Article Written By: Phil Guye
All the top advertising agencies formerly were based in New York, along famous Madison Avenue in the middle of Manhattan's financial district. If you watch the HBO show Mad Men (since acquired by another network in syndication) you will notice the fictional characters being employed at fictional agencies on Madison Avenue, thus the term "Mad" Men. In the 50s and 60s the leading advertising firms were all operated by men and it was a total boy's club that ladies were not permitted to enter, except as assistants or receptionists. These men chain smoked at their desks all day long and drank very much every night while wining and dining customers at fancy restaurants and bars.Those times are gone and many are grateful for that, specifically ladies and minorities who nowadays play a much bigger role in today's top advertising firms. Things have changed dramatically within the last two decades. Graphic Designers were always treated like technical flunkies and were usually not given the chance to rise above Art Director status. All of the Creative Directors (CDs) came from the copywriting departments and the moment you're a CD, you could possibly hope to make partner or V.P. with a few years of extremely long hours and hard work below your belt.Today's major advertising agencies are ones that have made it in the age of the internet and have modified their services to suit the cyber world's big demands. Thirty years ago advertising agencies did not even have computers. Typesetting was carried out manually with press on type that you bought at the Art supplies store. Typefaces were restricted and you must 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 customer changed the headline at the very last minute. Deadlines were extremely tight back in the former days and you had to manually crank out fifty to one hundred ads in one day (and all night) for distribution the next morning to the newspapers.Obviously nowadays all the top advertising companies have got high tech computer systems, mostly Mac but several PCs too. The employed small armies of Graphic Designers who use software like InDesign and Photoshop CS.A lot of the major advertising agencies now also carry out online advertisements and that shows that the artists need to have skills in HTML, Flash, Dreamweaver, as well as other website building software. By being so techie a number of the artistic side of the craft has surely suffered. But because the airwaves are slammed and packed with numerous images and loud attention hogging banners, the major advertising agencies have to be a little more imaginative than previously in their hope to get their client's message through to their target people. Many advertising campaigns cost a great deal that the ad firms utilize focus groups to receive responses before shelling out money.Despite the fact that techniques and technologies have developed over time, the goal of major advertising companies around the world have stayed the same and that's sell more products for their customers.
This Article Has Been Published on Tue, 25 Jan 2011 and Read 262 Times