Advertising is the business of salesmanship: it finds creative and effective means to reach consumers and influence their purchasing decisions.  Because outreach to consumers is based on in-depth research of the general public and its lifestyle, good advertising both reflects and affects the values and perceptions of a culture at any given time.

Due to the vertically integrated process of researching, creating and producing a successful ad, advertising is an extremely versatile career field.  Before an ad appears in public, several areas of expertise – including art, writing, math and science - must be combined to insure its effectiveness:

• the product market must be defined
• competition within the market must be evaluated
• the target audience must be identified and researched to determine how and why it makes purchasing decisions