Advertising Agencies

An advertising agency advises clients on the best way to attract customers to their product, and then creates the ‘bait’: an advertisement. It seems simple, but what’s needed is a knowledge of how people buy, and where they look when they want a certain product. You also need an ear for a catchy slogan: the ‘Not happy, Jan!’ TV advertisements gave personal assistants across Australia nightmares about missing the Yellow Pages directory deadline – and was a fine example of what an advertising agency can do.

Not all advertising agencies have the ability to pull together a TVC (TV commercial), and not all clients want that anyway. Some agencies specialise in copywriting for magazine or newspaper display advertisements. A tree-trimmer will probably get more work out of a display ad in the local newspaper than a television commercial. The advertising agency can sit down with him and help him turn his raw ideas into a well-written piece of copy that contains all the information about his service. An advertising agency can also arrange photography if an image is necessary, since agencies have ties to photographers, graphic artists and other technicians.

If it’s decided that a TV commercial is the way forward for a client, an advertising agency usually assigns a team of ‘creatives’ – the people who create the concept. Generally, creatives come in pairs: a copywriter, who writes the words, and an art director, who does the visuals. Once the pair have a script and have story-boarded the commercial, i.e. turned it into a series of images like a comic, a director takes a look and uses her technical knowledge to shoot the commercial, giving it a certain look.

You may think that ‘getting your message out there’ is an easy thing to do. But there are many ways that DIY advertising can come back to haunt you: spending thousands on advertising your childcare services in an area inhabited by single professionals, for example; or simply not knowing the best way to present your product because you are too close to it. An advertising agency brings its expertise and knowledge to work for you.