I’m a member of the MMS Marketing Club, which is doing an awesome job of holding events for students interested in pursuing a career in marketing and advertising. One event I loved was the Ad Lunch with Ed Bernier, the Associate Director of Career Services, on September 21. At that point, I didn’t know much about advertising or how to prepare myself for jobs in the industry. It was a really interesting session because I learned how to look at ads and commercials not as a consumer, but to analyze them as someone who could work in the industry.

We looked at an ad or commercial, and then analyzed how effectively it communicated about the product or service. We called this process the ‘creative brief,’ and tried to think of 5 key elements of the ad or commercial. Then we all talked about what we thought the elements were, and about how much we liked or didn’t like the ad.

The ad lunch only lasted an hour, but it gave me a framework that I can now use to look at any ad or commercial and evaluate how effective I think it is in accomplishing its objective.

For those of you interested in advertising, here’s a link to one of the ads I really liked.