More reasons why a non industry degree is useful in advertising

As if we need any more!

As you know, this blog exists to bridge the gap between the advertising industry (specifically agencies) and those who don't possess an industry degree. A lot of it has focused on account handling, as that is the function I myself was aiming for and later landed in. So it's high time we focused on the lesser well known side of agency life - Planning.

In a nutshell, Planners exist to shed light on consumer insights that will help inform the advertising devised by the creative teams. Whereas account handling and creative teams are standard in all types of agency, Planners can mostly be found in the larger agencies.

My impression is that Planning is quite hard to get into, more difficult than any other agency role. I think this is mainly because the roles are much less common and therefore it follows that the competition is fiercer. With competition for graduate jobs increasing all the time I think it's a great role to look at from a Jos Can point of view.

What qualities do employers look for in Planners? Do academically-trained graduates have a hope? These questions and more were answered by Chris Kneebone of Kitcatt Nohr Digitas in his great post on The IPA's Admission blog:

Worried your degree subject will stop you finding a job in advertising?

Thankfully for us non-industry graduates, the answer to this is a resounding "Don't be!"

Chris gives us an insight into what his job requires of him and makes a compelling argument as to why his History degree in fact has armed him with just the right skills to be good at working in advertising.


I'll always remember something a Creative Director said to me on one of my internships, which was

" With all of these advertising graduates emerging from unis having had the same teaching and exposure, what can they add that is different to hundreds of their peers?"

Although anyone (including the man himself) knows that graduates of the same course are far from clones of each other, it did make me think more about the potential merits of having done something different.