All of the major advertising firms used to be headquartered in New York, along famous Madison Avenue in the center of Manhattan’s financial district. If you watch the HBO show Mad Men (since picked up by some other network in syndication) you will see the fictional characters working at fictional agencies on Madison Avenue, hence the term “Mad” Men. In the 50s and 60s the top advertising firms were all run by men and it was a total boy’s club that ladies were not allowed to enter, except as secretaries or receptionists. These men chain smoked at their workstations the whole day and drank heavily each night while wining and dining customers at fancy dining establishments and pubs.
Those times are gone and many are glad for that, especially ladies and minorities who nowadays play a much bigger role in today’s major advertising firms. Everything has changed drastically in the last twenty years. Graphic Designers were often dealt with like technical flunkies and were normally not given the chance to rise above Art Director status. All the Creative Directors (CDs) came from the copywriting departments and the moment you’re a CD, you can hope to make partner or V.P. with a few years of extremely long hours and efforts below your belt.
Today’s top advertising agencies are those that have survived in the period of the internet and have adapted their services to fit the cyber world’s heavy demands. They are the ones who use the internet for internet marketing that includes social media marketing and video marketing. Thirty years ago ad agencies failed to even have computers. Typesetting was carried out by hand with press on type that you purchased at the Art supplies store. Typefaces were restricted and you had to be very careful that you didn’t mess up or else you had to start once again. God forbid that the Account Executive or perhaps the client modified the headline at the last minute. Deadlines were extremely tight in the former days and you had to manually crank out 50 to 100 advertisements in one day (and all night) for delivery the next morning to the newspaper publishers.
Obviously today all of the major advertising firms possess cutting edge computers, mostly Mac but a few PCs as well. The employed small armies of Graphic Designers who use software like InDesign and Photoshop CS.
The majority of the leading advertising companies now also carry out online advertisements and that shows that the artists need to have skills in HTML, Flash, Dreamweaver, and various site building software. By being so techie a number of the artistic side of the craft has surely suffered. But since the airwaves are slammed and jammed with a great number of images as well as loud attention hogging banners, the leading advertising firms have to be a little more creative than ever in their hope to get their client’s message through to their target audiences. The majority of ad campaigns cost a great deal that the ad companies utilize focus groups to receive reactions before shelling out any money.
Even though methods and technologies have developed over the years, the objective of leading advertising agencies worldwide have stayed the same and that’s sell more products for their clients.
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