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.