Advertising Agencies

Advertising agencies or ad agencies are service oriented business houses committed to planning, creating and handling advertising on behalf of their clients and/or doing promotional work for a client’s product or products. They are usually given free hand to do the job of image building for the client whom they have to know well to do justice to the job. Sometimes Ad Agencies are also asked to handle ‘Branding’ as well as ‘Marketing’ of a product by the client. In the same vein comes ‘Sales Promotion’ for a product, the key features being provided by the customer.

How big an advertising agency is tends to differ quite a lot. There are some agencies that are run by husband/wife teams where the husband does the ‘copy writing’, and the wife either does the ‘art work’ or gets it done by freelance artists. On the other hand there are multi-national and multi-agency conglomerates that dominate the market. These agencies take away the lion’s share from the Ad Budget of still larger corporate business houses.

Marketing and Business Growth - Start Here

Simply put your first name and email in the boxes below to start your Free Business Growth Course.

Advertising Agencies

With the advent of Internet advertising and ‘Digital Space utilization’, a new class of Ad agencies known as Interactive Agencies have grown up. For those not much acquainted with this lingo, the digital space is a multi-media enabled electronic channel from which an advertiser’s message (text or image) can be heard or seen. The ‘digital space’ construes the Internet, kiosks, DVDs, Lifestyle Devices like iPod, PSP and Mobile. The new generation Interactive agencies, though functioning similarly as traditional Ad agencies, focus solely on interactive advertising services that are described above.

Simply put your first name and email in the boxes below to start your Free Business Growth Course.

Departments In Advertising Agencies – How They Function

Most significant departments in an Ad agency consist of the Creative Department and the Account Service department. The Creative department is run by people who create the ad, taking the cue from the client and mixing the particular flavor of the agency house. Copywriters, visualizes and art directors also form significant part of the Creative department. Though not on a regular basis, Creative departments often work with outside production studios or design centers to enhance the appeal of any special ad matter.

The Account service department in an advertising agency mainly revolves round the client or the customer. An Account executive is primarily responsible for getting the client in the first place and then serving the client and ensuring that the creative department is following the brief that was received from the client. To ensure this, the account executive has to coordinate with the creative, media and, if necessary, production staff of the agency all the while. However, at the final stage, the decision is taken by the client, in consultation with the Accounts executive.

Though Creative Services department does not often come under the limelight, its staff members are constantly coming into contact with suppliers of varied creative media. They are also capable enough to negotiate with printers if the agency is producing print jobs for the client.

And this is how advertising agencies work.