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.