Organizational Structure of Advertising Agency

Answer 1

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Managing Advertising Decisions
Delivering an effective marketing message through advertising requires many different decisions as the marketer develops their advertising campaign. For small campaigns, that involve little creative effort, one or a few people may handle the bulk of the work. In fact, the Internet has made do-it-yourself advertising an easy to manage process and has especially empowered small businesses to manage their advertising decisions. As we will see, not only can small firms handle the creation and placement of advertisements that appear on the Internet, new services have even made it possible for a single person to create advertisements that run on local television. For instance, a company called SpotRunner allows users to select from a list of high-quality television ads that can be customized and then placed within local cable television programming.
For larger campaigns the skills needed to make sound advertising decisions can be quite varied and may not be easily handled by a single person. While larger companies manage some advertising activities within the company, they are more likely to rely on the assistance of advertising professionals, such as those found at advertising agencies, to help bring their advertising campaign to market.
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Advertising Agency Functions
Professionals at advertising agencies and other advertising organizations offer a number of functions including:
Account Management – Within an advertising agency the account manager or account executive is tasked with handling all major decisions related to a specific client. These responsibilities include locating and negotiating to acquire clients. Once the client has agreed to work with the agency, the account manager works closely with the client to develop an advertising strategy. For very large clients, such as large consumer products companies, an advertising agency may assign an account manager to work full-time with only one client and, possibly, with only one of the client’s product lines. For smaller accounts an account manager may simultaneously manage several different, though non-competing, accounts.

Account Service
The other major department in ad agencies is account services or account management. Account Services or account management is somewhat the sales arm of the advertising agency. An account executive (one who works within the account services department) meets with the client to determine sales goals and creative strategy. They are then responsible for coordinating the creative, media, and production staff behind the campaign. Throughout the creative process, they keep in touch with the client to update them on the ad's progress and gain feedback. Upon completion of the creative work, it is their job to ensure the ad's production and placement.
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Creative Team –The principle role of account managers is to manage the overall advertising campaign for a client, which often includes delegating selective tasks to specialists. For large accounts one task account managers routinely delegate involves generating ideas, designing concepts and creating the final advertisement, which generally becomes the responsibility of the agency’s creative team. An agency’s creative team consists of specialists in
**GRAPHIC  DESIGN  SECTION
**COPY   WRITING  SECTION
**FILM  PRODUCTION
**AUDIO  PRODUCTION
**COMPUTER  PROGRAMMING
Creative department
The people who create the actual ads form the core of an advertising agency. Modern advertising agencies usually form their copywriters and art directors into creative teams. Creative teams may be permanent partnerships or formed on a project-by-project basis. The art director and copywriter report to a creative director, usually a creative employee with several years of experience. Although copywriters have the word "write" in their job title, and art directors have the word "art", one does not necessarily write the words and the other draw the pictures; they both generate creative ideas to represent the proposition (the advertisement or campaign's key message). Creative departments frequently work with outside design or production studios to develop and implement their ideas. Creative departments may employ production artists as entry-level positions, as well as for operations and maintenance.
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Researchers – Full-service advertising agencies employ market researchers who assess a client’s market situation, including understanding customers and competitors, and also are used to test creative ideas. For instance, in the early stages of an advertising campaign researchers may run focus group sessions with selected members of the client’s target market in order to get their reaction to several advertising concepts. Researchers are also used following the completion of an advertising campaign to measure whether the campaign reached its objectives.
**CONSUMER  RESEARCH
**RETAIL  AUDIT
**MARKET  SURVEYS
**MARKET  POTENTIAL   STUDY
ETC ETC.
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Media Planners – Once an advertisement is created, it must be placed through an appropriate advertising media. Each advertising media, of which there are thousands, has its own unique methods for accepting advertisements, such as different advertising cost structures (i.e., what it costs marketers to place an ad), different requirements for accepting ad designs (e.g., size of ad), different ways placements can be purchased (e.g., direct contact with media or through third-party seller), and different time schedules (i.e., when ad will be run). Understanding the nuances of different media is the role of a media planner, who looks for the best media match for a client and also negotiates the best deals.
**MEDIA  SURVEY
*TARGET  AUDIENCE  STUDY
**MEDIA  PLANNING
*MEDIA   BUYING
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TRAFFIC   DEPARTMENT
The traffic department regulates the flow of work in the agency. It is typically headed by a traffic manager (or system administrator). Traffic increases an agency's efficiency and profitability through the reduction of false job starts, inappropriate job initiation, incomplete information sharing, over- and under-cost estimation, and the need for media extensions. In small agencies without a dedicated traffic manager, one employee may be responsible for managing workflow, gathering cost estimates and answering the phone, for example. Large agencies may have a traffic department of ten or more employees
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OTHER  SERVICES  OFFERED  BY  AD.  AGENCIES.

