The Functions of Advertising Departments

Each advertising department has a specific function or assignment. Once one department has completed its work, it hands off the completed assignment to the next department in the advertising process until the ad campaign is completed. The first department that becomes involved in an advertising campaign is the research department.

Advertising agencies employ research for both strategic and evaluative purposes. Strategic research enables the agency to better understand how consumers use a product or service and how they regard the product or service. Strategic research also determines the types of people most likely to buy the product. That group of people is called the target market. Advertisers have limited budgets so knowing who is most likely to buy a particular product helps them spend their advertising budget more efficiently. Evaluative research is used after the advertising has run and seeks to determine how well consumers remember the advertising message and how persuasive it was. Evaluative research is expensive, and as a result, many advertisers do not employ it. Instead, they try to measure the advertising's effectiveness by analyzing sales results. Agencies use both qualitative (for example, open-ended questions) and quantitative research methods (for example, close-ended questions in which answers are selected from a set list).

Media buying. Once the target audience has been identified, an agency's media department determines the most effective way of delivering the message to that target. The media planner is the person who decides which media will be used. The media planner must consider three factors: (1) the number of people to be exposed to the message, known as the reach, (2) the number of times each person needs to be exposed to the message in order to remember it, known as the frequency, and (3) the costs.

The media planner wants to reach the largest possible percentage of the target audience. To accomplish that goal, the media planner must employ the media that have audiences closely resembling the target audience. If the target is very broad, such as the national market for medium-priced automobiles, the media planner will probably select network television, which has a broad reach. If the target is more narrow and specialized, then the media that reach a more specialized audience, such as magazines, would be selected. Moreover, since not all members of the narrow target audience read the same magazines, the media planner might employ a range of magazines to reach a larger percentage of the intended consumer. The media planner must also determine how frequently the advertising should run in each medium. Frequency is important because repetition helps the consumer remember both the product and the advertising message.

Often an advertising campaign will employ many types of media. For example, to help advertise a medium-priced automobile, the ad campaign may consist initially of national television advertising to raise brand awareness, followed by local newspaper and radio advertising to reinforce the message and to direct consumers to a special sale at a local dealer.

Creative work. Once the types of media have been determined, the agency's creative department develops the presentation of the ads. The principal figures in the creative department are the copywriter and the art director. The copywriter is the person who writes the advertising message. The art director is the person who oversees the design of the ad. The copywriter and the art director work together to find creative ways to deliver the message that research found would have the greatest appeal to the target audience.

The creative team begins by familiarizing itself with the product and the research. Often the creative team will "kick around ideas" or “brainstorm,” a process in which one idea is allowed to stimulate another without reaching a decision about whether any of the ideas are valid. Such free association often leads to unexpected approaches that might never have resulted from more logical thinking.

Once the brainstorming has produced a wide range of ideas, the team then evaluates the various proposals and selects the best to present to the client. For example, if the team selects an idea for a television commercial, they present the idea to the client as a storyboard. The storyboard consists of a sequence of drawings indicating how the TV commercial's story or action will unfold. Or the team may design print ads for the client as layouts in which the various elements—the headline, photograph or illustration, and body copy—will appear as intended for publication in a magazine or newspaper.

Print ads and television commercials use a variety of techniques to deliver their messages. Testimonials and endorsements can lend both prestige and credibility to a product. Seeing an athletic superstar, for example, endorse a particular brand of athletic shoe makes the brand seem more prestigious and suggests that it must be good because a professional uses it. Superiority is also often demonstrated through product comparisons – for example, by showing that one brand of paper towels absorbs more spilled liquid than another or that in consumer taste tests one beverage is preferred over another. But because more and more competing products are virtually identical to one another, advertisers frequently use image advertising to distinguish their products. Image advertising surrounds the product with a "halo of positive associations" by using the same character or theme year after year.

Most advertising appeals to people’s emotions, particularly the emotional needs for love and belonging, prestige and self-esteem. Manufacturers of luxury and fashion products, for example, frequently appeal to the desire for esteem and prestige. Advertising for a line of clothing, such as Ralph Lauren’s Polo clothes, may associate the product with the lifestyle of wealthy landowners. Those who buy the clothing purchase it, in part, because they want to be identified with that prestigious lifestyle. Makers of personal care products, on the other hand, often suggest that buying their products will enable consumers to experience love and acceptance. Advertising for perfume or cologne conveys the message that the product makes users more sexually attractive. Personal care products such as breath mints and dandruff shampoos, on the other hand, usually play upon consumers’ fears and dramatize the rejection that results from failing to use the product. The implication is that product usage brings love and acceptance.

Production. Art directors and copywriters create the concepts behind the ads, but they do not literally make the advertising. Making the ads is the job of the production department. In print advertising, the art director works with the print production manager to hire a photographer or illustrator and then supervises the work. Once the photograph has been taken or the illustration completed, the image is scanned into a computer and placed in the proper position. The art director also selects typefaces for the headline and body copy and then, using the computer, correctly positions the headline and body copy. Once all the elements are in place, the computer file is sent to the newspaper or magazine in which the ad will run. The publication then prints the ad directly from the computer file.

After a client approves a television storyboard, the creative team works with the broadcast producer to hire a director for the commercial. In consultation with the agency and the client, the director selects the actors who will appear in the commercial. The director also hires the crew, including the camera and sound people who will film and record the commercial. After the commercial has been filmed, the creative team works with an editor to put the commercial's various scenes together. When that task is completed, the copywriter and art director supervise the addition of music and sound effects. Once the ad is completed, numerous videotape copies called dubs are made. A dub is then sent to each television station that will air the commercial.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 1020