1. Term Agency in advertising?

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. Typical ad agency clients include businesses and corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Agencies may be hired to produce television commercials and radio commercials as part of an advertising campaign. 2. What are the various department of advertising agency
Broadly there are 6 departments in any advertising agency

Account Servicing Account Planning Media

Creative Production Finance and Accounting

Account service department The account service, or the account management department, is the link between the ad agency and its clients. Depending upon the size of the account and its advertising budget one or two account executives serve as liason to the client. The account executives job requires high degree of diplomacy and tact as misunderstanding may lead to loss of an account. The accountexecutive is mainly responsible to gain knowledge about the clients business, profit goals, marketing problems and advertising objectives. The account executive is responsible for getting approved the media schedules, budgets and rough ads or story boards from the client. The next task is to make sure that the agency personnel produce the advertising to the clients satisfaction. The biggest role of the accountexecutive is keeping the agency ahead of the client through follow-up and communications. Media department The responsibility of the agencys media department is to develop a media plan to reach the target audience effectively in a cost effective manner. The staff analyses, selects and contracts for media time or space that will be used to deliver the ad message. This is one of the mostimportant decisions since a significantly large part of the clients money is spent on the media time and/or space. The media department has acquired increasing importance in an agencys business as large advertisers seem to be more inclined to consolidate media buying with one or few agencies thereby saving money and improving media efficiency. Creative department To a large extent, the success of an ad agency depends upon the creative department responsible for the creation and execution of the advertisements. The creative specialists are known as copywriters. They are the ones who conceive ideas for the ads and write the headlines, subheads and the body copy. They are also involved in deciding the basic theme of the advertising campaign, and often they do prepare the rough layout of the print ad or the commercial story board. Creation of an ad is the responsibility of the copywriters and the art department decides how the ad should look. Production department After the completion and approval of the copy and the illustrations the ad is sent to the production department. Generally agencies do not actually produce the finished ads; instead they hire printers, photographers, engravers, typographers and others to complete the finished ad. For the production of the approved TV commercial, the production department may supervise the casting of actors to appear in the ad,

the setting for scenes and selecting an independent production studio. The production department sometimes hires an outside director to transform the creative concept to a commercial. Finance and accounting department An advertising agency is in the business of providing services and must be managed that way. Thus, it has to perform various functions such as accounting, finance, human resources etc. it must also attempt to generate new business. Also this department is important since bulk of the agencys income approx. 65% goes as salary and benefits to the employees.

3. Advertising planning process. Advertisers and advertising agencies believe that customers have needs and desires, which can be fulfilled through the purchase and use of products and services. Advertising works largely through appeal of emotions of envy, fear, anxiety, about ones appearance and lack of status. It is widely assumed that advertising works if the AIDCA formulas are followed. The formula sums up the principles of advertising. The name of the formula is derived from the initial letters of the words: Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction and Action. The formula suggests that the att3ention and interests of the customers must be gained first before the process of stimulating desire, imparting conviction and urging action in advertisements can bring about a change in the buying behaviors. Steps Involved in Advertisement Planning The Attention part is the banner or headline that makes an impressive benefit promise. Interest builds information in an interesting way, usually meaning that this must relate closely to the way that the reader thinks about the issues concerned. If you seek a response you must move then to create Desire, which relates benefits to the reader so that they will want them. Finally you must prompt an Action, which may be to call a telephone number or to complete and send of a reply coupon. Advertising that does not prompt action is a wasted opportunity. Offer a single impressive benefit, quickly and simply Research proves that where responses are required, the best adverts are those, which offer an impressive, relevant benefit to the reader. This promise should ideally contain the business brand name, take no longer to read than is normal for the media and be clearly the most striking part of the advert. This point cannot be stressed enough; you must keep it quick, simple and to the point. Younger generations are extremely visually literate. They have been brought up on computer games, so they couldnt deal with a lot of polished copy, even if they wanted to. Think about the vocabulary and language you use; know your target audience: a simple test is to avoid any words or grammar that would not be found in the newspaper that the target group would read. Your message must be quick and easy to absorb. Use a clear layout, clear fonts and clear language. Do not distract the reader from the text by overlaying images or using fancy fonts. Use simple language, avoid complicated words, and keep enough space around the text to attract attention to it. Use simple traditional typestyles: serif fonts are quicker to read than sans serif. Use ten, eleven or twelve point-size for the main text; smaller or larger are actually more difficult to read and therefore less likely to be read. Avoid cluttering the advert with fancy images, colors and backgrounds. Make it easy to read. For the same reason avoids italics, shadows, light colors reversed out of dark, weird and wonderful colors. None of these improve readability, they all reduce it. Use simple black (or dark colored) text on a white (or light colored) background for maximum readability. Involve the reader in your writing style Refer to the reader as you and use the second person (you, your and yours etc) in the description of what your business does for the customer to get them visualizing their own personal involvement. Describe the service as it affects them in a way that they will easily relate to it. Incorporate something new

