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The Advertising Curriculum and the Needs of Creative Students

Scholars and practitioners have been discussing both the advertising curriculum and its creative components almost unceasingly since Walter Dill Scott first spoke to Chicago's Agate Club in 1901. Writing in both academic and trade journals, educators and advertising professionals have explored such issues as the most effective ways to teach creative courses,(1) whether programs should focus on first principles or basic skills,(2) and what courses should make up the advertising curriculum.(3) Although the debate over whether the curriculum should focus on practical skills or first principles remains unresolved, a number of surveys suggest that considerable agreement has been reached with regard to the components of the curriculum itself. As Rotzoll and Barban have observed,(4) the findings of Cather's 1974 survey of advertising and business executives are consistent with those from a 1982 survey of advertising executives for the Media Arts Center Advisory Council of the New York Institute of Technology. Furthermore, the results of the 1989 survey undertaken by the Task Force on the Future of Journalism and Mass Communication Education were generally consistent with the results of the earlier surveys. Perhaps more importantly, the findings also showed strong agreement between educators and practitioners about both general and specific components of a sound advertising program.(5) Such surveys, however, have tended to view advertising students as an undifferentiated group and have not considered whether the needs of those students planning to enter the creative area differ significantly from those who plan careers in research, media, or account management. Only recently have such questions begun to be addressed. Lauterborn has suggested that because agencies have reduced their staff and eliminated training programs, all entry-level people (including creatives) are now expected to perform immediately and so need more specialized skills than in the past.(6) Keding has pointed out the need to reconceptualize the curriculum to help aspiring creatives develop the specialized skills they will need;(7) and Morrison has discussed ways to manage such a program.(8) Others have conducted research to help determine exactly what should be taught in such a reconceptualized curriculum. A 1989 study divided the curriculum into account service, media, creative writing, and market research and then asked agency recruiters and educators what they were looking for in each area.(9) While this survey indicated the importance of the portfolio for creative job seekers, it didn't indicate what that portfolio should contain, what skills were required to produce it, and what abilities would be of value in an entry-level job. These issues have been addressed in part by two recent studies which have explored the perspectives of "new" and "experienced" creatives in order to determine what sorts of skills should be acquired in the classroom in order to do well in an entry-level creative post and progress in a career.(10) Although the findings from these studies are valuable, in each case the sample size was small and was drawn from a single U.S. office of a global advertising agency.(11) Because of these factors, the authors of the study of experienced creatives suggested that additional research should be conducted among practitioners in a wider variety of settings.(12) This article tests many of the findings of the earlier study of experienced creatives by exploring the perspectives of 132 creative executives who review the portfolios of entry-level job candidates. Creatives involved in the hiring process were selected in order to gain insight into the skills and knowledge that agencies feel entry-level creatives must possess in order to be hired. Students, of course, apply for positions with agencies of all sizes. Survey respondents were also drawn from a wide variety of agencies ranging from those billing less than $50 million to those billing more than $150 million. …