Plan your career: Exciting opportunities in digital advertising space

Your talent for writing one-liners and being part of an editorial team in the school magazine has given you natural inclination towards advertising and copyrighting. You have groomed it in you! The confidence you exude could see you successful in this highly stressful and competitive field. Graduation either in English or Journalism is a good idea. But my personal take would be Journalism at the under graduate level. Your English medium school education is sufficient to consolidate the language skills needed for this career. 

Generally, Mass Communication, Public Relations and Advertising are combined. If you would like to concentrate on copywriting and choose to do English, you can always switch to Advertising/PR courses at post-graduation. Some city colleges offer BA in Advertising and Public Relations. It equips you with a foundation in the creative, advertising strategies, media planning, copywriting and visual design, ethics and law and communication skills to work in the field. 

There are both MA and MBA programmes specialising in Advertising, Media Management, Convergent Journalism, New Media and Corporate Communications that fine-tune an individual in this career. There are also post-graduation diploma courses in Advertising and Public Relations. All these are designed to give a strong foundation in both creative and business sides of advertising. 

Advertising and Public Relations go hand-in-hand. The focus is different, but the field is same. It is like running a sprint or 200 meters on the same track. You can use one skill to get a job in the other. Mind you! You need two different competencies for sprint and 200 meters. So too, one does not guarantee that you know the other automatically. There is an abundance of opportunities to get started in this career. But not before you seriously invest in hard work and creativity. 

The flamboyant characters that you know in advertising have worked desperately long hours without counting days, sometimes even doing a 180-degree turn after all the hard work and creative energy gets trashed. It is definitely lucrative in the rapidly growing Indian economy. The digital advertising, i.e., mobile and online, presents a high growth rate. It displays a dreamy picture for advertising and PR talents. What the agencies look for are highly talented persons who can think independently and be an excellent team player. The Indian talents in the industry boast of high production value. We have been exporting skills globally and particularly to Gulf countries, South-East Asia, China, UK and the US. The job is very satisfying as one does something new all the time.