People respond better and are more easily attracted initially to a concept that is new or original. If theyve heard or seen it all before it will be no surprise that they take no notice at all. People must believe theres something in it for them right from the start. Develop a proposition that is special or unique Why should people be interested if your proposition is no different to your competition? You must try to emphasize what makes your service special. Unless your code of practice prevents you from claiming superiority over your competitors, you should put as much emphasis as you can behind your USP (unique selling point), and either imply or state directly that you are the only company to offer these things. Proposition or offer must be credible and believable The Advertising Standards Authority or equivalent would prevent you from making overly extravagant claims anyway, but you should still attempt to make your offer seem perfectly credible. This is usually best accomplished by explaining why and how you are able to do the things you are offering, in support of your claims; you can also increase credibility by showing references or testimonial quotes from satisfied customers. For example, if you claim particularly good customer service, this can be reinforced with an outline of your policy on seeking customer feedback and carrying out satisfaction surveys. Advertising is often referred to as a Black Art because it is mysterious, and is rarely a precise science. Things sometimes work, which you imagine, wouldnt, and plenty of things you think should work, dont. An advertisement campaign determines what the advertiser wants to say. It also determines how, when, where, and to whom the advertiser wants to say it. The Planning process of Advertisements Campaigns include the following activities: 1. Situation Appraisal- before planning any activity, one requires relevant information regarding the situation. For planning an Ad campaign, we require information about the target market or consumer, the company or product and the competition. The three important research areas are: Consumer research and market research Product and company research Competitive research 2. Situation Analysis- (analyzing strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats) From all the information collected, campaigns planners find out the strengths of the product. These strengths could be in any area. The strength often leads to new opportunities to be explored. Weaknesses make the product vulnerable to threats from others. 3. Structural or Strategic Planning- Advertising is an art and a science. While the art comes from writing, designing and producing exciting advertisements, the science comes from scientific methods of research and strategic planning. Strategic planning is the process of making intelligent decisions. It starts with finding out what to do, deciding how to accomplish the objectives. It also decides whom to address (the target audience), how to distinguish the product, how much to spend (budgeting), and how long to run the campaign. 4. Creative Planning- it includes developing a theme, the creative strategy and finally deciding the creative tactics. The theme needs to be a strong concept to be able to hold all there different and diverse ads together. A powerful theme brings about synergy to the campaign. A theme must always relate to and reflect the campaign objectives. Another step of creative planning is finding the creative strategy. The creative strategy outlines the impressions the campaign wants to create. Some common creative strategies are: Generic Strategy- this is used by market leaders who ignore the presence of competitors Pre-emptive claim strategy- here the brand is the first to pick up a particular feature. In the minds of the people, it becomes associated with that brand. Unique selling proposition (USP) strategy- here the campaign talks about some features, which is unique to that advertised brand and is not available in others.

Brand image strategy: when there are no strong differentiating features among the competitors, then branding try and create images.

