ADVERTISING AGENCY

ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN

An advertising campaign is a coordinated series of link ads that:- * Focus on a common theme for one ad of any brand * They are directed at a particular segment of the population that is the target audience. * They aim at achieving a specific objective. * Successful ad campaign may last for a week, few weeks to months or years. * Its planned programme using advertising aim at a particular target audience over a definite period of time for the purpose of increasing sales and raising awareness. * A successful campaign requires a number of important decisions which are: * Setting objectives * Setting advertising budget * Selecting media for message delivery * Creating the message * Evaluating the campaign results
Smaller companies with limited budget maybe forced to focus on what little money they have on only one key decision like selecting media and give less attention to other areas. Before making any advertising campaign a marketer should do an extensive research to understand the requirement of a market. Critical part of making an advertising campaign is to determine a champion theme as it sets the tone of individual advertisement and other forms of marketing communication that will be used. The campaign theme are usually developed with an intension to be used for a particular time frame but many are short lived due to factors such as being ineffective or competition in the market place.
ADVERTISING AGENCY An advertising agency is an agency that designs advertisement to call public attention to its clients. | | Following are the departments in an advertising agency:- 1. ACCOUNTS DEPARTMENTIts first function is strategy planning and research. Interpretation of consumers (Target Audience) and advertisement research from the brand’s perspective. Marketing analysis and SWOT analysis are also taken care of in this department. The accounts department provides the collected data to other departments. 2. CLIENT SERVICING DEPARTMENTIts an agency’s space to the client, they take the client brief and understand & analyze the market department. It’s a link between various departments in an ad agency which includes creative, production, finance, media and accounts department.Evaluates the ad and media plans. It also gives presentations to the client. 3. CREATIVE DEPARTMENTIt includes art director and copy writers.The copy writers provides the editorial content and headlines of an advertisement while the art directors provide visual elements.They are the lifeline of an ad agency which works on the ad campaign. 4. MEDIA DEPARTMENTThe media department is divided into two parts Media Planning and Media Buying .They perform functions like media planning and guide. Planning includes quantative analysis of media. Buying includes media relations, negotiations and operations. They may or may not hire third party services to do media business. 5. FINANCE DEPARTMENTIt includes the monetary transactions within an ad agency. It also take care of various accounts and finance services of various clients that are doing business with ad agency. 6. PRODUCTION DEPARTMENTIt deals with editing and refining of the work created by the creative department. It also includes applying high resolution images, editing the sound and various other functions to prepare the final artwork.WORK FLOW IN AN ADVERTISING AGENCY Stage 1: Briefing Stage First stage of work flow on an ad agency is the briefing stage . Brief from the client is taken. Internal briefing to creative and media department. Any research briefing is given to the Accounts department.Stage 2: Creation Stage Ad campaign and media plan is developed. Internal review and finalization. Presentation to the client for approval. Any pre-testing if required.Stage 3: Production Stage Budget and estimate approval. Production of films, press ads, collaterals etc and produced. Media Scheduling and Media booking. All release approval of creative and media.Stage 4: Release Stage Materials dispatched to the medias. Media release monitoring. Any post testing- if required. Billing and Collection. Types of Ad Agency | * FULL SERVICE AD AGENCY It’s the type of ad agency that handles all the types of advertising process including planning, designing, production and placement. Full service ad agencies work on marketing communication and promotional services like planning, advertising, creating ads, producing ads, performing research and selecting the media. They also deal with non advertising services like strategic market planning, sales promotion, trade shows material, packaged designing, PR and publicity. * LIMITED SERVICE AD AGENCYSome Ad agency limit the amount of and kind of services they offer. Some agencies specialize in creative which also offer strategic planning services.Some offer media buying services that concentrate on media buying and selling, billing and placements. When an advertiser choose to use limited service ad agency its assumed that some of the advertisement planning and coordination is done by another service ad agency. * CREATIVE BOUTIQUEThese ad agencies specializes in the creative functioning of an ad process. Creative boutique offers only those services that have to do with the creativity of the Ad. They provide only creative services, full time service ad agencies may sub contact them. They also provide functions to internal client departments. * MEDIA BUYING AGENCIESThey purchase ad time and space from media providers and resell it to advertisers. They can also be involved in planning individual ad campaign and monitoring the results of ad placements against agreed measures such as Target audience speech. They provide specialized media buying services, strategize media plans and implement the stratergy to buy time and space in various media. * SPECIALIST AD AGENCYIn addition to full service ad agency there is also an agency that specializes in particular kind of ad like recruitment, medical, classifieds, industrial, direct response, yellow pages, etc. * IN HOUSE AD AGENCYSome advertisers provide advertising services in their marketing department other than outsourcing it. It helps them to lower the advertising expenses. Its advantages are:- Cost saving, More synchronized control; and Better coordination.Its disadvantages are:-It has less professional and experienced people,Objectivity is delusional; andLess flexibility. * MARKET RESEARCH AGENCYIt refers to any commercial concerns engaged in conducting market research in relation to any product or service including types of customized and syndicated research services.They deal with planning and implementing research, information application, analysis and interpretation, primary and secondary data collection. * INTERACTIVE AD AGENCYThese are different from other ad agencies as they offer mix of web design, search Engine Marketing, Internet advertising and E- commerce and Consulting.HOW AGENCIES EARN REVENUEAn advertising agency may be compensated in the following ways:- * COMMISSION FROM MEDIAThe agency is compensated based on the time or space in purchase from its client. Typically the commission is 15% or if negotiated maybe downwards.The commission system has to be the target of criticism because it is argued that it ties/binds agency compensation to medium cost and encourages agencies to reply too much expenditure.From a recent survey by the Association of National Advertisers found that smaller amount than 10% of clients pay their agencies 15% of commission. * FEES, COST AND INCENTIVE BASED SYSTEMIn this situation where on billing are load or the client do not wish to recompensate a direct commission, an agreement is reached within which the agency is compensated in opening a fees, cost plus, or incentive based commission system.Fee arrangements are of 3 types:--Fined Fee method: Where on the billing charges, basic monthly allowance is earned. It also includes a bit of medium commission.-Cost Plus agreement: Under this compensation method, the client agrees to pay agency a payment based on the cost of its work plus sum agreed on profit side line.-Incentive way commission: The simple idea in this is that the agencies compensation depends upon how well it meets the pre- determined performance. |