“Advertising is a place where you constantly learn, regardless if you like it or not…”

There is much to understand about being in the advertising industry. Chances are that you have caught the passion and cannot but ignore the lure of this business. Nonetheless, it is a fantastic journey to be in. Here’s how.

Everyday is a new day

One thing is that you will constantly up your skills. Whether you like it or not, you will learn all kind of new things. How tea is made, how much pulp is used in making a mango drink, how bicycles are made and sometimes, discounts are a cover up by retailers…

In the morning, you could be having a brainstorming session with your team on how to sell a facewash, whereas in the afternoon, you need to crack a campaign on enrolling more students into a new school.

The learning sphere gets better with e-com is reaching out to each one of us. You cannot miss how the Google Fibre is changing the net, how and why there’s a huge demand for quality Arabic content on social media, and how the passion of 120 nationalities define one but triggers differently within the UAE.

For instance, VentureCom handles everything — from the old media to the new one — and everything real, digital, and integrate them to reach the right targeted audience. The bad thing about being in advertising is that there is no bad thing about it.

Advertising is not a job, it’s a passion

You do not prospect advertising for employment. That is sacrilege. You need to be driven by it and become one with it. You need to eat, sleep and drink advertising.

You become a whirling dervish of clients, brands, and businesses. You work on the briefs, meet people, listen to consumers, miss parties, and stay back in the office for several nights.

If you have something else in mind, become a banker or take up another 9 to 6 job as there is a saying in the ad world: “You can check in any time you want, but you can never leave!”

You think you know everything?

Sorry to puncture your cocoon of complacency but you only know little. The whole discussion on how distant textbook advertising is from the actual world of advertising will come alive to kick your ego every day. It is not a myth but a zillion dollars of truth.

There are no similar briefs, products, case studies or budgets. There are no similar audiences at times — each client or brand comes with its own perspective, guidelines, history, background and even religious peccadilloes.

Life in this industry is a slightly bigger beast on the prowl, and those claws hurt.

Jargon will get you nowhere

The world is far more jargonised that it was when I started my love affair. We had a couple of fashionable words to throw around called psychographics, demographics, OTS and 30 seconds. I used to borrow a few more for added radiance from my colleagues, but they never helped.

Clients yawned. Rational ruled.

Your best friends are insecurity and fear

Maybe the books have taught you the other way around, or perhaps in most businesses it is more important to be confident and fearless.

In this business, insecurity is the one fuel that keeps you searching and exploring for new things. Unlike others, in advertising, the products that we manufacture in our heads are ideas that have no formula.

They have no pie charts, no logic, no shape nor colour — nothing. The only thing that will give us ideas is a constant supply of insecurity.

What kind of idea should it be? Should it be based on emotion? Should it redefine media parameters?

Unknown to me, my neurons are bristling with lights and sparks. I am on an invisible energy overdrive. While I don’t know where the next idea is going to come from, yet I do that it will come to me before the deadline, and it’s going to be a killer one.

I do not deal in mediocrity as a policy. Fear and insecurity aren’t negative, that’s passion. They are your wings, so fly with them.

The writer is Director at VentureCom, part of Verse Group. The views expressed are his own and do not represent those of VentureCom or Gulf News.