An advertising agency is an organization that brings together into a single business venture people with specialized knowledge and skills, well versed in all aspects of marketing and consumer behavior. They must be receptive to other people and communications, knowledgeable about advertising media and markets, experienced text writers, artists, television producers, researchers, and administrators. An advertising agency provides an environment in which professionals of different backgrounds get to interact with each other and combine their talents in creating effective advertising for individual clients.
А. Dayan identifies three functions that an advertising agency should perform:
1) creating the advertising appeal, which it also produces and places;
2) consulting on advertising – helping to determine the strategy and concept of an advertising campaign;
3) mediation between advertisers and the media (buying advertising space); advertisers and companies specializing in marketing (market research, motivation); advertiser and owners of printers, which publish brochures, catalogs, product manuals, posters, posters.
All agencies are involved in the planning, preparation and placement of advertising, but the range and degree of thoroughness of the services provided to customers varies greatly.
Advertising agencies have their own classification:
1) by the scope of services provided:
- agencies with full-service advertising agencies;
- agencies with a limited range of services (limited-service advertising agencies)]
2) by types of services rendered: - universal agencies (universal agencies), dealing with all types of advertising;
- Special agencies (special agencies) deal only with one or several types of advertising media;
3) according to location of services rendered: - in the domestic market;
- foreign market;
- Combination of agencies – when the advertiser entrusts the domestic advertising agency with advertising of exported goods, which conducts it through a foreign advertising agency. This system is called “agency pairing” in the export trade, and the domestic advertising agencies located in the country of export in this case perform only controlling functions in relation to the foreign advertising agency.
The advertiser and the advertising agency enter into a contract or agreement between them governing the overall relationship between them.
Advertising agencies have different organizational structures. In larger agencies, there is a stronger need to combine different specialists into departments and more clearly delineate areas of responsibility. The main functional divisions of the advertising agency include:
- creative department – brings together text workers, artists, graphic specialists, directors, editors and other creative workers;
- Department of Execution of Orders – includes the head and inspectors of working groups of the client, the director of service execution of orders;
- marketing department – includes specialists in advertising, research and promotional activities;
- administrative department – includes specialists in accounting, development and monitoring of the implementation of prospective financial plans, coordination of revenues and costs, development of current policies, as well as the president and heads of departments.
The success of the agency as a business community of people to a large extent depends on its human resources policy, on how thoughtfully it solves the problems of attracting, training, stimulating and rewarding employees.
To attract and keep a prospective customer, an advertising agency has to be not only the technical, creative and conceptual center of advertising activities, but also the controller and coordinator of advertising campaigns. In the West, despite the diversity of types of advertising agencies, however, in most organizational schemes laid down the same principle – all work with a particular customer is carried out by one specialist. He is called the account executive (account executive), contactor, brand manager.