Product Positioning- some times products or brands are positioned different from competing brands. 5. Media Planning- the ultimate goal of advertising is to reach the target audience with the advertising message. Thus, the major decisions in media planning, which needs to be taken, are: Which media to be used? Where to advertise (geographic region)? When to advertise (timing and scheduling)? How intense the exposure should be (frequency)? Media planning is a behind the scene part of advertising. It plays an integral role in merging the science of marketing with the art of advertising. A media planner has to find out about the availability of various media, the media rates, their reaches and also analyze their effectiveness

4. Factors to be considered in developing media plan. See book 5. Steps in media planning
Every media plan begins with target audience. The target audience can be classified in terms of age, sex, income, education, occupation and other variables. The audience can also be classified as children teenagers, yound adults, office goers, newly married couples,parents, grandparents,etc. i.e DECIDING ON TARGET MARKETS The classification of the target audience helps the media planner to understand the media consumption habits, and accordingly choose the most appropriate media or media-mix The media planner can also select the most appropriate programme (in case of radio and TV) to insert advertisement. Matching media and market Advertisers must always attempt to match the profile of the target market with the demographic characteristics of a given mediums audience.Let us consider an example of cigarette advertising. The target market for this is men in the age group of 25 to 60 years. The advertiser would consider placing ads in magazines having a predominantly male readership. Advertising in magazines having a predominantly female readership would be mostly wasteful for this product. It may be true that rarely does any magazine have a 100 percent male readership. Even so, when selecting a predominantly mens magazine, the advertiser would minimize wasteful expenditure, Some media, such as general interest consumer magazines and newspapers, network radio and television offer to an advertiser the means of transmitting ad messages to a cross-section of the consumer market. Against this, some other media, such as spot radio and television, special interest magazines, business publications, and some business newspapers offer the means of reaching selective group of audience. The selectivity offered by some media is useful for advertisers, for it enables them to reach a distinct target market with minimum waste. In fact, a great deal of information on the media about their demographic characteristics is provided by the media themselves.The objective of any media planner is to achieve the best possible matching of the media and the market. DECIDING ON MEDIA OBJECTIVES: The media planner has to decide on the media objectives. Media objectives often are stated in terms of reach, frequency, gross rating points and continuity. Media objectives You can contribute most to the media process in the definition of objectives (what you want the plan to accomplish). Before media planning can start, companies have to define the marketing objectives of the product/ idea proposed to be advertised. For example, if a professional camera manufacturer decides to launch an automatic camera to expand his market, his marketing objective would be to reach those segments of the population who are photo enthusiasts but do not want to be hassled by the intricacies of operation of professional cameras, the fun loving people who want to capture moments of joy and togetherness. The manufacturer may also target the existing professional camera users to consider a replacement in order to have the pleasure of an automatic camera, which obviously

will be faster, having mastered the manual one. The marketing objective, hence, would be to extend distribution into new geographic markets or income groups as also the current users of cameras

The following could be the media objectives

To reach photo enthusiasts of that age and income group who are the chief purchasers. To concentrate the greatest weight in urban areas where the target audience would normally be found and where new ideas gain a quicker response. To provide advertising support at a consistent level except when it needs extra weight during announcements and the holiday season, when such target buyers are planning to visit exotic places or to meet their kith and kin. To select those media, which will help strengthen the creative strategy and help demonstrate convenience, ease of shooting and, of course, excellent results. The Hot Shot camera with theKhatak sound became an instant success with the photo enthusiasts in the late eighties in India. To reach target buyers through those media to gain greater frequency and lesser cost per opportunity

Media objectives are built around answers to five questions: who, when, where, how often, and in what way? MEDIA EVALUATION After the objectives are defined there is a need to evaluate each media in order to reach a conclusion about the type of media that will be most effective for the accomplishment of the objectives. The objects of the evaluation are:

To see which media are feasible. To pick the main medium. To prepare for the decision on how it should be used. To see whether there are suitable supporting media if required.

