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The
Communications Revolution
From ad agencies
to technical schools,
communicators
struggle to keep pace
with technological
advances
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Business New Haven
8/24/1998
By: Susan Banfield
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It is a generally accepted truism that when advertising agencies start to look healthier, it's a sign the economy as a whole is starting to pick up.
Certainly this is what is happening in Connecticut right now. The economy is healthier, and as a result advertising agencies are doing better.
The advertising and marketing budgets that were the first things to be trimmed when times got tight are now being pumped up. Evidence of this upswing in the industry can be seen in the rise in the number of awards given out in 1998 by the Advertising Club of Connecticut.
There is no predetermined number of awards; instead they are given out as merited, according to Lawrence Marks, president of MCS Advertising in Hartford and of the Ad Club. This year there were 96 awards, compared to 81 last year - and last year was considered by most to be a banner year.
How these new advertising dollars are being spent varies tremendously, depending on the very different marketing strategies appropriate to different industries and individual companies. One trend that seems evident across the board, however, is that the use of print media is down somewhat, and the use of the Internet and, to a degree, broadcast media are up.
One reason for this is that consumers are reading newspapers less and getting their news from radio and TV more. Cable TV especially is becoming a popular investment for advertisers, as it is easy to target very specific markets using cable.
But the more obvious reason for this change is simply the phenomenal growth of the Internet. Today, although the Internet is still a little-charted frontier, most companies feel that some sort of Web presence is a necessity. As a result, most advertising agencies in the state are involved with Web site design and other commercial uses of the Internet at least to some degree.
Many agencies are actually doing this entire piece of a campaign in-house, according to Alan Hutchings, president of Barbeau-Hutchings Advertising in Milford. Those who do so realize, as Hutchings says, that “this is a very dynamic area, and to keep up you have to be involved on a daily basis.”
However, a sizable number of firms do not handle the technical development of Web sites and the like directly, preferring not to take on responsibility for the considerable technical expertise that is required to do so. Some larger firms have actually bought Web design firms, and smaller agencies may outsource this work to such firms.
“In most cases a marketing company has already developed a strategy before they come to us,” says Jared Schmitt, a partner in Innovative Internet Marketing Solutions, a company that designs Web sites and handles other aspects of a client's Web presence.
One indication of the increase in commercial use of the Web is the tremendous growth web design companies are experiencing. Innovative Internet Marketing Solutions, for example, recently doubled its sales, and this year expects them to more than double once again.
While a Web site is the most common commercial use of the Internet, other uses are gaining prominence.
One that is growing rapidly is the use of electronic commerce. As consumers become more confident about the security of the Internet, more and more companies are setting up Web sites that users can browse for goods, use an electronic “shopping cart” to make purchases, then enter billing and shipping information.
Even business-to-business Internet commerce is growing rapidly, says Wil Bradford, president of Bradford Advertising in New Haven.
Other ascendant uses of electronic media include interactive disk presentations, or electronic brochures. These are used both as mailers and for presentations to clients or stockholders.
According to studies cited by Hutchings, electronic brochures get a 40 to 50 percent response rate, as opposed to a 0.5 to 1.5 percent response rate for direct mail.
Despite the increase in use of the Internet and other electronic media, the printing industry around the state has also picked up steam recently, and is almost completely recovered from the recession of 1989-91, when the industry lost about one-third of its volume.
Although there have been few new shops among the 700 or so around the state, neither have there been many foldings recently.
Printing is one of Connecticut's oldest industries. The local professional association, the Printing Industry of Connecticut Inc. (PIC), for example, has been in existence for 110 years now. However, the printing industry has also been deeply affected by the growth of computerization.
Computers have led to fundamental changes in how work is done in print shops. Not long ago, clients brought in designs on mechanicals. A negative was made from the mechanical, which was then “stripped” up and transposed to a metal or paper plate by another photographic process, and this plate was in turn mounted on a press and readied for printing.
Today, close to 90 percent of clients bring in their work on disks or send it in electronically. Often, computers can output film (the negative) directly from disk, eliminating the need for a camera shot.
Some computerized processors output it already in position for platemaking, greatly reducing strippers' work. In some shops, it is even possible to go directly from disk to plate.
