HOW DO ADVERTISING AGENCIES WORK?
The graphic above shows a typical agency's departments, and roughly how they interact. All advertising agencies are organised along similar lines. A client needs an ad, brochure, poster or a website produced to sell their product, or a logo and stationery designed to make them look good. They contact the agency and brief in their job, which goes through the ad agency's system. It is then produced and distributed to its target audience, and the client is billed for the work. The agency has a number of departments and a Traffic system, or workflow process, that enables it to achieve this.
Of course, this smooth-running organisation exists only in the dreams of ad agency CEOs.
What happens in the real world is this:
CLIENT SERVICE DEPARTMENTThe Client Service Department consists of Account Executives, who are known in the agency as "Suits". They're supposed to understand the client's needs, and give carefully-considered briefs to the Creative Department, based on recommendations by the Strategy Department. They're then supposed to get behind the work and sell it with as few changes as possible, so that the Creative Department doesn't waste man-hours and the agency is profitable. However, they usually just end up being messengers who pass demands and excuses back and forth between the client and the Creative Department. Some suits leave advertising and go into pizza delivery, which requires a similar skill-set. STRATEGIC PLANNINGThe Strategy Department conducts, collects and collates market research about how consumers behave. Based on this precise information, it reaches conclusions about what the client's customers need to hear to convince them to buy the product. But Strategic Planning is superfluous to the actual work, as the Creative Department ignores what they say and does whatever it thinks is best. The Strategy Department is nonetheless important as it pumps out large volumes of facts and figures, which form an impressive amount of documentation. This pads out the agency's presentations, confuses the client and makes them buy the creative work. Strategic Planners talk a lot and are highly paid. CREATIVE DEPARTMENTThe Creative Department is made up of Creative Directors, Art Directors, Copywriters, Graphic Designers, Illustrators (also called Renderers or Visualizers) and Studio Assistants. Their real job is to come up with publicity material which sells the client's products. However, mostly they couldn't care less about the client or their sales figures, because they're solely interested in winning awards. Awards are all about creatives showing other creatives how clever they are. This makes them feel important, and helps to distract these sensitive, artistic, highly talented people from the mundanity of being involved in the economy. Awards are judged by other creatives who think exactly the same way, and who are just as uninterested in the ads achieving what the client payed for. Most creatives lose the battle with reality by age 40 and get jobs in the service industry, as they're not qualified to do anything else. |
PRODUCTION DEPARTMENTSThere are 4 types of Production Departments: Print, TV, Radio and Digital. Print Production people are whipping boys, who turn to alcohol and are offered kickbacks by suppliers. TV Production people try to get employed by their film company suppliers and believe themselves to be important. Some day, somehow, they will produce a Hollywood blockbuster. Radio Production people are less important. Digital Production Departments are made up of computer programmers. No-one else actually understands how computers work, so if they don't feel like doing something they just say it's not possible - everyone believes them and tries to find a better solution. MEDIAThe Media Department decides on which TV and radio stations to broadcast ads, and at what times. They also decide in which newspapers and magazines to publish adverts. They spend most of the client's money. Media people are taken out to lunch a lot by TV stations and publications, and receive gifts. They have the easiest and least stressful jobs in the agency. FINANCENo-one knows what the Finance Department does, or even that it exists, except when there's a problem with their paychecks. TRAFFICTraffic is the most important department in any advertising agency. It runs the agency's operating system, and co-ordinates all the other departments' activities. Without it, all is confusion. Deadlines are missed, money is lost, the agency produces a lower standard of work, the staff kill each other and clients are unhappy. However, the other departments feel they're too busy to have to deal with such minor details. They ignore Traffic. It's just a background annoyance while they're trying to figure out why things are in such a mess.  |