Advertising Agency and its Role
“The work of a tailor is to collect the raw material, find matching threads, cut the cloth in desired shape, finally stitch the cloth and deliver it to the customer.”
Advertising Agency is just like a tailor. It creates the ads, plans how, when and where it should be delivered and hands it over to the client. Advertising agencies are mostly not dependent on any organizations. These agencies take all the efforts for selling the product of the clients. They have a group of people expert in their particular fields, thus helping the companies or organizations to reach their target customer in an easy and simple way. The first Advertising Agency was William Taylor in 1786 followed by James “Jem” White in 1800 in London.
Why do they need advertising agencies?
- They work with an objective and are very professionals.
- Hiring them leads in saving the costs up to some extent.
- The agencies make optimum use of these people, their experience and their knowledge.
- The agencies are expert in this field. They have a team of different people for different functions like, art directors, planners, etc.
Role of Advertising Agencies
- Creating an advertise on the basis of information gathered about product
- Doing research on the company and the product and reactions of the customers.
- Planning for type of media to be used, when and where to be used, and for how much time to be used.
- Taking the feedbacks from the clients as well as the customers and then deciding the further line of action.
There are 5 types of advertising agencies.
1. Full-service Agencies
- Large size agencies.
- Deals with all stages of advertisement.
- Different expert people for different departments.
- Starts work from gathering data and analyzing and ends on payment of bills to the media people.
2. Interactive Agencies
- Modernized modes of communication are used.
- Uses online advertisements, sending personal messages on mobile phones, etc.
- The ads produced are very interactive, having very new concepts, and very innovative.
3. Creative Boutiques
- Very creative and innovative ads.
- No other function is performed other than creating actual ads.
- Small sized agencies with their own copywriters, directors, and creative people.
4. Media Buying Agencies
- Buys place for advertise and sells it to the advertisers.
- Sells time in which advertisement will be placed.
- Schedules slots at different television channels and radio stations.
- Finally supervises or checks whether the ad has been telecasted at opted time and place or not.
5. In-House Agencies
- As good as the full-service agencies.
- Big organization prefers these types of agencies which are in built and work only for them.
- These agencies work as per the requirements of the organizations.
There are some specialized agencies which work for some special advertisements. These types of agencies need people of special knowledge in that field. For example, advertisements showing social messages, finance advertisements, medicine related ads, etc.
Functions of Advertising Agencies
Today advertising agencies are found in virtually every major city on the world and their role in stimulating economic growth is solidly established. To understand advertising, we need to examine the functions of an Ad Agency.
- Talent & Creative productions: The basic function of an Ad Agency is providing talent. A business organization or person will contract the services of an ad agency to help market a product. This function involves processing the information collected from the client and through research and designing communication material in the form of advertisements and other publicity material. This also includes planning creative strategies, script writing, visualization, designing, layout, shooting of films, editing, giving music, etc.
- Research: In order to distribute the message to the public successfully, the agency must first know all that it can about the product. One of the first jobs is to research the product and the company. The research must even take one close to the heart of the firm’s inner operations. Ad agencies use research as a tool to test consumer reactions to products and services.
- Distribution & Media planning: Here you decide what type of message you will create for the company and what media will be most helpful in sending this message to the public. On the basis of the media habits of the target audience, agency people prepare a media plan. This plan includes which media to be used, which part of the media to be used, when to place the ads and for how long to place the ads, etc. media planners keep track of the viewer ship, listener ship and readership of all kinds of media.
- Monitoring Feedback: By monitoring consumer feedback, a decision on whether to revise the message, the medium, the target audience or all of them can be made. As information is the backbone of all advertising, to prepare ads, one requires information about the product; its competitors, the market situation and trends.
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