The Role of Advertising Agencies in the Development of Successful Promotional

Explain the role of advertising agencies in the development of successful promotional campaign Advertising is considered by many major organisations as a powerful marketing tool to increase sales and can enhance the image of their company/brand. They are also service provide who create an effective advert for their client company to help them meet their business objectives or built their brand image at a price. As there can be high competition in the market that a business operates in, advertising agency can provide service in creating, attracting attention, unique and memorable adverts. This is because advertising agency has specialist team who are responsible for researching the target market. So they know how to connect with the consumers very well. Before starting out any campaign or developing any ideas such agency tries to understand the product or the company. They try to get well acquainted with the client company and understand what they are trying to achieve. This information they collect is very essential as to create the commercial to the client of the satisfactory.

Saatchi and Saatchi
Saatchi and Saatchi is one of the well-known creative agencies famous for their adverts. It was founded by brothers Maurice and art collector Charles in 1970.This agency operates globally in 80 countries and has 140 offices. It employs around 6,500 people. Their clients include some of the major companies such as Visa, T- Mobile, Olay, Guinness, and Ariel and so on. As a creative agency, they have to understand what their client want achieve out of the advert. This could be building their image, create interest in people, get the message across and to create a desire for them to buy. Once they know what their client wants to achieve, they start creating and developing an effective advert or marketing campaign to meet the objective of the client’s company. They create their advert through different forms of media such as the internet, TV, magazine, newspaper and so on. Mostly, there is going to be a promotional mix. Royal Wedding Advert

Saatchi and Saatchi is responsible creating the “life’s for sharing” adverts for T- mobile which have been very successful as it is the most watched adverts online. This was featured in both TV and on YouTube. All the adverts created for T-Mobile are unique in its theme, music and situations. This is why they are so popular. The teaser video of the same ad has more than 170,000 within 24 hours of going online. This just shows how effective the advert has been and Saatchi and Saatchi are responsible for this. This advert was intended to go viral so that the brand could be exposed to all its audiences. As of now, it has more than 25 million views in you tube and is still being watched by many. This has helped boost T-Mobile’s company profile and most importantly, this has helped T-Mobile to reach millions of people. The life’s for sharing adverts in the past has been watched by more than 50 million people worldwide. Once people get to know the brand and have a good/ memorable impression of the brand, they are most likely to purchase from brand and so ultimately objectives of meeting the sales target can be met. Creative development:

In this department, there are creative specialists who are responsible for the creation and execution of the advertisements. These specialists are known as copy writers. They are also the ones who come up with ideas and themes for the adverts and those ideas are further developed. For the advertising campaign, they prepare storyboard, which are rough layout of the ad in print version. Mainly the copywriters are responsible for creating the ad and the art department are responsible for the visual appearance of the ad. For the T-Mobile advert above, this department must have come with the idea of the royal wedding theme. This advert was developed by Copy writer/ creative director Paul Silburn, their art director, Lovisa Almgren-Flaken and agency producer James Faupel. Creative partner, Paul Silburn had said that they wanted capitalise on the excitement around the royal wedding and that the whole royal wedding excitement is the life for sharing moment of the year. This is what the whole ad is based on. Before the actual production, they must have come up with a story board of rough sketch of the advert to show how the advert would look like. The media planning department must have decided that they wanted to show it on the entire social networking site from Facebook to twitter and on YouTube to generate the attention of the consumer.

Account service Department: The account service department is the link between the client and the agency. It is usually one or two of the account executives who communicate with the client company and the rest of the agency department to understand the main objective of the marketing. Any marketing problems, goals or other objectives of the client company is discussed so that they understand what their client is looking for. Those executives are also responsible for the approval of media approvals, budgets and the story board. They have to ensure that the ad produced by their agency is to the satisfaction of the client. Moreover, they also have to ensure that follow up are communicated well ahead of the client and throughout the process. This department of Saatchi and Saatchi could have been responsible for communicating what T-Mobile wanted to achieve from the commercial. They must have been responsible for the storyboard provided by their copy writers. This department must have discussed how much their profit goals, their budget toward this commercial before finally sealing the whole deal. The Saatchi and Saatchi had to ensure that the ad clearly highlights the T- Mobile brand and Slogan in the clip. During the process, they must have been responsible for letting T mobile know about the progress of the ad. Production department:

The copy and illustration of the approved ad is sent to this department. Generally, they do not actually produce the finishes ad but they hire other specialists such as the photographers, engravers and other to complete the finished ad. They are also responsible for filming the ad. In this process, they select and supervise the casts who are meant to appear in the commercial. They decide on how to film the commercial and also make decision of the shoot settings or location. Sometimes, they hire director to direct the advert for them. The production department must have been responsible for recruiting the casts and crew for the filming. Since they had to create a royal wedding themed video, they must have been responsible for hiring royal family and Kate Middleton lookalikes. They also needed to hire extras such as the hundreds of guests. According to Saatchi and Saatchi press release, the lookalikes were picked from hundreds of application and the 130 guests were mostly T-Mobile staffs. They were responsible for the location which was the church St Bartholomew in London and also the song to go with the wedding. To direct his video, they hired director Chris Palmer who works for the creative production company, gorgeous based in London. Finance and Accounting:

Advertising agencies are business that provides services. Like any other business they also require to manage their different functional departments such as the accounts, Human resource, finance etc. Therefore, it also need to attempt to get new business. Moreover, this department is important as approximately, 65% goes as salary and benefits to the employees. This department for the campaign must have been responsible for managing the costs involved during the whole process of the ad campaigns by T-Mobile. They must have had allocated budget to ensure that the costs are spread out evenly in all the departments to operate the business.