#  SALES  PROMOTIONS
-agency  also provides  help  to  the  clients  in  SALES PROMOTION  ACTIVITIES.
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#  RETAIL  CONSUMER  PROMOTIONS
-agency  also provides  help  to  the  clients  in  RETAIL  CONSUMER  PROMOTION  ACTIVITIES.
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# BELOW   THE  LINE  ADVERTISING
-agency  also provides  help  to  the  clients  in  BELOW  THE  LINE   ADVERTISING,
like  merchandising/ displays/ etc etc.
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# DIRECT  MARKETING  
-agency  also provides  help  to  the  clients  in  DIRECT  MARKETING   ACTIVITIES.
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# ONLINE  MARKETING
-agency  also provides  help  to  the  clients  in  ONLINE  MARKETING  ACTIVITIES.
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#PUBLIC  RELATIONS  
-agency  also provides  help  to  the  clients  in  PUBLIC  RELATIONS  ACTIVITIES.
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Creative Services 'Production'  department
The creative services department may not be so well known, but its employees are the people who have contacts with the suppliers of various creative media. For example, they will be able to advise upon and negotiate with printers if an agency is producing flyers for a client. However, when dealing with the major media (broadcast media, outdoor, and the press), this work is usually outsourced to a media agency which can advise on media planning and is normally large enough to negotiate prices down further than a single agency or client can.
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FINANCE  AND  ACCOUNTING  DEPARTMENT
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THE  BROAD  ORGANIZATION  STRUCTURE  COULD  BE
1.CEO
2.CREATIVE  DIRECTOR
-MEDIA   DIRECTOR
-ACCOUNTS  DIRECTOR
-RESEARCH DIRECTOR
-PROMOTIONS   DIRECTOR
-DIRECTOR  OF  PUBLICATIONS
-DIRECTOR  OF  TRAFFIC   MANAGEMENT.
-FINANCE  MANAGER
THESE  DIRECTORS  REPORT  TO  THE  CEO.

