Education
Beginning media jobs, start with a degree. Usually this is a bachelor's degree in English, public relations, communications, marketing, journalism or advertising.
Some advertising jobs may have started their career from working their way up through the company. They may not have gone to college. Experience is sometimes as valuable as formal education. There are courses that can be taken to teach writing copy. There are also advertising schools that can help those wanting to enter jobs in advertising.
Duties
As a copywriter for an advertising agency, remember this agency may have several clients. They may not handle any other advertising for anyone other than their company. Many people who start media jobs work with a team and they have a supervisor who is the Creative Director. The writing will mainly focus on writing copy for brochures, advertisements, web sites and other projects as needed.
The advertising jobs for a copywriter works on the ads, corrects their copy before submitting, works with the Creative Director, pitches ideas for ad copy for new clients and current ones. In addition, they work with the other members of their creative team and may travel to commercial production locations.
Skills
Person wanting to succeed in jobs in advertising will have certain skills that will allow them to do so. They must be able to write good copy that is essential to selling the service or products provided by their client. Sometimes this position requires putting in long hours each day in order to meet deadlines. They must be creative and able to come up with ideas for advertising promotions.
Although some copywriters do not work directly with clients, there are some agencies that encourage interaction. Those who do work directly with clients work on the advertising strategies that are being considered and the campaigns that are selected for this advertising among other duties.
An advertising copywriter must be very adept at speaking and writing English. The ability to spot mistakes in grammar and spelling is extremely important.
The potential advertising copywriter should decide in which of these types of positions they would like to work. However, being versatile when starting out is a very good attribute and will allow you to get experience that will be invaluable in your job.
If you are just starting as an advertising copywriter, you will be learning quite a lot even if you did earn a degree. There is nothing like hands-on training to teach someone the ins and outs of any job. As a matter of fact some people prefer to start on the ground level of a company, learn everything they can and move up the company ladder in this manner.
Often even the new graduate will have to start at the bottom and work their way up the company ladder. This may not pay much to start, but if you stick with it, the chance to earn a very comfortable living working as an advertising copywriter is possible.
