Career Exploration: Interactive Specialists are in Demand as Marketing Hits Digital Age

Even a classic, though fictional, ad man like Don Draper could have trouble getting hired in marketing communications today.

A lack of experience in making strategic use of social media and interactive or digital marketing is what could doom Draper and real-life marketing communications professionals, industry observers and executives say.

Those who aspire to or already are working in advertising, branding, marketing, public relations graphic design, publicity, sales and other marketing communications-related jobs must have some online experience to go with the skills traditionally used to promote products and services to consumers or other businesses.

"Right now, everybody wants the Internet specialists," said John Risdall, vice chairman and CEO of Risdall Marketing Group in New Brighton.

Risdall, who has worked in advertising in the Twin Cities since the mid-1960s and founded his firm in 1972, has been at the forefront of the transformation as the focus of marketing has shifted from print to broadcast TV, then cable television and now online.

Agencies like his are looking for creative people to design websites, social media profiles, smartphone apps and mobile websites, and those with the technical know-how to build them and monitor their performance.

"The kids in college, it's what they do every day on the Internet," Risdall said. "They can't quite get a degree exactly in what they need, so they have to go to tangential things like communications, marketing and business."

"It's not just enough anymore to be savvy - just because you can use Twitter and understand Facebook as a tool for the consumer doesn't mean you know how to deploy it as a strategic tactic within marketing communications," Porter said. "The students that I see finishing their degrees and moving on to a new position or moving within their organizations tend to be in that area. We spend a lot of time focusing on the strategy piece rather than the mechanics."

Agencies aside, health care, agriculture and financial services companies, all well represented in the Twin Cities, appear to hold post-recession promise for those looking for marketing work, according to Porter and Chuck Swensson, president of Creatis Inc., a Minneapolis marketing and creative services company that provides staffing and studio services.

Marketing analysis is a growing specialty, Swensson said, as companies seek to measure the effectiveness of their marketing spending, which is easier to track in the digital world.

That's been a focus of Three Deep Marketing, an outsourced digital marketing firm in St. Paul. While the firm has been hiring project managers and account managers as it adapts more of a traditional agency model, technical skills remain important, said Jeff Sauer, director of interactive marketing.