At Kolbrener, we hire three interns every semester and have been running our intern program for four years. Every semester I interview approximately 20 to 25 students from regional universities and colleges. And in every interview I ask the following question: “What periodicals do you read that cover the advertising, marketing and/or PR industries?” Not one of the 240 to 300 students I have interviewed could ever answer that question. That’s right. Not a one. In fact, they pause and look at me dumbfounded. About a third don’t seem to know what a periodical is. Here is an excerpt from an interview I did last Friday morning:
Potts: What periodicals do you read that cover the advertising, marketing and PR industries?
Candidate: What?
Potts: You know, for your classes in marketing and advertising what relevant publications do you read?
Candidate: Ummmm . . . Uhhhh . . .
Potts: Okay, let me give you a parallel example. Time magazine covers current events. What magazines do you read that cover advertising and/or PR?
Candidate: Sorry, I don’t read Time.
Helloooooooooooooooooooo. Unfortunately, this is the norm not the rarity.
In the early nineties, I was a Political Science major at Duquesne University. As part of my coursework, I was required to read American Political Science Review, Foreign Affairs and the Christian Science Monitor. I also took a few Economics courses through the business school. I was required to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal and was periodically quizzed on its contents. How is it that marketing communication students today are not only not required to read publications such as Advertising Age, BtoB, PRWeek and Creativity, but they don’t even have a freaking clue that these publications exist? Please, I am calling out to the academic community to explain this. I just don’t understand it.
So here is a small piece of advice to all marketing communications students. If you are truly passionate about advertising, marketing and/or public relations, please subscribe to the appropriate industry publications. How else do expect to stay current with industry leadership, trends and issues? Maybe you’ll even recall a few names of agencies that you read about.
3 Comments
Hey, not fair! I got that question right.
Admittedly, I wasn’t reading all 3 of those publications regularly , and one of them was a website.
Hmm, maybe periodicals just don’t have enough jokes and pretty pictures to entertain students.
Or maybe the marketing teachers themselves aren’t reading them? After hearing a CMU Prof say “I really think this internet thing is the future,” I wouldn’t doubt it.
Tanya,
Ok, maybe you were the only one.
Also, students don’t even know abour prominent marketing Web sites like Marketing Sherpa.
I’m a recent graduate with an Advertising/PR major, and I can honestly say that I wasn’t introduced to these periodicals until my senior year of college, when I took my creative strategies course. Even then, we weren’t required to read these publications, but we were strongly encouraged to. I knew that they existed before then, but I suppose I never purchased subscriptions because of today’s world: everything is online. Even though I hadn’t subscribed to one of these periodicals until senior year, I had consistently searched for areas of interest in the advertising area online. I found many fascinating articles for free. And these were also articles where I could easily interact with the author. I don’t think not reading these publications are such a bad thing, as long as students are interested enough to pursue these types of stories on their own time (and for free! Remember, college students don’t want to spend any extra nickels or dimes).