Some of what you have to know to work in advertising.

You have to know what you are trying to accomplish and why.

You have to know how to craft a compelling brief.

You have to know your brand and it’s voice, archetype, and stories.

You have to know your audience and community.

You have to know what problems they have or what they need help with.

You have to know the competition, the market, and the distribution channel.

You have to know what’s been done already across the category.

You have to be able to think up creative ideas.

You have to be prolific and able to generate lots of them.

You have to find different ways to of expressing a creative idea.

You have to learn how you think and how you personally get to ideas.

You have to stay harsh, reject your own ideas, and push through to greatness.

You have to know how to craft messages.

You have to understand digital behavior and digital technologies and the difference between the two. (Ideas that GET digital and ideas that ARE digital.)

You have to know how to frame problems.

You have to know how to think across all the social and digital platforms.

You have to know how to make ideas travel.

You have to be able to generate content in all its forms.

(Long-form, short form, stock and flow, social, video, etc.)

You have to understand data and what you can do with it.

You have to be able to synthesize an awful lot of stuff into a concise, clear, relevant idea.

You have to be able to explain your creative idea and sell it.

You have to be able to make a killer presentation.

You have to learn to do all of it on demand.

Sometimes you have too much on your mind when you work in advertising. But still, you have to stay focused and be good at a lot of things. That includes making quick recoveries.