After reading How to put our Book together and get a Job in Advertising by Maxine Paetro (as recommended by two ad guys I've talked to) and working with the creative team here, I've figured out where you start. And it's pretty simple: an idea. A good, interesting, engaging, emotional idea.
That's the hard part too. Coming up with a good enough idea to carry a campaign, be clever or witty or emotional, and stick with the consumer is difficult. Of course this is the main challenge in advertising, so if it sounds uninteresting or too hard, don't look here for your career. Developing great and successful ideas is what makes a great advertiser, most importantly (for me right now) an employed advertiser.
So this is what I've been working for the past few weeks, creating ads for my book that have a nice, big idea.
This skill is something that I've seen requested in many job listings and talked about in a number of articles and books. They call it the ability to be conceptual. And if you can demonstrate it in your portfolio, you're as good as hired. (So they say.)
Going along with this ability is being able to adapt this idea into any medium. Paetro says that if it really is an idea, and a good one, this should be fairly easy. This also makes it a little easier to test the strength of your idea. If it can adapt well to a number of platforms usually means it's a winner, so slap that baby into your book!
Another surefire way to make an ad meaningful and therefore effective is to make it emotional, as a woman in advertising I met with recently said. When looking for this ad idea, delve into why people would by this product. What do they want to feel as a result of its purchase? Then morph it into, how can you say this interestingly? And boom - you've written an ad.
Or at least my limited understanding of how you make an ad.
The most succinct version:
come up with a good idea
make sure it's adaptable to any media
make it emotionally engaging (memorable)
I'm hoping these make the cut.
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