Advertising Students Face Tough Time Selling Themselves in Job Market

Paul DelPizzo spent the past five years studying for a career in advertising. This fall, he is thinking about leaving college--but not for a job on Madison Avenue.

Instead of selling images, DelPizzo may soon be selling pizzas. He is pondering an offer to manage an Italian restaurant in Laguna Niguel.

“For the past four months, all I’ve been thinking about is this decision,” said DelPizzo, 24, who is a senior majoring in advertising at Cal State Fullerton. “My heart says to go with what I’ve dedicated the last five years of my life toward. But my head is saying to go with the financial security now.”

For DelPizzo, at least there appears to be an employment option. But for the thousands of students who are majoring in advertising at universities nationwide, the situation looks pretty dismal. Most advertising agencies are laying off--not hiring. Yet none of this seems to be stopping record numbers of students from majoring in advertising. Virtually every college in the nation offering a degree in advertising reports that demand is so great that many are actually turning away prospects.

“We certainly aren’t trying to paint a rosy picture,” said Fred Zandpour, coordinator of the advertising department at Cal State Fullerton, which with 1,100 advertising majors ranks among the largest in the nation. “The job market isn’t good. But that doesn’t seem to be discouraging anyone.”

More than 5,000 students nationally are expected to graduate with degrees in advertising during the next year, according to estimates by academics. But less than half of the graduates are expected to find jobs even remotely related to the field of advertising. “It defies logic that so many would enroll in a degree program when the industry is in the doldrums,” said Charles Sharp, a West Los Angeles-based headhunter who specializes in placing ad executives. “I have no idea where these graduates are going to find jobs.”

Professors of advertising echo those words. “The hard facts are, we have many more students than there are jobs for,” said John P. Jones, chairman of the advertising department at Syracuse University, which has seen its enrollment double to more than 400 majors during the 1980s. “We try to discourage ad majors by telling them how difficult it is to get a job.”

But few students are switching majors. Instead, some are just lowering their expectations. “I’m not above working in a mail room,” said Becka Stair, a senior in advertising at Cal State Fullerton, who graduates in December. “I have several friends who are working at agencies for free right now just to get connections.”

Even connections might not be enough these days as the nation’s universities continue to overflow with advertising majors. Until last year, Michigan State University, one of the largest ad schools in the nation, had 1,400 ad majors. Last year the East Lansing institution began limiting the number of ad majors to 1,000, and it is now turning many away.

“I don’t know how to relate to 1,000 advertising majors,” said Bruce VandenBergh, chairman of Michigan State’s advertising department. “Back in 1968, when I majored in advertising at Rutgers, there were just a handful of us.”

Other schools are placing limits too. “We’re trying to find ways to restrict enrollment in a school that doesn’t usually believe in such restrictions,” said Edward Cundiff, chairman of the advertising department at the University of Texas in Austin, which now has nearly 700 ad students. “In the last six years, our size has doubled.”

In Los Angeles, the Advertising Center, a rigorous trade school that trains people for the ad business, has seen its enrollment jump 200% to 1,200 over the past five years, said Wayne Mansfield, executive director of the center that also has a branch in Chicago.

“I feel sorry for students who graduate this year,” said Walter Lubars, chairman of the School of Mass Communication at Boston University, which has about 450 ad students.

Here’s how Kim Rotzoll, head of the University of Illinois advertising department, reminds the school’s 260 majors where they stand: “I tell them they can take all the people who work in the ad business in America and fit them into our 80,000-seat football stadium.”

Some advertising majors have all but given up on the prospect of landing jobs domestically. When he graduates, James McLaine, a 20-year-old junior in advertising at Boston University, doesn’t expect to find a job at a Boston ad firm. Instead, he hopes to find an advertising job abroad. He is arranging for an internship later this year at a London agency. “I like the thought of doing something creative and still making money at it,” said McLaine. “But most of us know the market is pretty bad right now, so we’re looking at jobs overseas.”

That may be exactly the place to look, said Allen Rosenshine, chairman of the giant advertising agency BBDO Worldwide. “As advertising becomes more global, there’s going to be a need for trained people, but not necessarily in local markets,” said Rosenshine. “I don’t know how you can look at the current state of world events and think anything else.”

Olympic Festival Needs Gold Medal Sales Pitch

Tens of thousands of Southern Californians attended the Olympics here in 1984. But how will they react to a huge competition being held here next year to prepare athletes for the 1992 games?

That could depend on advertising. Last week, the Los Angeles agency Ayer Tuttle was named the agency to create ads for the U.S. Olympic Festival. The 10-day event--which will feature 4,200 athletes in 37 different sports--takes place in Los Angeles in July, 1991. “I recognize a lot of people will think, ‘Ho-hum, it’s the Olympics again,’ ” said Donna Tuttle, chairman of the agency. “That’s something we’ll have to fight.”

The ads will take pains to point out that about 90% of the American athletes who win medals at the ’92 Olympics will first take part in the festival. The agency is not being paid for its efforts--but if it can pull off a successful campaign, it hopes to attract future business from some of the wealthy corporate patrons of the games.

Making TV Ad, Jackson Was ‘Unstoppable’

What went into Michael Jackson’s newest commercial, “Unstoppable Magic” for L.A. Gear?

Plenty of Jackson’s time, according to Sandy Saemann, executive vice president at L.A. Gear. “I spent over 90 hours with him in seven days,” said Saemann of the ad to debut this week. “No one else would have gone this far but Michael.”

Jackson oversaw all the sound effects for the ad--and also played a major role editing and directing it, Saemann said. The sound effects, which Jackson is said to have spent nearly 17 hours producing, are mostly late-night street sounds set to a rhythmic beat.

Fruit, Cereal Ads May Be Coming in Bunches

Next time you’re slicing a banana on your morning cereal, you may find yourself caught in an odd dilemma. Which ad should you read first: the one on the cereal box--or one stuck on the banana?

It all began years ago with product-name stickers that said “Chiquita” or “Dole” or “Del Monte.” But now, bananas are becoming increasingly popular as advertising mediums--especially by cereal makers.

Dole, for example, currently has ads for Fruit Muesli cereal stuck on its bunches. “This happens every summer when banana sales slow down,” said Dan Edmeier, product distribution manager at Dole Fresh Fruit in Laguna Hills. Generally, the cereal makers and fruit companies split the costs of the cross-promotions that often include newspaper ads and coupons. No word yet about sticking ads inside the bananas.

Blue Line Advertising: Frequent Flyers Only

Folks riding the Blue Line light rail from Long Beach to Los Angeles have probably noticed there are no advertisements on the trains--or at the stations. But that might change.

Over the next year, RTD officers will “look at revenue possibilities,” including the placement of ads inside the trains and outside at the stations, said Rick Jager, a spokesman for RTD. But there is an “unwritten policy” prohibiting ads on the outside of the trains, he said. In the meantime, several advertisers--including Church’s Fried Chicken--have found a way to get an early start: They place flyers under windshield wipers of cars parked at the Blue Line parking lots. Said RTD’s Jager, “We have no policy that prohibits that.”