Students with degrees in advertising will find a competitive job market. Competition for jobs in advertising is tough because this industry customarily attracts more jobseekers than there are job openings. The draw towards this industry is the multimillion-dollar campaigns, and the glamour surrounding the promotion of products and the clients it represents. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics ( http://www.bls.gov/ ), non-supervisory workers in advertising and public relations services made $633 a week on average in 2004. Companies in the advertising and public relations industry arrange advertisements for other companies and organizations and propose campaigns to encourage the interests and image of their clients. This industry also includes media representatives, radio, television, and the Internet. It also includes display ads, direct mail, billboards and other tangible media. The demand for educated advertising professionals is on the rise as technological advances give advertisers more options for the media on which they advertise.

You can earn an advertising degree at public and private colleges and universities, as well dedicated technical schools that offer career specific programs. Specialty schools often offer two-year degree or certificate programs in advertising. Traditional four-year college and university programs offer advertising programs within other majors such as communications, business or art programs. Most people starting out in an advertising career will be required to hold a bachelor’s degree with a liberal arts background. Bachelor’s degrees are not required for entry-level positions in the creative department. Assistant art directors, for example usually need at least a 2-year degree from an art or design school. Although assistant copywriters do not need a degree, obtaining one helps to develop the superior communication skills and abilities required for this job. Entry-level positions in the industry include account management, media coordinator, or market research. Internships, in conjunction with your education, will help you get a job when you graduate. Completion of an internship is often a necessary requirement for many advertising firms. In addition to an internship, course work in marketing, design, statistics and accounting can help get you ready for employment in this field.

Walk down a suburban street in any developed industrialized nation and one thing will be remarkably constant: The letterboxes will be full, often overflowing. And they won’t just contain addressed, posted mail. The bulk of the material will often be brochures and flyers advertising businesses and services, many of them local.

Certainly, many people find this fact of modern life extremely annoying. Sometimes more than half the houses in a street will have signs angrily demanding that there be no junk mail!.

But this phenomenon proves something: Those flyers and brochures must be working! Otherwise businesses wouldn’t be paying to have them produced and distributed.

Without a doubt flyers and brochures have distinct advantages over other methods of advertising: Here are a few:

1) They are comparatively cheap to produce flyers particularly so. Certainly, glossy multi-page brochures can be very costly, but basic one page black and white flyers are very inexpensive and can still work well. As long as they are clear and large enough to catch the resident’s eye, they can get your product or service noticed.

2) You can target the geographic areas that you want. Ultimately all business is local business. But some businesses are more local than others! Businesses that cater to a geographically specific market tend to get a very good response from flyers and brochures.

An example would be a pub or bar wanting to promote a one-off or regular theme night. Placing several thousand flyers in letterboxes around the venue would be a great way of telling people about this event. People do tend to be more likely to go to something that is close to where they live, after all.

3) Just as you can target runs geographically, you can also target them demographically. Say a pool table company is using brochures to get leads. There would be little point in targeting units, since they generally wouldn’t be large enough to contain the product. And pool tables are not cheap! So, the best results would come from a large run through middle to high income suburbs — houses only.

Of course it can be difficult finding distributors who can do a drop in this way. Most of the big distribution companies offer value but on a large scale. You must pay for a large drop, your promotional material is rolled up with several others, and no thought is put into which letterboxes are chosen! However, there are smaller distributors who can thoughtfully target your material. They are just less well known, and harder to find, that’s all.

4) You can put special offers on them. A flyer that says something like, Present this and get a ten percent discount on any item in the store! is a good choice. The incentive itself can increase sales. Secondly, it’s a great way of tracking the campaign, since the number of actual discounts can be recorded accurately.

5) People hang onto them. This is one definite advantage over newspaper advertising. Of course, many more people will see an ad placed in the paper. But to keep your contact details they have to cut the ad out, highlight it, or write it down usually along with a lot of others. A flyer or brochure, however, contains all the details and can be kept indefinitely. Businesses often get leads from flyers or brochures that have been left on the tops of fridges or in desk drawers for months, even years!

Certainly, particular circumstances dictate that flyers and brochures are not always the best advertising method. But the above advantages make them a remarkably reliable, cost effective way of raising awareness and generating leads for most businesses.