It was so fascinating to read about your insights into working in institutional advertising and marketing. I definitely related to your concerns about working with such clients as many of the clients my firm works with are institutions (a handful of them also being education institutions). I certainly worried that I lacked the background necessary to work on these clients too as I felt much of my experience so far in classes and elsewhere was more focused on either product or service-based advertising. I do think it’s extremely beneficial for us to be able to work with clients like these to expand our experience and knowledge to their greatest potential. Another thing I’ve gathered throughout the last several weeks at my internship is that not every client I work on is going to be the most exciting, material-wise or creatively. I think that’s another great thing to learn due to how diverse an agency’s clientele can be.

Best of luck with the remainder of your internship!

I was also on the field trip for Advertising Club and I remember seeing how beautiful and welcoming the office is. You certainly are going to have an incredible experience and take away a lot of knowledge from your coworkers and clients.

I am also interning at an advertising agency but it’s really cool to read about just how different our experiences are. The agency I am working at does not have any university/college clients that I have had the chance to work on. What you were saying, and I agree, is how impactful advertising is for these institutions. It truly can make or break someones decision to apply. With that much power obviously comes a lot of responsibility and it sounds like you’re learning a lot about how to navigate that.

Something I also think you should include is how these clients can be so beneficial to people. These colleges educated people and in turn lead them to get better jobs and opportunities. No university could survive without any advertising because no one would know about it. It is also a way for these schools to advertise their scholarships to make college more financially achievable. While it is great to work on fun products, these clients can really change peoples lives.

My question for you is how do different locations of these universities alter the advertising you all do for them? Obviously like a school in California would be different from a school in Philadelphia so how do you navigate that?