Advertising Models and the Romanian Academic-Practitioner Divide

Abstract

The current paper presents a comparative analysis between the advertising models taught in the advertising classes of Romanian universities and those applied in the marketing and advertising industry, appraising the gap between the two worlds but also identifying the interference points. The current qualitative research is based on semi-structured interviews with professors from important Romanian universities specialized in teaching advertising, on one hand, and with experts from the most important three industry structures, marketing, account planning, and creative departments, on the other hand. According to the study’s conclusions, on one side, the Romanian textbooks include the main advertising models, but most of the professors do not insist on the subject as the students have a big reluctance to this topic. Moreover, the academicians do not know what models are used by the professionals although they make efforts to be as close to the practice as they can. On the other side, with some small exceptions, the professionals do not know and do not use textbook theoretical approaches. Furthermore, the creatives in the agencies manifest a certain reluctance against the main advertising theories as they consider them post-evaluation models that do not help them to solve the communication problem