Advertising Products
So you’ve decided that you want to be advertising products for the rest of your life…
So it is time for you to be applying for admission to colleges and you have decided that you would like to major in advertising. Advertising is a relatively new field and it is often hard to find a school that offers advertising as its own major. The first thing you have to decide is what kind of degree you want to finish college with and then you have to decide what kind of college experience you want to have. If you are majoring in advertising because you are very creative and artistic then you may want to attend an art school. Art schools will help you to fine tune your creative skills and to graduate with a nice portfolio. Some art schools, however, do not offer a typical campus life with dormitories. Therefore, you may prefer a larger university that will give you a well rounded education. To help you with your choice we will take a look at an east coast college that offers advertising as a major.
Temple University
Temple is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is not for those who fear city life. Unlike most campuses that occupy their own secluded space, Temple University is right in the center of everything and everyone who is the city of Philadelphia. You hear traffic lights chirping while you sleep, a red light may make or break you getting to class on time, and public transportation is the fastest way to get anywhere off campus. These attributes may excite you or they may repel you, but no matter how you view the culture of Temple University, you will absolutely leave that school with a solid education in advertising.
Temple’s advertising department is split up into four tracks that students may choose to follow. Your first year you will take general classes which include Intro to Advertising in which you will get to role play that you are advertising products for an advertising agency to give you real experience on your chosen career and how you fit into that world. You will take Intro to Media and Society in which you will learn the progression of media and how advertising products has changed with technology and will continue to always change. You will take Intro to Advertising Research because behind every great campaign there must be the proper facts to back up the strategy that you choose in advertising products. Lastly, you will take persuasive writing because the core principle of advertising products is all about persuading consumers.
Your second year you will delve deeper into the separate aspects of advertising. You will take Advertising Strategy and Positioning which teaches you how you come up with successful ideas for advertising products. You will take Media Planning I which gives you a basic understanding of how advertisements just placed and tracked. Then you will take Visual Communications which helps you to see all that goes into choosing graphics, symbols, and type. Lastly, you will take Intro to Copywriting because it is important for everyone in the advertising field to know the basics of how to get their ideas for advertising products across to the consumer or even the client.
Your third year you will choose a track. Whether you choose the research, the management, the art, or the copywriting track, you will take two classes that focus specifically on your concentration. Then every track will take Creative Thinking in which you study the great creatives in history and their methods for coming up with such great work. The fourth class requirement for every track is to complete either an internship or to interview to get into Diamond Edge Communications, Temple’s own student run agency.
Your last year in the Temple advertising department, all tracks will come together for either a campaigns class in which you will work like an actual agency to create advertising campaigns for their portfolios or you can join the American Advertising Federation competition in which you create a campaign and enter it into the national competition. If you choose the art or copywriting track, the two tracks will collaborate with each other for Portfolio class in which they will actually be advertising products with a creative partner to build up their personal portfolio. Management track students will take Advertising Account Management to really learn what they would do in their future positions in an ad agency, while research track students will take Account Planning. All advertising students will take Interactive Media to learn about how advertising products has moved online in recent years. The last class that the students will need to take is Morality, Law, and Advertising because sometimes advertising products you do not agree with can present a personal moral dilemma or your particular pictures or words in an ad could cause a legal suit.
After all of that, you will come out of school four years smarter and with a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in hand. If advertising products is your passion, look into Temple University. Their hands on classes and experienced professors prepare you for the real world as you watch it right outside your door in the big city of Philadelphia.
