At some point, though, you're going to be ready to start looking for full-time employment in the marketing department of an advertising agency. When that time comes, the first thing you should do is mosey on over to your local library and become intimately acquainted with the Advertising Redbook. Look up the names of the marketing directors in the agencies for which you'd like to work. Most medium-sized and large agencies will have someone with that title. But not all agencies have marketing departments per se. In smaller agencies, the people in account service double as marketing folks. So if you can't find anyone listed as a marketing director, look for someone listed as an account supervisor. If you can't find anyone listed as an account supervisor, call an account executive. If you can't get through to an A.E., call the president.
Make an appointment to see whoever will interview you, then sit down with them and discuss your situation. They'll want to see a resume and a willingness to do anything to start. If this will be your first job in an agency, then you're obviously looking for an entry-level position, and your salary requirements should be adjusted accordingly.
As a junior member of a marketing department, you shouldn't expect to earn more than $9,000 to $14,000 a year in the beginning. When you're first starting out, though, try not to be overly concerned with your wallet. Focus your attention on what you'll learn and on how much the other people in the marketing department can teach you.
Everyone, but everyone in this business needs a mentor, regardless of what department they're in. A mentor is someone who'll take you under his wing and go to the time and trouble to teach you the things you need to know to practice your craft. So, if you want to get into marketing, try to go to work for an agency with the most brilliant and demanding marketing people you can find. You won't regret it. Taking a job only for money your first time out of the gate is false economy, pure and simple.
What if you can't get into an agency's marketing department? Then try the same places suggested earlier for summer employment. Try getting into an agency's account service department, media department, research department, or traffic department. You could even try getting into their typing pool if there's a chance you could move into marketing a little later. You wouldn't be the first marketing person to get into the field through the door of a different department.
Try getting a job with an advertiser, a media buying service, a market research firm, or with any company that does business with an agency's marketing people.
Whatever avenue you take to get into marketing, though, two facts will always remain the same. The competition will be stiff, and chances are, it will take some time until you find the job you want.
No matter how long it takes to get hired, try not to get discouraged. If a career in marketing is what you really want, then don't give up until you succeed.
Never quit. That's the secret of life. That's the only way you'll ever win. Your luck can't change if you don't keep rolling the dice. If you're aggressive enough to keep trying, yet patient enough to wait for it to happen, then you will get a job in marketing. You could end up making oodles of money, and you'll definitely have as much fun as anyone else in this business.
As is the case with most other advertising careers, a career in marketing could afford you the opportunity to expand your interests into other areas. A lot of marketing people end up opening their own agencies or marketing firms.
But the first and last thrill for any marketing person isn't anything that complicated. It's the special pleasure that comes from figuring out what motivates people, from figuring out what there is about a product or service that would make people want to partake of it. It's the fun of watching people buy widgets because you figured out that those widgets make people's teeth look brighter, or their hair shinier, or their cars run better.
It's the simple, selfish little hoot you get out of saying to yourself, "I knew it! I knew that would get 'em! And I was right."
