Handicaps
Men who take up this profession should possess good general health, the ability to get about with a fair degree of facility, good hearing, and unimpeded speech. Personality counts for much in salesmanship, and since personal appearance is one factor in personality it should be suggested that facial wounds, which are soon forgotten by friends, often distract attention on first acquaintance and put a man at a disadvantage before his customer. The loss of a leg or an arm will not prove a barrier to this occupation so long as a man’s general activity is not interfered with seriously.
PLAN No. 1090. ADVERTISING
The passing from war to peace conditions will increase the demand for all kinds of advertising. Business has largely marked time during the war because of lack of goods to sell and lack of men and facilities.
Now, factories that have been on war work will have to keep their plants busy, win back trade lost through inability to supply old customers, and create new fields for their enlarged producing capacity. Retailers will have to keep pace with the new demands of readjusted commerce. All this means more advertising, and more men to plan and execute it.
Advertising to-day is as much a part of every business as clerking, bookkeeping, or stenography, for no manufacturer or merchant can do business without some form or many forms of it.
What Advertising Is
Consider the sign over the door, the labels on packages, the leaflet, circular, or catalogue describing goods, directions for using, sign cards, window posters, mailing cards, and the like; then, the business letter answering inquiries, or soliciting orders, the follow-up system that turns the inquiry into an order, the trade-aid work of many kinds that helps the manufacturer make good distributors of his dealers-and you have a bird’s-eye view of some forms of advertising work that are almost universally used, yet scarcely thought of as “advertising.” Add to these the demand for sales-producing “copy” for newspaper, magazine, and trade-paper advertising; the planning and preparation of illustrations and typesetting necessary to put the advertising into effect; and the vast quantity of such “copy” that appears daily, weekly, and monthly in various advertising mediums—and it is at once apparent that an army of workers is needed to carry on this work.
Permanency of Employment
The permanence of such work is attested by the fact that there has been an increasing use of all forms of advertising, keeping steady pace with America’s business growth. Even without taking into consideration outdoor advertising—billboards, bulletins and painted signs, electrical advertising display, street-car advertising, propaganda campaigns, civic and organization advertising, each of which offers fields of great extent—the employment of trained advertising men is as yet only in its infancy.
PLAN No. 1091. OPPORTUNITIES IN THIS PROFESSION
The personnel of advertising staffs includes men officially designated as follows:
Advertising director: The man who plans and directs.
Space buyer: The man who knows advertising media and the value of space, and the one who places advertising contracts.
Copy writer: The man who produces copy for advertisements, catalogues, printed matter, letters, follow-up work, etc.
Layout man: The man who assists the copy writer by preparing typographical and art layouts.
Proofreader: The man who reads proof on advertisements and printed matter.
Copy helper: The man who has charge of engravings, drawings, and printed stock, and who supervises the making, shipping, return, and safe-keeping of the same.
Buyer of printing: The man who knows papers, printing processes, their relative values, and also their sources. He also places the printing orders.
Art work buyer: The one who knows advertising art work; where to get it and its value; and who also places orders for illustrations and engravings.
Commercial artist: The man who produces sketches and finished drawings in pen and brush work, in tone and color, and who retouches photographs.
Photographer: The man with special training in posing, lighting, and photographing industrial subjects to secure pictures illustrating features of the product, texture, and construction, who works often with living models.
Correspondent: The man who produces orders from inquiries received through advertising, or who solicits orders through the mails.
Advertising promoter: The man who sells the advertising done by a house to its distributors, and who teaches them how to take advantage of the demand created, and how to use the trade-aid matter furnished by the house to its dealers.
Advertising investigator: The man employed to discover the needs, buying habits, buying power, consumption of competing lines, price limits, etc., of groups of consumers, dealers, or jobbers by actual contact with the individual.
Advertising solicitors: Men employed by publishers to solicit advertising for their publications; by manufacturers of calendars, advertising novelties, etc., to sell their products; and by advertising agencies to sell their service to the advertiser. Every newspaper, magazine, and trade paper must have one or more, perhaps many, solicitors, as must also the advertising agency and the maker of advertising novelties, the bill poster, the bulletin painter, the car-sign proprietor.
While this general list is in no way complete, it serves to show the vast field open to men in advertising and may serve as a guide in selecting the line of work to be undertaken.
Kind of Men Needed and Qualifications Required
Any wide-awake, intelligent, ambitious, optimistic man can become a useful advertising man in some one of its many branches. Physical disabilities will prove no handicap, providing general health has not been too seriously impaired. A knowledge of practical salesmanship helps, for all advertising is only a form of selling. Men of exceptional education and executive ability find a field as managers and production men. Good merchandise salesmen make good advertising solicitors. Commercial artists can be made into advertising artists. Commercial photographers and amateurs develop into photographers of advertising subjects. Most of the other positions can be filled without much previous training by men of ordinary general ability. The humblest advertising position can be made a stepping-stone to something higher.
The kind of men that make good soldiers are needed in this profession—sturdy, honest, determined, versatile men of good common sense, adaptability, and capacity for work. Such men will soon acquire the knowledge of detail necessary for advertising work.
Financial Rewards
No more inviting field of labor awaits the returned soldier than that of advertising, and there are few occupations in which the pecuniary rewards for high-grade service are more attractive. A man’s natural ability and training for this work are the only measure of his earning capacity.
