What are the career prospects in Advertising & AD-Designing?

Q.) I am interested in advertising and specially AD Designing. Please tell me about the courses one should pursue to get into the field and its career prospects.   –  Sateesh Bandi

A.) Advertising is a means of influencing people. It can be for endorsing the product/ service of a company, for promoting a company or organisation or for spreading some message of public interest.

Creativity, insight to the mind set of mass, awareness of social and economic trends, understanding of consumer behaviour, ability to communicate the message to the targeted audience and specific technical skills are what required to get into advertising.

Advertising can be through various media of communication like billboards, posters, newspapers, magazines, radio, television and Internet. One must know the mechanics of a specific advertising mode to be successful in it. Also, each of these requires specific set of technical skills.

This is a very creative and competitive career and uses one’s abilities to the fullest extent.  Team spirit and ability to work under pressure are some more attributes demanded to exist here. The growth in this field is quite promising. Apart from vertical growth, you can also shift laterally between different areas of advertising and specialise in each.

There are a number of activities involved in advertising. Doing research about how an entity to be advertised is perceived by audience, identifying their priorities, estimating the goodwill of customer, learning how to influence the target audience, designing the advertisement and producing the campaign are some of it.

To start a career in advertising, one can opt for a bachelor’s degree in arts, mass media or allied subjects and opt for advertising as specialisation.  You can also get into the field with a diploma in advertising or a degree/ certificate in technical skills required for advertising. There are several institutes and courses offered both in regular and in distance mode and at several levels, in these subjects.  Ad designing is usually offered as a subject in advertising courses. Following are some of the courses you can opt for:

Apeejay Institute of Design, New Delhi affiliated to Guru Nanak Dev University, Punjab offers one-year diploma and six months certificate courses in advertising design. The eligibility criterion is a pass in Intermediate or equivalent with minimum 50 per cent marks in aggregate. The fee for diploma is Rs. 45,000/- and certificate is Rs. 30,000/-. For details, log on to www.apeejay.edu

National Institute Of Creative Communication, Bangalore offers B.Sc Visual Communications and diploma in Design (Advertising as specialisation), a Combination Graduate Programme. The eligibility criterion is Intermediate or above.  They also offer Professional Diploma in Design with Advertising as a specialisation. The eligibility criterion for this course is graduation in any discipline. The admission to these courses is through NICC Aptitude Probe. The test is composed of Written Paper,
Practicals and Viva Voce, and Assessment of existing work (if any). The institute offers placement services also. For details, log on to www.niccindia.org

Asian Academy of Film and Television, Uttar Pradesh offers one-year Postgraduate Diploma in Multimedia, two-years M.Sc Multimedia Technologies and three-years B.Sc Multimedia. The admission is based on performance at entrance test. The eligibility criterion for B.Sc is Intermediate. For M.Sc it is graduation. These degrees are awarded by Punjab Technical University. For details, visit www.aaft.com

Bharthiyar University, School of Distance Education, Coimbator offers PG Diploma in Advertisement in distance mode. The eligibility criterion is graduation in any discipline. For details, visit www.b-u.ac.in

Madurai Kamaraj University, Directorate of Distance Education, Madurai offers one-year P.G. Diploma in Multimedia Technology. The eligibility criterion is graduation in any discipline. For details, visit www.mkudde.org

You can also opt for one of the short-term multimedia courses offered by several institutes. Advertising is an industry that provides employment for eligible candidates from several disciplines. You can enter the industry with a related set of skills of the time and update them later guided by the trends in the industry.

Courtesy: ” The Hindu “