1. Social Capital and Interdisciplinary Fusion Skills in Contemporary Advertising Practice
Thomas Richard Berry

2. Rationale
Solent Capital Compass Model Catalyst Work-based learning pilot Linking of advertising education practice and advertising practice through experiential learning Moving towards a practicum to facilitate the transition from education into the periphery of practice
The artefact of practice is a curriculum developed through the research process with a focus on the development of contemporary advertising and communication practice within students moving from higher education into industry and from the pre-periphery of the field. In this, as well as the concepts developed by Bourdieu, Schön provides a model which he defines as practicum, a safe environment within which the less tangible aspects of practice can be developed while showing due cogniscence of the ‘book of rules’ or ‘espoused theory’. This reflection-in-action (as distinct from reflection-on-action, in this Schön is open to criticism as he fails to adequately define the difference) he defines as being particular to professional practice in building tacit knowledge upon which practitioners rely in handling ‘indeterminate zones of practice’, building knowledge from experience of practice (or knowledge in use) (Schön, 1991). This concept bridges the gap between theory and practice that is at the heart of the study, interpeting action, that is, behaviour plus meaning (Gage, 1989, 9pp.5)
Whitehead and McNiff (2006, pp.12-13) maintain that a social science approach ‘aims to generate new knowledge (theory) about what other people are doing’. Therefore maintaining an outsider perspective – the researcher’s theory about other people. By contrast, they state that in action research ‘the focus swings away from the spectator researcher and onto the practitioner researcher’.

3. Research Questions
To what extent does the advertising education curriculum reflect contemporary advertising practice?
Which skills are evident in early career practice?
Do these activities reflect a convergence of practice across traditional disciplines?
Are upbringing and education helpful in entering the industry?
Advertising practice is evolving in response to the changing wider environmental context, in particular the impact of social, digital media and the blurring of ‘church and state’ in native advertising and content marketing which encroach on the traditional boundaries between advertising, public relations and journalism. As a result, the range of digital and creative skills which underpin success in the industry are often referred to as ‘fused’ skills and organisations operating within ‘creative clusters’.

4. Methods Semi-structured interview 1 Blog-diary (reflexive narrative)
Supported by:
Visual methods (with observation and interview with ‘carefully matched participant and investigator’) to uncover and illuminate elements of habitus. Reflexive component for participants. (Sweetman, 2009)
‘research subjects are re-imagined as reflexive narrators of self’ (Butz and Besion, 2009).
Semi-structured Interview 1
Technical instruction in adding entries to the blog-diary and to begin to develop a biographical, interpretive, self-narrative using a semi-structured approach. The principal investigator will also take photographs to construct visual data about the physical evidence of practice which will be used to elicit responses in the second interview.
Blog-Diary
The participants are asked to make daily entries in a private WordPress-based blog-diary for one-month. The entries can include text, images and hyperlinks. The dialogue between the participant and principal investigator is maintained though commentary on the blogs. The blog is password-protected and excluded from external web searches.
Semi-structured Interview 2
The purpose of the interview is to provide an opportunity for the participant to provide feedback on the blog-diary method and also further develop the self-narrative by reflecting on the transcription and photographs from the first interview, the diary entries/dialogues and the interpretations that the principal investigator has subsequently developed. Importantly, this offers the participant the opportunity to review and corroborate the data.

5. Data Analysis
The analysis of the interviews and blog-diary content will take the form of a narration:
through the temporal stories developed by the participant (referring to their own life history and practice)
and photo-elicitation with the aim of constructing more coherent narratives.
By combining data across a range of participants a more communal narrative may be constructed.
The transcribed data from the interviews is itself an interpretation of narratives, reflecting and interpreting experiences.
A limitation of the research is that the textual narratives describing experiences are open to multiple interpretations.
Because of the close involvement of the principal investigator, the dialogic approach to developing narratives from verbal and visual data will also reflect the voice of the researcher.
The analysis of the interviews and blog-diary content will take the form of a narration. Firstly developed from the themes initially proposed, but equally through the temporal stories developed by the participant (referring to their own life history and practice) and through the second interview and photo-elicitation with the aim of constructing more coherent narratives. By combining data across a range of participants a more communal narrative may be constructed.
The transcribed data from the interviews is itself an interpretation of narratives, reflecting and interpreting experiences. A limitation of the research is that the textual narratives describing experiences are open to multiple interpretations. Because of the close involvement of the principal investigator, the dialogic approach to developing narratives from verbal and visual data will also reflect the voice of the researcher.

