ADVERTISING AGENCY

 Advertising agencies are outside companies that provide for the marketing and advertising needs of other businesses and organizations. Advertising agencies offer a full range of advertising services and advice based on market studies, popular culture and advanced sales techniques. Because they are independent from the client company, they can be objective about a client's promotional needs. An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its clients.

Before proceeding with selecting a media agency, it is useful to be aware of what services media agencies offer in today’s market. Over the past years, many factors have influenced the development of the role of media agencies:

•                     The explosion of media outlets, linked with the dynamism of media groups and a revolution in technology (digital TV, multimedia/internet, interactivity), means a more complex media choice, especially since this proliferation has led to audience fragmentation.

•                     The advertisers’ search for ever more effectiveness and productivity from their media monies has increased the need for research and tools enabling an accurate evaluation of audiences, rate cards, selling conditions and measurement of return on media investments.

•                     The increasing market concentration of media, on an international scale, has in turn driven the development of media agencies in size, staffing, technology and international capability, with a view to better serving the advertiser’s interests.

Following points must be kept in mind while choosing an advertising agency:

a) Experience of an Agency

b) Agency size and location

c) Product Conflict

d) Financial position of an Agency

e) Special skills of an Agency

f) Current clients

g) Process of payment

            The longer an agency has been in business, the more stable it is expected to be and stable agencies are more reliable.

*               Large-budget advertisers want to go to large agencies because these agencies have better staff and more facilities. Large budget advertisers do not like to select small agencies as these are not profitable. Similarly small advertisers do not select large agencies for fear of insufficient attention.

*                  If an agency already another account with the same or similar product, then it is not advisable to select that particular agency because of conflict of interest involved.

*                  If the agency is in a week financial position, then it will spend more time in solving its own problems than working on the advertisers campaign. Financial difficulties also indicate the poor planning of the agency and lack of its stability.

*                  Some agencies specialize in certain areas such as industrial advertising, legal advertising or medical advertising. It would be useful to know if the agency specializes in a particular product or it has specialists who are familiar in the promotion of this particular product. If the agency has special skills for the promotion of this product, it will run a successful advertising campaign.

*                  Most advertisers are very careful in selecting an agency. They usually see the list of the clients of an agency. An agency with a solid list of clients would be more desirable. It will also be useful to know how many new accounts were acquired in the last two or three years and how many accounts were lost. The reasons for the lost accounts may highlight some of the weakness of the agency.

*                  It should be seen that what is the process of payment in an agency. The advertiser will have to pay in advance or after the advertising. The client should have a detailed analysis of the method adopted so that there is no misunderstanding afterwards.

In addition to these specific areas, consideration must be given to the support services and additional facilities that the agency might have. These include market research, dealer support, public relation etc.

There are some who call advertising the second oldest profession. The pun is intended to highlight the importance of advertising which has existed through the antiquity though the art has been honed into a science with the all-encompassing dawn of the communications era which leaves no life untouched today. The advent of PC, Internet, e-commerce, desk-top publishing, and computer-assisted designing has changed the way of advertising today.

The primary objective of advertising is to make people buy goods or services. If the world is the market place where everyone is trying to sell a product, a service, or an idea — and many say that it is — the importance of advertising could hardly be over-emphasized. The length of commercial breaks has become the barometer for the popularity of a TV program — the more popular is sure to draw more advertisers than a less popular one. A popular sixty minute TV serial usually contains 15 minutes of advertisements. While this insistence on the part of the advertisers to book advertisements during airing of a popular program is not hard to understand, it has also resulted in people jumping from channel to channel during commercial breaks, thanks mainly to the all mighty remote, as the airwaves of today are filled with satellite channels giving the viewers a much bigger choice to jump a channel than ever before. Like the rest of the world the communications revolution has changed the face of the advertising industry in Pakistan. Gone are the days when consumers all commodities be it rice, milk, cloth, soap, tooth paste, soft drink, etc., from a local store — the concept of brand loyalty was yet to shape. This of course does not mean that there was no advertising, only that it was merely used to publicize a much fewer number of products and services. The magnitude of advertising was much smaller and it was restricted to graffiti on the walls, printed messages in the newspapers, handbills. The vast majority of product and service oriented companies believed more in the word-of-the-mouth than anything else.

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