Breaking into Marketing and Advertising

ADVICE FOR ASPIRING COPYWRITERS AND COPYEDITORS, GRAPHIC DESIGNERS AND ALL MARKETERS AND ADVERTISERS

Do some work note taking for market research interviews. Obviously, you need to have good typing and transcription skills. If you have that down, though, a note taking gig is very entry level. You can possibly even get such a gig by interning or telling temp agencies that you just want that kind of position.

Even though it doesn't have much glory attached to it, can get quite tedious or really have that much of a challenge to it, the gig can teach you a lot about how different elements of copy, visuals, graphics and the such affects a variety of people. I can't really provide too many examples since the data that I have is really proprietary property.

Also, the studies I've worked on have generated tons of data of so many varieties. I didn't even really know how to sift through the information at first. Most of the time, I just compared the responses to a profile that I made of people based on the most superficial bits of information like sex, nationality, experience in a field, where they worked, etc. etc. The first couple days that resulted in pretty homogenous results didn't help, either. After having an exposure to a large variety of respondents and data, though, I've found myself picking up on some things.

So yeah, I'd say if you want to get into marketing and advertising, you should really check out this kind of note taking gig. Two other gigs that could help you get more of a breadth of the methodologies and principles of these types of things: a survey research interviewer (or if you have a degree in the social sciences, a survey designer or analyst) and some kind of entry level sales position.

In regards to sales, I've only done low level sales in insurance, when I read a book on selling insurance (which included some interesting psychology stereotypes that proved somewhat accurate), and the event marketing for Blue Green. Nonetheless, those sales/event marketing positions helped me to understand marketing and advertising just that much better, and not necessarily in some academic, deconstructionist type of way, either. . .even though I prefer those kinds of interpretation more. =D