M2 – Explain the advantages and disadvantages of using professional agencies in ensuring promotional success Advertising and marketing is a very important part of business. Without coherent marketing mix, a business’s product would not receive any recognition, without recognition there would be no demand and without and demand there will be so sales. Advertising is so important that more and more business, organisations, celebrities and political parties are turning to advertising in order to fulfil their own marketing interests. There are various advantages and disadvantages to hiring an ad agency, and businesses must weigh up every negative and positive aspect of hiring an agency before making a decision on whether or not to uses an ad agency to develop their marketing mix.

Advantages of using professional agencies:
Advertising agency provides exclusive and objective advice about what advertising techniques would suit your business and your product. Another benefit provided by the advertising agencies is the benefit of experienced staffing with expertise in the field of advertising. Since their focus is narrow, they are able to generate more prolific results as compared to the company itself. It takes a lot of weight of the shoulders of the business owner, and gives him/her the opportunity to focus on other things. Having an effectible and professional marketing campaign would help a business to surpass its competition, so it can also be used to gain a competitive advantage.

They are more focused on the aims and objectives of their client company. Once they get their creative brief or information from the company, they set out the planning of the ad straight away. In a way they are more organised, so there are more chances of getting a successful campaign. An example would be the advertising mix of the iPhone to the advertising mix of the HTC Desire. Both the iPhone and the HTC had vertically the same features, touch screen, internet access, and high resolution screen and so on. They even looked similar. The reason why the iPhone is more popular and sold more was because it’s marketing campaign more effective than the HTC’s. Being a service provider, most professional services are likely to have many links with other media such as TV, newspaper, networking sites. So these agencies have the capability to negotiate a deal with any of those media forms straight away. So it save times and money for the client company. An advertising agency can work with a business to develop a campaign that can help create name and brand recognition to potential customers. While hiring an agency can be expensive, a well-planned and executed campaign can lead to recognition and sales, and ultimately a return on that investment.

The advertising agency can perform much of the legwork in this area by helping to identify the business’s target market as well as their key demographics good ad agencies often times have their own profiles on different demographics, meaning that if the product is aimed at teenagers, the agency can look back on its other projects that it had previously done which were aimed at the same demographics, and use the more effective techniques. In other words, the advertising agency will be better suited to determine what type of advertising would be most effective, as well as to whom the ads should be aimed. They are most likely to meet their deadline for the campaign than the business because providing advertising service is what they do and all the work seem to be done on time in order to satisfy their client. Using an Ad Agency would be very beneficial because it would provide them with a professional and superior ad as opposed to if they were to attempt to conduct a promotional campaign themselves While business owners may be experts in their particular field, they may possess little or no knowledge of what makes an effective, attention-grabbing advertisement.

Disadvantages of using professional agencies
While there are a lot of advantages to hiring an ad agency, there are many disadvantages. The main one is that the business would be giving up control over their products. A big problem will be the communication factor. If it is the first time that the business has used that agency, the agency may not fulfil the businesses goals and creative wishes the way the business wants them to be. During the process of the promotional mix being organised, the business will pretty much be blindfolded i.e. not knowing what the agency is doing for them until they see to finished product. Even if they see the finished product and are not happy with it, they will still have to pay the agency for their work on the campaign regardless of how they feel. The advertising agencies provide service at a price. When a business hires an ad agency, it is engaging itself into hiring all the expertise involved in the agency. This can be very expensive. For example: if it is very expensive to hire an ad agency, so a small or newly started business will have to consider whether it is a risk worth taking, especially taking into account the implications of the ad failing (loss of money, which could lead to loss of resources, and for their product to make a bad first impression with the customers, which would tarnish their reputation).

Less well known and possibly lower paying client, the business may not be regarded as a priority by the agency and agency may not allocate its best resources to that project. In essence, the higher paying clients will be at the top of the list, and the small time businesses at the bottom, or the campaign maybe assigned to inexperienced staff members. There is no guarantee that the ad agency will produce an effective campaign because the ad agencies may not be well aware of the product properly. It will take time to ensure that the agency is well educated about the product. Agency may not fulfil the businesses goals and creative wishes the way the business wants them to be. During the process of the promotional mix being organised, the business will pretty much be blindfolded i.e. not knowing what the agency is doing for them until they see to finished product. Even if they see the finished product and are not happy with it, they will still have to pay the agency for their work on the campaign regardless of how they feel.

Some of the ad agencies can prioritise big budgets client if your company is small budgeted. It can push your deadline in order to provide time slot for their big clients and moreover, they may not use their best resource if the company is providing small budget. Each different business will have to consider both the negatives and positives of using an ad agency. While there are disadvantages, some of those disadvantages can be remedied, such as the communication issue. If the finished ad is not what you want or does not meet your expectations, if is often due to disconnection between the business and the agency. The way this can be avoided is by the business firmly and clearly stating its position in respect of how the ad should be like. Businesses could also set a contract between themselves and the agency, which could give the business the right to withhold its payments if the agency delivers a second rate ad, or neglects the business wishes. I personally feel that the business better suited to use an ad company would be company which have just started, whose owner may not be as experienced with marketing. Although there are risks, the rewards could be bigger than the losses they could make.