• 29
  Nov 2022

• The Umbrella of Opportunities!

  
  

  Ms. Aditi Gosalia | Mass Media

When you think of a brand, what comes to your mind? Loreal? Adidas? Netflix? Cadbury?

These companies have spent millions of rupees and thousands hours of hard work for their names to pop into our heads. That's what advertising is all about!

There have been a lot of prominent marketing models and one of them being the 4P's - product, price, place and promotions. The 4P's form the base of the strategy you create to get your brand message to your audiences - Right audiences, Right message, Right time, High on ROI and Low on cost.

A great question would be, "How do I get the best from my brand?" A lot has changed in the world of advertising in the last decade. But one thing still remains the same - A great idea, executed brilliantly can change the fortune of your brand.

Brands need their messages to reach the audiences appropriately, which will ultimately help their revenue streams grow. There are agencies in multiples working on brand promotions and are in constant search of fresh talent and perspectives to contribute to the communication business in various capacities.

There are 360-degree advertising agencies which function as full-service agencies, with everything under one roof type. Also there are independent media, creative, digital marketing, outdoor, events and pr agencies which caters to the specific services for brands.

Let us broadly understand the prominent job roles in an advertising agency:

Say for instance, Mr. A is the brand manager at KFC and has been asked to plan out for a 10% increase in revenues this financial year. He is to look out for an advertising agency to aid in achieving his business goal.

Mr. A will share the business brief and invite a shortlisted six best-suited advertising agencies for a pitch plan of how they will make the business goal a success.

The first to come in contact with Mr. A is the client servicing or account management team of the advertising agency.

The Account Management (Client / Brand Services) team has two major roles including identifying and pitching new business for the agency and handling the advertising cycle for the brands on board. This means you as a client servicing executive will handle the entire communication & coordination with the brand (in this case Mr. A) and with different teams within your agency to get the work done as per the clients brief.

Planning / Strategy - Based on the brief received from the client, this team is responsible for creating the pitch deck and brand plan for the client/brand. This means you as a strategist will research, ideate, number crunch and come up with a plan to match the business goal of the brand.

You will also contribute to the execution bit, monitor progress and work on alternative strategies if the progress is not as desired.

Creative Solutions - As a creative team member you will be involved in copywriting. Here you will ideate captions for different ad formats and churn out creative and impactful marketing copies for the brand keeping in mind the plan created by the strategy team to meet the business goal of the brand. The art team or visualisers will work on the look, feel and aesthetics of the promotion materials - logos, creatives, banners, posters etc. This function works hand in hand with the strategy.

Media Services - As a media planner, you will work hand in hand with the strategy team to identify and plan the media vehicles on which the brand needs to be promoted and the commercials involved. This means you suggest an action on whether KFC should advertise on TV / Print / Radio / Outdoor or Digital along with duration, tenure, frequency and money.

Publicity Services - As a PR person your role will involve creating and executing pitch-in plans for brand engagements in various events & occurrences to churn out the Public Relations (PR) tables. In this case, keeping KFC and its updates in the news.

Integrated Services - The team mainly looks at opportunities for the brand to be integrated into different short and long-story formats. In this case, you will pitch KFC to different TV shows / Web series or iFilms. The role calls for different avenues to increase brand awareness and reinforcement.

Ad films and Corporate films play a huge role in the advertising of a brand. At times the advertising agency has its inbuilt production team or they look at outsourcing the project to a production house. The production house works on producing and packaging the end-to-end TVC keeping the client and strategy brief as a base.

Sounds interesting right?

Yes, it is!

Advertising as a profession is huge. It cuts over brands, products, services and is deployed across mediums to be brought to a consumer's table.

Thinking of Advertising and Communication as a career option? To understand more and for a detailed career counselling session, connect with MET Institute of Mass Media.