3.ALL  THE  MANAGERS  REPORT TO  THE  RESPECTIVE
DIRECTOR.
4. LOW  RANKING  STAFF  REPORT  TO  THE  MANAGERS.
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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 single ads or, more commonly, ongoing series of related ads, called an advertising campaign.
Types of advertising agencies
Ad agencies come in all sizes and include everything from one or two-person shops (which rely mostly on freelance talent to perform most functions), small to medium sized agencies, large independents, and multi-national, multi-agency conglomerates such as Omnicom Group, WPP Group, Publicis, Interpublic Group of Companies and Havas.
Full-service, or Media-neutral advertising agencies have pantsed the talent and as print ads or television commercials. Other agencies, especially larger ones, produce work for many types of media (creating integrated marketing communications, or through-the-line (TTL) advertising). The "line", in this case, is the traditional marker between media that pay a (traditionally 15%) commission to the agency (mainly broadcast media) and the media that do not. Most Full-Service agencies work on a combination of fee-based (to help offset the cost of non-commission production and planning) and commission based (the traditional 15% for electronic) compensation.
Interactive Agencies may differentiate themselves by offering a mix of Web Design/Development, Search Engine Marketing, Internet Advertising/Marketing, or E-Business/E-Commerce consulting. Interactive agencies rose to prominence before the traditional advertising agencies fully embraced the Internet. Offering a wide range of services, some of the interactive agencies grew very rapidly, although some have downsized just as rapidly due to changing market conditions. Today, the most successful interactive agencies are defined as companies that provide specialized advertising and marketing services for the digital space. The digital space is defined as any multi-media enabled electronic channel that an advertiser's message can be seen or heard from. The 'digital space' translates to the; Internet, Kiosks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, and Lifestyle Devices (iPod, PSP, and Mobile). Interactive Agencies function similarly to advertising agencies although they focus solely on interactive advertising services. They deliver services such as strategy, creative, design, video, development, programming (Flash and otherwise), deployment, management, and fulfillment reporting. Often, Interactive Agencies offerings are; Digital Lead Generation, Digital Brand Development, Interactive Marketing and Communications Strategy, Rich Media Campaigns, Interactive Video brand experiences, Web 2.0 website design and development, e-Learning Tools, email marketing, SEO/SEM services, Content Management Services, web application development, and overall Data Mining & ROI Assessment.
Lately, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms have been classified by some as 'agencies' due to the fact that they are creating media and implementing media purchases of text based (or image based in some instances of search marketing) ads. This relatively young industry has been slow to adopt the term 'agency' however with the creation of ads (either text or image) and media purchases they do qualify technically as an 'advertising agency' as well as recent studies suggest that both SEO and SEM are set to outpace magazine spending in the next 3-5 years.
Not all advertising is created by agencies. Companies that create and plan their own advertising are said to do their work in house.
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Advertising agency   OPERATION
Advertising agencies are the link between the product and the market. They cannot be classified as just one service provider. As they provide a bundle of services to make and build a brand.
Advertising agencies first began as space selling agencies. They would buy space in bulk, then sell it and live on the commission gained. Slowly they began to give the client more than just one service. Media began to creep in. And slowly the creative personnel too were made the pillars of the organization. Today advertising agencies give the clients a 360 degree  view of their product.
How does an ad agency function?
First the brief is provided by the client that is brought into the company by the client servicing personnel. The brief is about what the client needs to communicate to his target audience. Target audience is categorized according to their income, consumption, purchasing power etc. Once the target audience for a particular product is identified the strategy to communicate the product is taken on.
The strategies are carefully planned by strategic planners and then communicated to the creative. The creative team then takes on the task on how best to communicate the necessary to the common people. Smart headlines, attractive visuals are then brainstormed among the creative personnel. Finalized ideas are given birth to on paper, which are then presented to the client.
Deliberations, presentations follow in the conference room and the final ad to be released is settled upon. Sometimes rework is demanded, sometimes corrections are given until the ad is finalized. The estimate for media releases as requested is placed before the client. In-depth planning is undertaken for colossal product releases. The media too works on the estimate for days to finally sum up on the release plan that will give the product and the client maximum reach.
On release of the ads, feedback from the client's end is anxiously awaited by the agency. A good response to the ad only elevates the relationship between the client and the agency and stands as a motivator for some more good work.
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ADVERTISING   INTERNS/  TRAINEES.
Advertising interns are typically university juniors and seniors who are genuinely interested in and have an aptitude for advertising. Internships at advertising agencies most commonly fall into one of six areas of expertise: account services, creative, interactive, media, public relations and traffic.
An internship program in account services usually involves fundamental work within account management as well as offering exposure to other facets of the agency. The primary responsibility of this position is to assist account managers. Functions of the account management intern may include:
• Research and analysis: Gathering information regarding industry, competition, customer product or service; as well as presenting findings in verbal/written form with recommendations
• Involvement in internal meetings and, when appropriate, client meetings
• Assisting account services in the management of creative projects
Interns often take part in the internal creative process, where they may be charged with creating and managing a website as well as developing an advertising campaign. Hands on projects such as these help interns learn how strategy and well-developed marketing are essential to a sound advertising and communications plan.
During their internship, the intern will experience the development of an ad, brochure and broadcast or communications project from beginning to end. During the internship, the intern should be exposed to as much as possible within the agency and advertising process
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ADVERTISING   AGENCY   personnel  size.

In small agencies, employees may do both creative and account service work. Larger agencies attract people who specialize in one or the other, and indeed include a number of people in specialized positions: production work, Internet advertising, or research, for example.
IN  LARGE  AGENCIES,  THE  NO.  OF   EMPLOYEES  COULD BE  AROUND  [ 250-300]
IN  MEDIUM  AGENCIES,  THE  NO.  OF   EMPLOYEES  COULD BE  AROUND  [ 150-200]
IN  AVERAGE  AGENCIES,  THE  NO.  OF   EMPLOYEES  COULD BE  AROUND  [ 80-120]
IN   SMALL   AGENCIES,  THE  NO.  OF   EMPLOYEES  COULD BE  AROUND  [ 25-60]
IN   BOUTIQUE  AGENCIES,  THE  NO.  OF   EMPLOYEES  COULD BE  AROUND  [ 10-15]

THESE  DAYS, A  LARGE   CHUNK  OF   SERVICES  ARE  OUTSOURCED
TO   SPECIALIST   FIRMS.

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