Running An Advertising Campaign

People included in the advertising campaign

will come from management,

administration, creative, production

and finance.

When a company wants to first sell a product and begin a campaign, there are several routes it can go down. Firstly, however, the companies will need to

discuss and sum up what they can afford, which effects they seek and who they want to target and

how because the cost of advertising can be extremely expensive. The advertiser will then search for an ad agency, chosen carefully though past work with them, or whoever may have impressed them with rival companies recently or they may enquire into several companies and ask them to present a

pitch to convince them to choose their agency.

Step one of the campaign would be briefing. This is because in an ad agency, the creation of the actual ads from the brief is the responsibility of the creative team. A creative team consists of copywriters and art directors who work together to come up with concepts, images and words that will form the core of the campaign. A large agency might have a number of separate teams working under a creative director who not only supervises the various teams but may also work directly on the very important or high profile campaigns.

The second step of the campaign is research, the ad agency needs to learn all it can about the product or service to be advertised, its competition and the target audience. The agency’s info department or library collects and reports surveys and info about the product and the market in which it sells or will sell. For major campaigns, agency's may be instructed to survey consumers. The idea is to figure out what people think about the product area, what attracts them most or turns them away from buying products in this area and what would encourage them to buy.

Step three of the process comes from ideas, copywriters may be asked to come up with slogans, for ads in print, on billboards, in newspapers and in magazines, much importance is places on the headline and first few words.However, my campaign is a filmed advertisement and copywriters would work producing the dialogue, theme or script for television or cinema. At the same time the art director is working to create visual ideas, with the increased use of technology, many ads involve the manipulation of images and special effects. The final work may be put together by an outside company, but the team led by the art director has to work out in advance what can and cannot be achieved, and plan what exactly they want to see.

Step four is visuals, the art director and graphic designers will prepare a layout of the ad if it is to be printed – however,

because like mine, the advertisement may be in television or film, storyboards are prepared. If these and the overall ad are

approved, they oversee the filming of the ad, usually by an outside production company. They may also contact actors or models and supervise photo shoots. Throughout the creative process, the team rely on advice from the account exec, the

production department and the agency’s info department.

Step five of the campaign is testing, where there will be rounds of testing on consumers in set up focus groups. Approval from the advertiser is also needed. During this period, many changes may occur and it can be a stressful time in an agency. Testing is a crucial and one of the most important steps in developing a campaign. Some ideas may seem great to the creator, but may receive highly negative reactions from the public.

Step six is the media. A Media planner will gather information on the publics viewing, reading and internet

habits. They look at and report on the content of different media to help decide which will be most suitable for each

particular campaign. Some may also calculate the numbers and types of people reached by different media, and how

often they are reached, media planning calls for an expert knowledge of the media available, and strong contacts in

the industry.

The seventh step is the campaign launch. Once it is launched, ad agencies may continue to work with advertisers to try to measure how the campaign is performing. The quality and timings of ads are checked. Audience figures are measured using the readership numbers or sales of magazines or newspapers, or the ratings of the TV programmes in which the ads appeared. There is a type of research called the ‘’next-day recall’ which is where people are surveyed about weather they remember an ad, and if so, what they felt about it and the product being advertised. News media may also be scoured to see how much additional publicity or comments have been attracted. If the advertiser is unhappy with the response of the campaign it may be altered.