Studying a graduate course in Advertising and Marketing can propel your career forward and open doors for you from around the world. Studying Advertising and Marketing overseas will give you invaluable experience and insight into varying marketing strategies and campaigns and make you an asset to any international company. Advertising and Marketing graduate programs offer you a huge variety of specialist areas to study and create an opportunity for you choose how to build on your future career.

What Will I Study?

Just as there’s a huge difference between creating the concept behind a successful ad campaign and managing its roll-out across several continents, so university or college graduate courses differ in focus. You need to weigh up the advantages of a strategic versus a creative approach, and examine what sort of academic balance, between practice and theory, would best suit you.

You also need to look closely at the modules offered on each course. A degree in the field of advertising or marketing might give you the chance to look at PR, Media Policy, Corporate Communications, Advanced Design, E-Commerce, or International Marketing, to give just a few examples – in addition to its core subject modules. This flexibility is great as you can tailor your degree to your individual interests, and career goals.

Which Careers Can I Pursue?

You could become a brand manager, monitoring market trends and overseeing advertising and marketing activities to ensure the right message is delivered for your company’s product. Or perhaps, you’d prefer to be part of a creative team as a copy writer or art director coming up with an original idea that then needs to be fleshed out with memorable images and catchy straplines, across a campaign of press and TV adverts. Or why not PR officer, marketing manager, communications manager, or advertising account executive? As you may have guessed, careers in this area are many and varied, with salaries ranging from standard graduate packages to £100K+ for senior executives.

There’s no doubt that this is a popular, but competitive field to enter. A graduate program can help by giving you the specialised knowledge and skills to stand out at interviews. Having experience of advertising and marketing strategies from overseas will also put you ahead of the game. Other noticeable benefits can include higher career entry levels, and faster career progression. Recruiters typically look for people with energy and passion for the job, people that love the field and have clear plans about their future within it.

In an age of increasing globalisation, it’s worthwhile recognising the value of international experience. Intercultural skills are highly prized by firms who operate across continents, fighting for new clients and increasing market share. Getting an understanding of the international working environment, at least at a basic level, is more achievable than you might think. At graduate level, many international students come to the UK to study advertising and marketing programmes. Evidence of successful course work, undertaken with a mixed team of UK and international students, may impress an HR manager and open more doors to you.

What next?

Think of your graduate course in Advertising and Marketing as an investment in your future: equipping yourself with the knowledge, skills and experience that you’ll need to succeed. Now give this investment the best support you can, by making time to research the sector whilst you study. A graduate program in Advertising and Marketing can give you a huge advantage in career progression so think hard about which course you want to study and where you can envisage living and learning.

With thanks to:
Charlotte Johnson
Marketing and Communications Manager
Leeds University Business School
www.leeds.ac.uk/lubs