Real Worlds and Ivory Towers: A Survey of Top Creative Directors

Abstract

While the value of education and its relevance to the professions in general has recently been called into question,l for advertising education such a concern has been present steadily and repeatedly over the years. Much of the scrutiny has been self-inflicted. Researchers have sought relations between a successful advertising education and a successful advertising career, from the obtaining of entry-level employment (Deckinger, Brink, Primavera & Katzenstein, 1989) to the reaching of highlevel management positions (Donnelly, 1992). Academic publications have further discussed advertising education in editorials (McGann,1986) and forums (Mandell, 1975); they have attempted to define a larger role for advertising educators in relation to the industry (Moore & Leckenby, 1975); and they have surveyed existing university advertising programs (Ross, 1973; Ross,1991) to evaluate them in relation to the demands of the industry (Moore & Leckenby, 1973) and to those of the students (Schweitzer, 1988). Academics have also invited the industry's perspective (Montana, 1973), elicited program rankings from agency heads (Marquez, 1980), and measured agency professionals' attitudes toward a degree as preparation for a professional career (Gifford & Maggard, 1975). A common thread running through all such examinations has been and remains How can advertising educators balance the goals of academe with the needs of the profession? Business side of art Perhaps nowhere is the concern with a balance of academic and professional goals more pronounced-and legitimatethan in the creative side of advertising. Hiring decisions on creative departments are made primarily, and often ultimately, on the basis of the applicant's book (Barry, 1990; Paetro, 1990). While some researchers have concluded that portfolio-oriented programs or schools (e.g. Portfolio Center, Art Center, Ad Ed, Miami Ad School) are typically attended by college graduates, [so]they complement, rather than threaten, advertising curricula (Otnes, Spooner & Treise, 1993, p. 9), a counter argument must at least be admitted that the presence and success of such schools suggests the failure of the university advertising curriculum to accommodate those students who want to pursue careers in the creative area of advertising. Indeed, Otnes et al. (1993) fail to explore exactly how portfolio-oriented programs complement traditional advertising curricula. Furthermore, such a conclusion is reached, by the authors' own admission, from a sample of only 13 recent hires at one large Midwestern agency. Even within the limited scope of such a study, far from suggesting a complementary relationship between universities and postgraduate portfolio schools, a more valid conclusion would be that the presence of this niche suggests that: a) recent graduates need specialized training, and b) agencies often don't and won't provide such training. The study could also be said to force the conclusion that the university, by and large, is not the place one should go (or does go) to prepare for a career as a creative in advertising. Our own study proceeded from this recognition of failure or, at least, the assumption that universities often do not prepare graduates for entry-level creative positions in advertising. It also recognized that one of the problems with interpreting results of previous studies on the subject of creatives is with sample selection and size. By using as its population the creative directors from some 600 top U.S. advertising agencies, ours is the first formal study of top creatives regarding advertising education. Such an effort is easily contrasted with other studies of advertising education, which have tended to rely on relatively small, homogeneous samples of students (cf., Otnes et al., 1993), agency presidents (as opposed to creatives; cf., Marquez, 1980), or educators (cf., Applegate, 1994). And while previous studies have used closed-ended questionnaires or even a focus group method with an agenda, the present study adopted a completely openended approach to identifying issues in the preparation of students for creative jobs-the use of non-directive questions allowed us to use the verbatim comments themselves to form their own categories. …