6. Participants’ workspaces

7. Discussion: Themes
Management and organization – the extent to which individuals in the creative industries are seen to have enhanced opportunities for self- realisation and autonomy as compared to the reality of the work place.
Digital skills – the application of a range of digital skills within an inter- disciplinary context but with the need to develop specialisms.
Creative skills – the extent to which creative problem solving and ideation are engaged in and if they are restricted to the ‘creatives’.
Learning – updating advertising practice the through organizational learning and creative clusters
Research – the advertising field increasingly employs ethnography in marketing research and user experience testing.
Getting in – the self-commodification and voluntarism route to the industry.

8. Discussion: Audience
‘I’ll try and keep these posts brief, but i get on a roll quickly! So enjoy my everyday goings-ons at work!’ (Research Participant 2)
‘Tomorrow I will look forward to a more relaxed working day before the Easter bank holiday weekend - plus a small Easter egg hunt around the office (we are all big kids really).’ (Research Participant 1)
‘That’s all i’ve really got for today, along with the usual countless rounds of tea making and answering phones with fake voices, so i can avoid suppliers that have been badgering me for 6 months to go into their mags.’ (Research Participant 2)
It was clear that there was an element of writing to an audience, though as Kenten (2010) argues ‘this is not necessarily different to the self-censorship participants may employ during an interview, focus group or other data collection methods’. But the style of writing, perhaps because of this awareness of audience and assumptions about what blogs look like did seem to reflect ‘the way they feel a diary should be written’. Certainly the ‘discursive display’ (Hookway, 2008, pp96) was apparent in some of the scene setting and introductions tended to limit the extent to which the ‘research subjects are re-imagined as reflexive narrators of self’ (Bust and Besion, 2009).

9. Discussion: Management
‘During this morning’s meeting, I quickly realised that today was going to be pretty busy. ‘ (Research Participant 1) ‘Then we have the creative guys who sit there and wait there to be told what to do by Mark the production manager.’ (Research Participant 2) ‘I have grown accustomed to his design styles however, which means usually he approves my work now straight away.’ (Research Participant 1)
The majority of entries covered organization and management, revealing the nature of the team working and particularly time management and work allocation. One thing that became apparent was that the junior design role was very closely managed with work being distributed on a daily basis. Hesmondhalgh (2010) defines ‘good work’ as having two qualities. Self-realisation and autonomy. Although it would be surprising if the participants expected a high level of self-determination, the extent and means to which time is managed (‘direct control’) may have been a surprise, particularly if in their university course the expectations have been calibrated differently.

10. Discussion: Skills
‘We’re all specialists in our own areas. I’m one of the only ones who knows Facebook really well so if they need to know anything about Facebook they’ll ask me. Like the account execs, if they need to know something about Facebook, they’ll ask me.’ (Research Participant 1)
‘Each member of the team is developing a specialism. One member of the team can use HTML5 and can make really neat work. Another uses infographics to convey information rather than a Word file. I want to develop that side, using Illustrator to create symbols. We didn’t really cover that at university, as it is more of a graphic design thing.’ (Research Participant 2)
The range of digital skills employed by the participants was covered in many entries. Working in small and often inter-disciplinary teams, the need to find your own niche was apparent.

11. Discussion: Getting In
‘I was on my fifth of six interviews but I was trying not to look desperate. I was given a month long internship and another person had just started a three-month placement. When he left after two months I was offered the chance to stay on. It was a hard decision as I had been used to an income but I did get expenses. ‘Then after two months I was offered a permanent position. I have been lucky, some of the others on my side of the degree have had to take marketing jobs just to get started.’ (Research Participant 1)
‘Well I researched all the agencies on the south coast from kind of Poole to Portsmouth and I visited each one of them with cake just to say can I have an interview… Then I took one to [the agency] and took another one to the interview and I think that sealed the deal. After speaking to people after the cake thing, they thought some of the gimmicks people tried were just ridiculous… some gimmicks are too much.’ (Research Participant 2)
Making the move into the ‘periphery’ of advertising practice required determination, planning and ingenuity. The participants’ experiences related to the work of McLeod, O’Donohoe and Townley (2009, p.1025) who looked at class and progression in creative careers ‘Most had gravitated towards London at the outset, seeing it as an exciting place in its own right and because it was home to the top agencies. They hoped that a placement would lead to a permanent job, but it generally took several placements, and periods of unemployment, before this happened’. This can also be seen as part of a ‘self-commodification processes by which each individual seeks to improve his/her chances of attracting gainful employment’ (Ursell, 2000 pp.807 in Hesmondalgh, 2010) whereby the assumed positive features of working in the creative industries are undermined.

12. Conclusion Operationalising Bourdieu? Self-reflexive participants?
Photo-elicitation?
Social justice?

13. References
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