Length of Course
Men who elect this vocation will be given a short intensive course of from four to six months in a day school, and will then be placed with a good advertising firm for practical experience. They will, at the same time, be enrolled in unit extension courses for further training on a part-time basis. The time required for this advanced part-time training will vary according to the ambition of the man himself, the higher he wishes to rise in the profession, the longer will be the period of training, but correspondingly higher will be the reward. Then, too, he will be earning as he learns, and qualifying for a promotion at the same time.
PLAN No. 1092. FOREIGN TRADE
For many years past there has been an active demand for men who would be willing to represent American business in the foreign field, and this demand has never been fully met. Just now at the close of the great war there will be an expansion in the foreign trade of the United States, and trained men for this field will be needed as never before. Men who have seen overseas duty may be interested in preparing for overseas commercial service. The living and working conditions are pleasant in almost every commercial center of the world. Of course, hardships are encountered in certain backward countries and in some tropical commercial centers, but in the main a position as representative of an American house in a foreign commercial center is an enviable one. In those foreign commercial centers which have come to be of importance, the American or European colony is a community in itself and frequently one whose social life is delightful. Social position and prestige are so important for commercial representatives in almost all foreign countries, that the term “Ambassador of commerce” has been applied to those who qualify and successfully represent American business houses in overseas commerce.
The possession of a merchant marine adequate to the needs of the time will lend a great impetus to our business activities in foreign countries. More men will also be needed for the large number of tasks connected with the handling of our shipping. The head offices of the shipping lines are at home, and these offices have branches throughout the world. Many employees are needed for the various duties in these offices. Positions in the shore end of shipping include important document work, and other work of a more routine character; salesmen who can sell transportation to foreign trade concerns; ship brokers who devote their time to the chartering of ships; insurance brokers who handle the insurance end of foreign shipping; wharve superintendents and master stevedores; warehouse managers; traffic managers, and port and harbor experts.
Training Required
Plans for giving training to men who desire positions in connection with the shore end of ocean transportation with foreign trade houses are well under way, and adequate vocational training of this type is now available for the first time in this country.
No longer is it necessary for men interested in foreign-trade service to contemplate a four-year collegiate course of study before they can form connections with firms sending their wares to foreign markets. The Federal Board for Vocational Education in co-operation with the United States Shipping Board and in the United States Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce is actively promoting throughout the United States courses in foreign trade and shipping. These courses are being offered in evening, part-time, full-time, university extension, and correspondence schools, and are open to graduate engineers, lawyers, graduates of collegiate commercial courses, men who have had general college training, men of technical or business training in any branch of commerce and industry, graduates of secondary schools and, in fact, to all intelligent men with a background of business experience combined with a serious interest in international commerce or shipping activities.
PLAN No. 1093. EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Recent conferences with the Export Managers’ Club show that all enterprising export managers are in need of trained men, or men capable of taking such training as will be necessary to the successful carrying of their important work.
There are two general divisions in foreign trade occupations. The first includes active service in the foreign field, and the second service in the home country. In the foreign field clerks, assistants, salesmen, and managers are required. Some concerns send traveling salesmen into foreign countries to cover the field and report back to the home office, while others send men abroad with instructions to take up their residence there and establish an office for the permanent conduct of their employer’s business. The establishment of such branch offices calls for the employment of the usual types of office help. Banks and other financial agencies also are created in foreign countries for the benefit of American exporters and importers.
Who Should Be Interested
Men of the American expeditionary forces who have seen something of the world, and who have gained an interest in and a taste for things outside of the United States, will find in foreign trade service great opportunities. This is particularly true of those who have learned a foreign language, and who are so situated with reference to family ties that they can easily take up an occupation in a foreign country.
The list of positions that will be opened in this field is so extensive that a man may find in it an opportunity to elect just the kind of work he is best fitted to do.
Men who prefer foreign trade service in home offices will find excellent opportunities as soon as they have completed the necessary preparation for such service. Well-defined, intensive co-operative courses of study have been worked out and are being offered in the large foreign trade centers for men who desire to enter this service. Home office positions include those requiring clerical work in connection with the preparation of commercial documents, positions that have to do with financial affairs and foreign exchange, adjustment work, foreign correspondence, foreign advertising, transportation, credits, and collections. Superintendents for packing and loading departments also are required. Men who have had experience in the Quartermaster’s Department of the Army during the war, and who have learned something about scientific handling of merchandise, will find in the foreign trade field opportunities to cash in on their special experiences.
What Training Is Necessary
A thorough study of the general technique of the home office in connection with foreign trade and shipping is considered a necessary foundation in any scheme of foreign trade education. A part-time plan, in accordance with which men may pursue their studies while securing practical experience with foreign trade houses has been worked out, and it is now possible for men to get training under a co-operative basis scheme of instruction and work. Courses offered will be given intensively for short periods and on a unit basis. They will vary in length from 15 to 30 weeks. The same provision is being made for the study of languages and the geography of various countries that are of interest in connection with foreign trade education. The United States Shipping Board is taking steps to establish permanent nautical training schools, as it is expected that more than 10,000 officers will be needed to man the United States merchant marine. This means that men who desire service in the actual transportation end of the business will find an opportunity to secure training and a very ready market for their service upon the completion of their courses.