Quote:
Originally Posted by pj3000
I will never understand why top graduates of prestigious universities in highly sought-after majors want to go work in advertising for "tech" firms. It's a terrible waste of intellect.
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Really,
really depends on what you're doing in advertising.
Media gets traded today on open exchanges, and if you're into that, advertising is shockingly similar to futures markets. If you're the trader at Xaxis or Cadreon or Hearts & Science executing and optimizing on hundreds of $millions in spend, it's a rush. A heady rush too, because this isn't easy stuff.
Building and executing a multi-market, omnichannel media plan is incredibly complex. There are so many moving parts, so many stakeholders, so many competing interests, and soooo much money. It requires some seriously specialized strategic planning. It's not that dissimilar from playing a turn-based strategy game like Civilization, down to the real-time performance results digital media makes possible. This can be addicting for certain personality types, especially if you're successfully doing it for prestige brands.
Very smart people are still people. Some of them just want to make a lot of money for relatively minimal effort and hours and then spend their free time having fun with all that money they make. Being smart isn't a higher calling to serve the greater good. All those Wharton and Sloan grads who drop straight into Amazon, Google, and MS VP slots (no one gives Facebook a glance these days) are perfect cases in point.