Advertising agencies play a massive role in creating and developing advertisements for a variety of large organisations.
Organisations who has sufficient expertise in advertising, may decide to let their in-house team deal with the advertising. On the other hand, a business may choose to use a ‘full-service’ agency. Such agency provides a full advertising service involving creative work, production, media planning and buying. However, a full pay per click advertising service can cost an excessive amount of money if not managed properly. So those businesses that use them tend to have high promotional budgets but limited in-house resources.
Services which advertising agencies offer include:
- Media Buying – Advertising agencies decide on the best advertising options for a particular product/service. The main purpose is to negotiate price and placement. This is to ensure the best possible rates i.e. schedule slots on different television channels and radio stations.
- Advertisement Design – Advertising agencies combine copywriting, graphic design and typography to design an advertisement. This requires the agency to interpret and build on the brand values and use the business’ branding appropriately.
- Advertising Production – Advertising agencies will work with a business to identify a concept for the production of. TV and radio ads, when the business is happy with the script and storyline of the ad, the process of recording and editing then starts.
- Engaging the Target Audience – Advertising agencies can provide a range of services to engage with a business’ target audience e.g. market research.
There are also in-house agencies that work for only one particular organisation. Just unlike full-service agencies, which are large size agencies that deal with all stages of advertising.
EE Promotional Ad Campaign starring Kevin Bacon
EE unveiled their first multi-million pound TV ad campaign. This campaign was by Saatchi & Saatchi starring Hollywood A-lister, Kevin Bacon on 3 November 2012.
On the other hand, EE launched an advertising campaign promoting the launch of EE. The campaign was an introduction of the UK’s first superfast 4G mobile and Fibre Broadband service. Part of the campaign involves redesigning over 700 stores in the UK. The campaign cost EE millions of pounds with advertisements across TV, press, digital and outdoor media. EE’s first TV ad was scheduled on 3 November 2012 during The X Factor on ITV.
A professional advertising agency
Professional advertising agencies, such as Saatchi & Saatchi, know what they are doing so it is beneficial for EE to collaborate with Saatchi & Saatchi in the development of the campaign.
It is Saatchi & Saatchi’s job to help companies like EE to have a successful marketing campaign. Saatchi & Saatchi’s job was to guide EE in the right direction to help them advertise to the best of their abilities. They can give expert advice to EE so that at the end of it they can have a successful ad campaign.
EE’s target audience consists of people who are likely to be of a young/middle age. Also those people who require internet on their phone. Due to their large target audience, the form of media used for EE’s debut was a TV advertisement. The advert initially aired on ITV during The X Factor, a prime-time slot on UK TV, and this choice for media was one in which Saatchi & Saatchi contributed to. The advantage was that millions of viewers would have been watching The X Factor so the advert would have reached a massive audience.
Downsides
On the other hand, the only downside of this is that it is very expensive to advertise during prime time evening shows.
Also EE’s main promotional objective was to raise awareness of EE and its services/features. Therefore, the use of TV advertising will be the most effective method in gaining their target audiences’ attention. Advertising on the TV allows them to reach out to large numbers of people with their message as it is promoted all over the country and as a result EE will become well known.
