Where Should I Intern, Ad Agency or Newspaper

proudterrier
Tue, 04 Aug 2015 23:22:46 +0000

Advertising and PR are definitely a bit different, but every school that others one/both will approach them differently, so you’ll need to dig into the specifics of the department. Generally the distinction tends to be: in advertising you are developing/supporting the brand identity through advertising campaigns & tactics. Usually you work at an agency–it’s long hours, fast-paced, lots of thinking on your feet/coming up with big creative concepts & selling them to brands (ie: Mad Men). It’s the ads you see on TV and in magazines, and now also broad social/digital/brand integration strategies. PR is more backend/reactive (though not always), where your job is to manage a company/brand’s consumer facing brand strategy, usually more along the lines of perception, consumer relationships, launches, event management. It’s easier to get “in house jobs” for PR–ie: work directly for a specific company instead of working for an agency (agency life is not for everyone). And marketing is an extension from PR and can also be a blend of both PR & advertising (I work in marketing, in-house, and I do both consumer facing branding strategy as well as copywriting & media buying).

Some advertising majors will cover everything, including things that fall under PR–press releases, brand image triage/rehabilitation, marketing, etc., but others won’t. Honestly the trifecta of advertising-PR-marketing has a LOT of latitude to fit a range of talents/interests/career preferences, and I think it’s worth exploring all three. I don’t ever want to work in advertising, or even PR, but marketing is a great fit for me–it dovetails nicely from my journalism major (b/c marketing & PR are the flip side of journalism in many ways). I had no idea I’d like marketing so much b/c I only ever saw the advertising/PR side of things in school (lots of extroverts, type A people–I’m more of an analytical introvert).

So look at each school’s program and see how easy it is to major in one thing but maybe cross-pollinate to take classes in other things. You can actually see how you like the agency–if you do, I would major in advertising. If a school only has PR, look at their sample classes and see who the professors are–they may cover more bases than just PR, but if they don’t, see if the school has a communication major.