Creative suitability: There may be obvious reasons why a particular medium is especially suitable for the campaign or another is unsuitable, a coupon is to be included or the absence of colour is critical. Often the preference of the creative group is not backed up by concrete evidence but they have strong views nevertheless about the media to use and those not to use. The agency is not in the business of reaching consumers with exposures of advertisements (which tend to be the media departments natural criterion), but in the business of selling the product. So if the creative choice looks at all reasonable in media terms, it is usually sensible for the planning to accept it. Sometimes the creative choice is unreasonable and may have been reached without full consideration of the alternatives. An idea: Sometimes a media idea, or better an idea which involves media and creative content, is obviously right or simply a novelty, which is expected to attract attention and so work. A press advertisement in the shape of the product, using publications that have never before carried this type of advertising, a radio commercial announcing officially there is now no shortage of the product, a TV commercial that starts with silence and black screen, a poster that looks like a shop window and so on. Sometimes a change is as good as an increased budget. Proven effectiveness:

When there is evidence that a particular medium is the most efficient, the choice is obvious. The evidence may come from the tests on our own product or from a study of competitors activities. The advertiser often insists on using the same medium as before, even without testing its effectiveness. The best predictor of an advertising schedule is the schedule for the previous year. This is not always laziness. It is partly because the media scene is not very different from year to year: media change is dictated by a major shift in the market place, a new medium, a new definition of the target, or a new advertising idea. Advertisers resist change because it involves more risk than to continue with a proven, viable strategy. Availability and timing: The type of product or copy claim may prevent the use of a medium- this is most likely to rule out TV, on which, for example cigarettes are not advertised. The flexibility required by the advertiser, for example being able to cancel or change advertising at a few days notice, may also rule out a medium-for example it may make colour press impossible. Competition: We cant come off the box, thats where our competitors are. Look, theres no advertising for this product in womens magazines: lets dominate there. Of the two policies- match the competition or avoid it- the first is more common in media choice. This may be because the main purpose of the advertising is defensive- to reassure existing buyers and reassure existing buyers and diffuse competitors attacks. It may also be a fear of leaving him to dominate a medium. Or the medium normally chosen is simply the most suitable for that product group. Or the consumer and the trade have come to expect the advertising to be in that medium and look for it there, so it works best there.; on the same principle, shops often do better together in the High Street than scattered over the town. These arguments apply to large advertisers: McDougalls will not leave spillers to be the only large flour manufacturer on TV, nor Cadburys leave TV to Mars. But for the small budgets it could be inefficient to hit competition at knee-level. A small advertiser might do better to dominate a less used medium. CHOOSING AMONG MAJOR MEDIA TYPES: The media planner has to know the capacity of the major media types to deliver reach, frequency, and impact. The major advertising media along with their costs, advantages, and limitations are to be well understood. Every media plan requires that specific media types be selected Doordarshan, Direct mail, satellite TV, newspapers, magazines, etc. Media planners must consider several variables before choosing among major types: Target audience media habits: This is the most important factor. Housewives watch more of television, whereas, working women go for magazines. Again television programmes have different viewers. For instance, world this week is viewed by teenagers and young adults. Therefore, it would be advisable to advertise during World this week such products which are of interest to teenagers and young adults. Radio and television are the most effective media for reaching teenagers. Products: Products that require demonstration can suit for television. For example, the demonstration of the use of a vacuum cleaner by Eureka Forbes. Financial advertising such as new issue of shares is good in newspapers. Women's dresses are best shown in color magazines, and Polaroid cameras a best demonstrated on television. Media types have different potentials for demonstration, visualization, explanation, believability, and color. Again there are media restrictions on certain products. For instance, alcoholic drinks and cigarettes cannot be advertised in press as well as on DD and AIR, hence these two options are totally ruled out. Message: The type of message dictates the type of media. For example, an ad that features technical information is best suited for specific magazines. Again, an ad from retailer announcing major sale on discount requires more of local newspapers.

Cost Factor: Television is very expensive, where as, radio is very economical. However, cost is not the only factor, even if it is calculated on the basis of cost per- person reached. The impact of the media is to be taken into account. SELECTING SPECIFIC MEDIA VEHICLES Once a decision is made on media types, specific media vehicles within each medium must be chosen. For instance, the media planner may take a decision to select only magazines. The question now appears in which magazines. There are several classes of magazinesGeneral interest like Readers digest, Women Interest magazines like Femina, Savvy, Elle, Business interest magazines like Business India, Business Today. If the decision is to select Business Interest Magazines- then the media planner may consider the following:

Business India Business World Fortune India Dalal Street Journal Business Today Advertising & Marketing