BA in Advertising

Graduating with a degree in advertising, it’s hard not to notice it around me.

Coming home to find restaurant magnets on my apartment door never seems to fail. Because of the language barrier I’ve never ordered their offers over the phone so until I learn Korean, the magnets will be used as refrigerator decorations. Since I got my TV, I’ve noticed that advertisements play at the end of shows instead of during them. I don’t know how effective this is, but I enjoy watching commercial free episodes. Not only do they play at the end of shows, but the frequency of the same advertisement is a bit much. I’ve seen the same ad play four times in a row. Talk about high frequency or maybe it was just a cheap sales package.

One day when I was walking home from work a car stopped right in front of me. Thinking they were stopping for me to cross the street (not normal in Korea), I started walking. A bunch of papers flew right at me. The car wasn’t stopping for me… they were stopped in the middle of the road to throw advertisements on the ground. Picture the scene from 10 Things I Hate About You when the party invitations gets thrown down the stairwell. That’s exactly what it felt like. Surprisingly though, there’s never litter on the ground. So maybe people actually stop and pick up the flyers.

I read somewhere that single trip subway tickets in Daejeon are plastic tokens instead of paper ones, like in Seoul, because they’re easier to advertise on. One of the coolest ads I’ve seen was on the subway in Seoul. You know when you’re at Disney World and vendors sell you those lights that you swirl around and they spell something. There was an ad like that in a tunnel on the subway. The subway was moving so fast that an electronic sign flashed an ad. I also noticed on my bus ride to Gimhae, that there weren’t any billboards.

When I studied abroad we visited Cheil Worldwide in Seoul. It is ranked as the 16th largest global ad agency so it was a rare opportunity to visit there a few years ago. Well, walking around Seoul this past weekend, I came across Cheil Worldwide! I was so excited to have noticed the building that I asked someone to take a picture of me in front of it. Unfortunately, mid-picture, a security guard came out and stopped me, but luckily it sort of came out.

This is my study abroad group and I in front of Cheil back in 2007.


And this is me now... post getting yelled out by a security guard. Good thing the photographer had good reflexes.