The latest technology is a fully computerized machine that goes from electronic file right to the plate cylinder, bypassing even the plate stage. These more advanced technologies, especially the latter, are found primarily in larger shops; smaller ones still use negatives and plates. Still, these changes are coming.
Color separations, traditionally an involved, three-hour process that was handled by independent service bureaus, have become vastly easier due to improvements in scanners. Now separations can be done in a fraction of an hour. Increasingly print shops are installing their own scanners, and service bureaus are losing volume correspondingly.
So far, despite the increased use of computers in their business, printers are seldom involved in producing images for the Web. This is because the language involved is very different from the QuarkXPress or Pagemaker used in desktop publishing, says Leigh Dannenberg of Graphic Image in Milford. Some programs are beginning to come out that can translate between the two but, says Dannenberg, it is still a “queasy move.'
As computers assume a more central position in the communications field, the training offered those who want to center the field has also necessarily been affected.
With the exception of a number of respected schools of journalism and a very few art schools with an advertising emphasis to their programs, there has been little effective, practical training available to young people who wanted to go into communications. Generally, this has been accepted in the industry. A well-rounded liberal arts background, perhaps with some business courses thrown in, has been thought to be the ideal preparation for those who wanted to become journalists or ad creatives.
There are still those who hold to this position. “Art and copywriting need people who are quick thinkers, who can easily synthesize a client's business,” says Wil Bradford. “Most who are successful have a generalist background. [Thus] the best training is general liberal arts.”
What schools could be doing better to prepare young people who want to enter the field, Bradford believes, is to give students a better understanding of how important a broadly-based education is.
Yet, acknowledgment of the importance of computer training is growing. Even Bradford admits that “It's always nice to have some technical training.”
Eric Mudry, a partner with Innovative Internet Marketing Solutions still maintains that “The more well-rounded you are, the more use you'll be,” and points out that those at the helm at IIMS have backgrounds in such fields as history, English and economics. But, says Mudry, “You have to have some computer skills and a working knowledge of the Internet. A challenge in our marketplace is finding people who understand computers and who have business sense and written communication skills.”
If he were going to college today, Mudry says, “I would major in computer science with a business minor. Anyone who comes out of school with computer science or graphic design skills will be invaluable in firms like mine.”
An especially weak area in scholastic preparation is that of Web page/Internet design, he points out. “Graphic designers making the transition to the Internet find it's not as easy as people thought,” says Mudry. “And there are not many courses out there, it's just so new.”
Schools are beginning to respond to the need for a more technical approach to preparation for the communications industry. While at many colleges and universities the communications major is still treated as a liberal arts program, at others this is changing.
At Southern Connecticut State University, where communications is the fifth most popular major on campus, the majority of the students who choose it opt to get B.S. rather than B.A. degrees.
SCSU's B.S. program in corporate communications, according to Roger Conway, the department's associate chair, is an extremely practical one. In addition, each student must take a minimum of three semester hours as an industry intern. This translates into approximately 150 hours on site at one of 200 different area businesses that function as internship sites for the program.
Conway says that one recent graduate is now an intranet designer for Bayer, and another is with a major advertising agency in New York City.
Lawrence Marks became so frustrated with the poor preparation new creatives in the ad industry had received that he become an adjunct professor at the University of Hartford. Marks' concern was to make sure students learned how things were actually done in the field.
He felt especially strongly about teaching people learning copywriting and people learning design to work together, so he worked with a professor at the art school to create an opportunity for just that kind of experience.
Gregg Hutchings, a partner at Barbeau-Hutchings, says he has begun to notice changes in the way schools are preparing students. “I think the young people are more prepared than people who've been in the business five or six years,” he says. “This is due to the prevalence of computers on college campuses. I think the schools are doing a pretty good job on training.” Hutchings adds that he wishes there were “more training for seasoned people.”
While the preparation offered those who want to be copywriters or designers may be improving, the training available for those who want to enter the printing industry remains problematic. “It's difficult for schools to keep up because of state budgets,” says Herb Brody. “Students are learning the basics of computers now, but they are still five to ten years behind the industry.”
When he hires new technical graduates, Brody says, they must still receive a great deal of on-the-job training so that they can operate equipment to which they were never exposed in school.
The faster schools catch up, he believes, the better.
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