Advertising Classes Ain't about Advertising

Thirty three years of work in the media and advertising field have brought me to this conclusion about advertising classes. They only benefit you if you are willing to challenge EVERY SINGLE aspect communicated to you by your instructors. You see, here's what's wrong with advertising classes that I've attended. They focus on the wrong things. Here's a good example I borrowed from an unnamed advertising student about a blog they clearly didn't want to be bothered writing.

"I think that artful advertising should be beautiful, classy, and effortful"

Huh? Artful advertising? How about does it sell something? How about an advertising class in AIDA style of writing?

Advertising classes need to be renamed to art classes. The way they are currently structured is a misnomer. The classes are focused much less on the quality of the words used. but more on the "art" of the moment. In the real world its the ability or words used to grab attention, focus interest, create desire, and initiate action brings the money home. The advertising that wins awards and is held in the highest esteem many times doesn't sell much of anything. That's my biggest problem. You pay your money to advertise to generate sales, not to win agencies awards.

Here's how you can make advertising classes pay off for your investment. Learn all you can about the art. Learn about lighting, angles, creating mood with subtle backgrounds. Learn to covey feelings, create emotional bonds, and heighten desire.

Then think about how you would do the exact same thing again

Without the photos. Without the music. Without the videos.

Only the words. Its the words, the copy, put together in a fashion that evokes all those emotions that work. The secret is the words. While we've heard the phrase "a picture is worth one thousand words," we probably don't realize we are spouting a sales line made famous by a camera company. Advertising as a discipline is, at its core, an art form. Its no wonder that so much time in advertising classes are focused on the visual arts. There are times when words can't carry the entire story. The destruction of the World Trade Center. The action in China at Tiananmen Square. The pictures carried the story. They told the story. But they were not advertising.

The man who carries the title "the Father of Advertising" David Ogilvy says there is one book you must read if you never want to write a bad advertisement again.

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. Add to that a couple of other great books. Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves and Tested Advertising Methods (5th Edition) by John Caples.

These books will add to your advertising education where advertising classes can come up short.

Looking at the quote from earlier

"I think that artful advertising should be beautiful, classy, and effortful"

Does it grab your attention?

You'll find a number of advertisers on this article who are pitching advertising classes, triggered by Google Adsense on advertising keyword. Most of the ads won't be artful. They are Adsense, so the won't be beautiful in a pictoral sense of the word. Classy, maybe. And I don't know what the **** effortful means.

Advertising classes can teach you technique. They can teach you style. They will teach you "smoke and mirrors."

Geek Squads' Founder Robert Stephens explained what advertising is at Advertising Age’s 2007 IDEA Conference, “Advertising is the tax you pay for unremarkable thinking.” Advertising classes as taught in academia today is about the art. Selling products by creating needs and desires in the mind of the prospect is not the same subject.