Professor of Advertising: Georgia-Zozeta Miliopoulou

da Joe Brooks

Point of View: Professor of Advertising

What are the skills, interests, and personality traits necessary for a student to be successful in a marketing and advertising program? Why are these important for students to have?
1. SKILLS - creativity: to respond to new challenges; strategic understanding: to ensure quality of proposals; collaboration: to work with groups; conflict resolution skills: to ensure a fruitful working environment; professionalism (keeping deadlines, sharing information, responding properly): to gain trust; presentation skills: to convince and motivate. 2. INTERESTS - advertising, new media, communities of interest, public relations, social issues -students should be keen readers of books, not just websites and blogs. They should also monitor industry news and trends. At the same time, they should be keen movies and series viewers, music listeners and culture vultures so as to align with the trends and gain more profound insight on different kinds of consumer groups. 3. PERSONALITY: dedicated, hard working, empathetic, ambitious but in the context of a work-life balanced career plus all the traits mentioned before.
What is the most rewarding part of a career in the marketing and advertising field? Why should students pursue a career in this field?
Creative challenges never cease, there is not a single boring day plus this field is about people, what they need and aspire to. By pursuing such a career, students learn how to offer to society and how to provide service to clients, how to build relationships of collegiality and how to respond effectively and creatively under extreme pressure.
What advice would you give to students who are considering earning a degree in marketing and advertising?
Be prepared for endless hours of hard work and pressure; be dedicated and ready for team work with all its friction; love what they do.
What can students applying to advertising programs do to increase their chances of being accepted?
Study hard reading books and monitoring journals and industry media (ideas alone are less than enough) - keep observing and analyzing every campaign, first as viewers and then as professionals - work as interns until they are confident enough to apply for entry level jobs
How can prospective advertising students assess their skill and aptitude?
A) working for all kinds of projects and contests in a real-life context b) working on cases and checking their insight and understanding in "reading behind the ads" c) working as interns
Are there different considerations for those who know that they want to specialize in a certain area?
Creativity: constantly be exposed to all forms of art; re-work on existing campaigns
strategy: poll peers to assess new campaigns' effectiveness and insight
media: being extremely active on all kinds of platforms and communities
What factors should prospective students consider when choosing an advertising program?
Links to the industry; breadth and depth in offered modules; real-life projects being part of their assessments schemes; activities that create links between the program and the industry; include staff with industry experience
What further advice can you offer to prospective students thinking about an education and career in advertising and marketing?
I think I have covered everything pretty much. One extra thing would be: regardless of how easy or hard the beginning is, always keep in mind that longevity in the profession demands them to always be alert, on shape, on top of things and maintaining good relationships.
How do you use AdForum within your program and how useful is it ?
We use adforum to describe the advertising world, which is useful; we are yet to explore its full potential.