All of the major advertising agencies were once headquartered in The Big Apple, along well-known Madison Avenue in the heart of Manhattan’s financial district. If you watch the HBO show Mad Men (since acquired by some other network in syndication) you will see the fictional characters working at fictional companies on Madison Avenue, thus the term “Mad” Men. In the 50s and 60s the leading advertising agencies were all operated by guys and it was a total boy’s club that ladies weren’t allowed to enter, except as assistants or receptionists. These guys chain smoked at their tables the whole day and drank heavily each night while wining and dining clients at fancy restaurants and pubs.

Those times are long gone and many are thankful for that, especially women and minorities who nowadays play a much larger role in today’s leading advertising firms. Things have changed drastically in the last 20 years. Graphic Designers were often dealt with like technical flunkies and were frequently not given the chance to rise above Art Director position. All of the Creative Directors (CDs) came from the copywriting departments and once you’re a CD, you can hope to make partner or V.P. with some years of extremely long hours and efforts below your belt.

Today’s major advertising agencies are ones that have lasted in the age of the internet and have adapted their services to fit the cyber world’s heavy demands. 30 years ago advertising companies didn’t even have computers. Typesetting was done manually with press on type that you bought at the Art supplies shop. Typefaces were limited and you must be very wary that you did not mess up or else you had to start once again. God forbid that the Account Executive or the customer modified the headline at the last minute. Deadlines were extremely tight during the good old days and you needed to manually crank out fifty to one hundred ads in one day (and all night) for distribution the next morning to the newspapers.

Of course these days all of the top advertising firms have got cutting edge computer systems, mostly Mac but a few PCs too. The employed small armies of Graphic Designers that use software like InDesign and Photoshop CS.

A lot of the major advertising companies now also do online advertisements and that shows that the artists have to have skills in HTML, Flash, Dreamweaver, and other website building software. By simply being so technical a number of the artistic side of the craft has positively suffered. But because the airwaves are slammed and stuffed with so many images and loud attention hogging banners, the top advertising firms are forced to become more imaginative than previously in their hope to acquire their client’s message through to their target audiences. Most advertising campaigns cost a lot that the advertising agencies make use of focus groups to get reactions just before shelling out money.

Despite the fact that techniques and technologies have developed over time, the goal of major advertising companies around the world have stayed the same and that’s sell more products for their customers.

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