10 career options with your Media and Entertainment degree

The media and entertainment industry is becoming a favourite among students, due to sudden proliferation and penetration of new media technologies in the market

Within the gamut of courses in MBA, the preferred ones are marketing, human resource, international business and finance. However, the media and entertainment industry is becoming a favourite among students, due to the sudden proliferation and penetration of new media technologies in the market. The field is relatively new and there are many career choices for those who choose to earn a degree in the field of media studies.

Here’s a rundown of the ten career prospects that open for you with an MBA in Media and Entertainment:

1. Media strategist: Media strategists essentially decide what, where and who of an advertisement campaign. From analyzing data to understand the customer profiles to find the best-suited media to show the message, their jobs involve skill and creativity. No doubt, they are an essential member of any team.
2. Marketing analyst: This is a more evolved role as marketing analysts are not just confined to marketing. They help strategize the communication across the consumer’s purchasing power and, ergo, their propensity to buy certain products or associate to specific communication.
3. Media manager: They are specialists in understanding the type of content for every medium. From creating to publishing, media managers handle end-to-end content requirements across different media platforms. Some media managers are also capable of analyzing data and analytics, making them unique and in-demand professionals. A subset of this role is a social media manager, who essentially focuses on social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
4. Media planning manager: The core role of a media planner is to plan the campaign communication in an impactful way across different media. Hence, they ‘plan’ which media to use by analyzing the type of consumer interacting with a particular media, the type of communication the brand has, the budget allotted, the set target and the duration. Once all this is decided, they share their suggestions with the media buyer.
5. Media buyer: In simple words, a media buyer buys media. This is the most crucial role in the media and entertainment industry. Consider a well-planned campaign with excellent communication and stunning visuals. If this communication does not reach the target audience because of no media platform or expensive media space, the whole campaign goes in vain. So, if a brand can buy time (at the cheapest rate) on primetime, on all national channels, then they will show their most important piece of communication in that slot. A media buyer ensures the brand buys this space at the cheapest rate, every single time.
6. TV producer: Planning, budgeting, strategizing, managing talent, signing contracts and executing projects end-to-end are some of the daunting tasks of a TV producer. TV producers travel around the world even before the actors! They coordinate and supervise all aspects of the production and over time, become ‘the voice’ that backs any show or talent.
7. Corporate communication: As the name suggests, these folks deal with the way corporates communicate with the outside world and their employees. The stakeholders vary from C-level professionals to investors to interns. This is a lucrative field for those who are good in communication and managerial tasks.
8. Digital media analyst: Digital media is the new form of media that has quickly become the favourite medium for advertisers. From Google search ads to websites, from social platforms to link clicks through emailers, the medium has a plethora of data, explaining consumer behaviour and helping brands make informed and targeted ads. The digital media analysts make sense of the data and share it with the digital media planners, buyers, content creators, corporate communication professionals and even designers.
9. Channel head: In simpler terms, a channel manager or a channel head, is responsible for the health of a channel – financial, reputational and communicational. The role demands a blend of sales, marketing, analytics, communication, managerial and leadership skills. From deeply understanding the audience to knowing the strengths of a channel, from increasing audience viewership to stakeholder confidence, channel managers juggle many hats.
10. Creative head: The term ‘Creative Head’ is vast and requires creative expression as a necessary skill. Some examples are designers, sound mixers, scriptwriters, set architects, post-production members and so on. Even though creativity cannot be formally taught, certain habits and practices that help one be more creative can be taught. Creative heads churn out stories, designs or music for any piece of communication – radio jingle, TV commercial or big-budget movies. A managerial degree propels them to climb up the ladder.

Today, traditional and new media are both vying for our attention. Television, print, film and radio are competing with digital, gaming, OTT platforms, and immersive media such as virtual reality and mixed reality. With the advent of 4G and smartphones in India, we have become the second largest online market globally, standing at 700 million users (Statista). With such a high number of ‘eyes’ consuming modern media, the demand for professionals adept at modern media is high. A degree in management will make the professionals skilled in managing large teams, bring in sales and devise new avenues for growth.

The media landscape is ever-evolving and it is estimated that the media industry would require an employable workforce of 1.5 lakh per year for the next five years, with the majority of career opportunities emerging in the digital media and analytics space. Promoting the teaching and learning of media literacy to students is today more important than ever before due to the deluge of information on various media platforms. The internet generation needs to be taught to separate fact from fiction and verify content sources in this dynamic environment. UPES School of Modern Media prides itself on the state-of-the-art labs, industry-aligned curriculum and employment-relevant training in new media, thus equipping students with all the requisite skills to stay ahead of the curve.