Brett Robbs

Teaching Practices and Emphases in Advertising Creative Courses

The changes that convulsed the advertising industry over the last decade had an impact not only on agencies but on advertising education as well. The down-sizing and mergers of the late 1980s and early 1990s greatly reduced the ranks of mid-level creative people and also led to the elimination of most creative department training programs (Lauterborn, 1987; Robbs, 1994). So where agencies once helped develop entry-level creative talent, they now expect junior writers and art directors to “hit the ground running.” These new expectations together with the rise of advertising trade schools such as the Portfolio Center, Creative Circus, and Miami Ad School have helped spur discussions of the undergraduate creative curriculum. Educators have conducted interviews and surveys to determine what agencies are looking for and what advice practitioners might offer about how to prepare students for creative positions (Kendrick et al., 1996; Otnes et al., 1993; Otnes et al., 1995; Robbs, 1996). But there has been no corresponding effort to determine what those who teach advertising creative courses are actually doing in the classroom. This study was designed to do precisely that. Its findings not only provide a way to measure the gulf between educators and practitioners but also will help individual programs assess their creative offerings and chart future directions.

Multicultural Issues in the Advertising Curriculum.

America’s demographic profile has changed profoundly over the last 15 years. Minority group members now account for a significant part of the U.S. population with African-Americans making up 13 percent, Hispanics comprising 11 percent, and Asian-Americans three percent (Teinowitz, 1998). As these groups have grown, so has their purchasing power. In fact, the African-American market is said to represent

Incorporating Team Processes into the Advertising Curriculum

450 billion in spending power, the Hispanic market

The Advertising Curriculum and the Needs of Creative Students

300 billion, and the Asian

The Advertising Marketplace and the Media Planning Course.

101 billion (Sandlund, 1999). Moreover, their buying power is outpacing that of the general market and is predicted to triple over the next 1 2 years while that of the general market is expected to only double (Adverfising Age, 1998). Ethnic consumers have become increasingly important to both advertisers and agencies because of their purchasing power. Between 1994 and 1996, Spanish language advertising expenditures increased from

Preparing Young Creatives for an Interactive World: How Possible is It?

952.8 million to

Teaching the Advertising Media-planning Course: Trying to Serve Two Masters

1.2 billion (20.6 %) (Zate, 1994; 1996). In contrast, overall U.S. advertising expenditures have been increasing at the rate of 6.8 percent per year (Cohen, 1994) and are expected to increase at the rate of 4.8 percent over the next three (Gottesman, 1997). The increasing significance of ethnic markets makes it especially important for advertising students to understand them better. Indeed, as early as 1989, Albonetti and Dominguez argued that, “pursuit of academic training in areas useful to Hispanic marketing ... promises rewards for a good number of students” (1989, p. 20). Recently, Wagner and Treise have suggested that, “it seems reasonable that students in advertising strategy and creative classes should be sensitized to the nuances” of the way specific ethnic markets use particular products (1999, p. 44). But

Teaching the Undergraduate Research Course for Advertising Majors: Course Content and Key Challenges

Most advertising students will spend the rest of their lives working in teams. Yet most of them are not offered a single hour of teamwork training. This paper reviews the work on collaborative learning and also examines the practices of corporations known for their emphasis on teamwork. In-depth interviews with 41 managers at nine corporations help identify the processes which are essential for teamwork. The paper then discusses ways these processes can be incorporated into the advertising curriculum.