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Sample Statement of Purpose for Advertising
I hold the French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in great
admiration. Whenever I read about his devotion to writing and his
perseverance toward it, I feel tremendously excited and constantly
remind myself that every choice of mine should be made with conviction
and that, once a choice is made, I must adhere to it unswervingly and
strive to realize it with all my might. Obviously, Sartre will serve
as my lifelong example on my journey of life. I did not specialize in
advertising during my undergraduate studies, and what I did specialize
in is largely unrelated to advertising. Nevertheless, these two
factors can by no means prevent me from devoting myself to the field
of advertising that I deeply love. I will make relentless and
dedicated efforts to this chosen objective until the end of my life.
In writing this Personal Statement, I have come to find that the
entire process is actually a process of retrospection and summarizing
and conducting deep reflections on the course of my life over the past
ten years. In the high school, I accidentally came upon a book
translated from English that talked about mass media. It was The
Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy that triggered my
vague interest in advertising. In retrospect, it was precisely this
vague notion that developed into a strong desire, an unshakable ideal
that I am determined to pursue with lifelong dedication. But when I
succeeded in my National University Entrance Examination, due to some
external reasons, I failed to specialize in advertising as my
undergraduate program. This was the first opportunity that I missed.
After graduating from my university, I was recruited by a future
broker company. Even though my distinguished professional performance
brought me honors, status, and generous salaries and perquisites, my
dream to be involved in advertising profession again failed to be
realized. But deep inside my heart, I had always cherished the
unquenchable wish to demonstrate my talents in the advertising
industry, to taste the real joy of doing what I liked. Five years ago,
this wish made me decide to relinquish all that I had achieved at that
broker company and start my advertising career from the very
beginning.
My advertising career started five years ago at ShangHai Fine Art
Academy's Art and Advertising Company. There, I worked from the most
basic steps. Initially, as the only female at the company's Department
of Market Service, I assumed the same heavy workload as my male
counterparts. My activities in market development and identifying
potential clients enabled me to gain an increasingly deep
understanding of the actual operations of advertising business. I also
developed a clearer picture of China's larger advertising environment,
the dynamics of China's advertising industry, and the relevant legal
regulations and systems. The profit of China's advertising business
rapidly increases by an average rate of 39.73% annually. According to
a survey conducted by ACNielsen in 2000, the annual advertising
expenditure on the Mainland China reached 861 billion RMB Yuan,
ranking first among the 12 Asian-Pacific advertising markets that were
surveyed. China's official statistics show that in 2000 China's income
of advertising business accounted for 0.8% in China's GNP, the
advertising income being 56 Yuan per capita. Nevertheless, the entire
annual advertising input in the whole country of China is less than
the total business value (10 billion US dollars) of a large-size
advertising company in the United States. From an international
perspective, this means that there is huge business potential to be
developed for China's advertising industry. On the other hand, the
percentage occupied by China's advertising industry in the country's
overall economy is by no means proportional to the country's macro
economic development. According to statistics, the current advertising
input in China only account for 0.7% in its GDP whereas it is 3% in
the United States. Those figures are sufficient to indicate that
China's advertising industry is developing with gathering momentum and
will enjoy a tremendous prospect for development. At the same time,
China will join WTO within this year and in 2008 will host the Olympic
Games. The combination of many factors, both domestic and
international, have created great business opportunities for Chinese
and international advertisers. At the same time, Chinese advertisers
are faced with precious opportunities to cooperate with and learn from
their foreign colleagues. The curtain of a really spectacular
advertising campaign has just been raised. While feeling proud of my
career development, I involved myself more deeply into my work in
order to scale new heights.
By bringing into full play my qualities of intelligence, industry, and
perseverance, plus my solid command of the many application skills of
fine art software including Photoshop, Covedrawl, AutoCAD, and other
computer-aided graphics design software, I was transferred to the
central part of the Company, the Department of Advertisement
Designing. On account of my distinguished performance, I was promoted
to be the supervisor-in-chief of the Company's, responsible for the
creation of original ideas in specific advertisements. During this
period, I participated in designing virtually all the major
advertising projects that our company succeeded in winning the bid.
Under my leadership, our company's designing team fruitfully completed
a number of challenging tasks, which include the CI Design of xxxxxx
Future Broker Company, the publicity handbooks of the company and its
web-station; the product packing of the xxxxx Oral Liquid; the Sample
Design for xxxxxxMedical Company Ltd., the CI Design for the xxxxxxx
Company Ltd. The clients were very satisfied with the advertisements
we designed for them. As a consequence, I received positive comments
and important awards from our company for my outstanding professional
qualities and major accomplishments.
In the course of my work, I have also come to discover that,
underlying the excessively rapid development of China's advertising
industry, there is the problem of serious disorder in the advertising
profession as a whole. For instance, the relationship between the
client of advertising, the advertising media and the advertising
company has not been properly worked out; there is a serious lack of
social responsibility on the part of the advertising agents in their
business operations; the self-discipline of the advertising
professional is rather weak; the mechanism of social supervision is
woefully incomplete; the legal regulations of advertising are not
well-developed and their enforcement is difficult. Those problems all
testify to the imperfections inherent in the governmental
administration of the advertising sector.
With China's accession into WTO getting closer and closer, China's
ever-expanding advertising market urgently demands that a large number
of highly qualified professionals can work for its mature development.
However, up until now, all the China's institutions of higher learning
have provided not more than 10,000 undergraduates (graduate students
being much fewer) for the advertising market on the Mainland China,
which has 1.3 billion population. At present, there are only a very
limited number of advertising professionals with international
advertising background, who are familiar with the rich Oriental native
culture, with China's national characteristics, and with China's
existing advertising conditions on one hand, and possess advanced
advertising knowledge of the West, able to effectively integrate the
highly developed and original Western advertising ideas with Chinese
context on the other hand. With this awareness, I hope that, by
pursuing an in-depth study and research in the United States in the
field of advertising, I can become the kind of person who can combine
the strengths from Chinese and Western cultures and employ those
strengths in the creation of perfect advertisements in the future.
No mountain is too high for you to climb; no river is too wide for you
to make it crossed. In my future journey of life, I am bound to
encounter endless difficulties and challenges. But, as long as I
entertain a steadfast faith in my career objective and take Jean-Paul
Sartre as my example for his professional dedication, my pursuit will
be fruitful and meaningful in its own way. |
