Every company wants that the product it makes appeals to the
consumer and enters the evoked set of the consumer. For this to occur every
firm needs to develop a comprehensive advertising and promotion campaign. There
are many parties that take part in the development of any such program. Such
parties can be from within the organization as well as from outside the firm.
The development, execution and administration of an advertising and promotion
program is a tricky and lengthy job which needs to be managed at every stage.
This is the reason why this process of developing an Integrated Marketing
communication includes participation from advertiser (client agency), ad
agencies, media agencies, specialized marketing communication firms and
providers of collateral services. Firms
use three types of system to organize themselves internally for any
communications campaign. The first is the centralized system in which
advertisement is also treated as a different vertical under marketing like
market research, sales etc. headed by a single person for every brand that
company has. The advantage of such system is lower personnel requirement and
more top management involvement whereas the disadvantages are lower involvement
with the overall marketing goals and longer response times. The decentralized
is followed by companies like P&G where everything about a brand starting
from advertisement and promotion to sales is managed by a brand manager. The
advantages of such system are concentrated managerial attention and more rapid
response to problems whereas the disadvantages include ineffective decision
making, internal conflicts and lack of authority. Many firms have in-house
advertising agency which offers the advantage of being cost effective, control
and increased coordination but have the disadvantage of lacking experience,
objectivity and flexibility. Many firms use advertising firms to develop and
execute their communication program. This type of agencies can take up several
of forms such as full service agencies, creative boutiques and media buying
houses. These type
of firms offer their clients a full range of marketing, communications, and
promotions services, including planning, creating, and producing the
advertising; performing research; and selecting media. A creative boutique is
an agency that provides only creative services. These specialized companies
have developed in response to some clients ‘desires to use only the creative
talent of an outside provider while maintaining the other functions internally.
The client may seek outside creative talent because it believes an extra
creative effort is required or because its own employees do not have sufficient
skills in this regard. Media buying services are independent companies that
specialize in the buying of media, particularly radio and television time.
There are different types through which agency can be charged. They are
commission systems, percentage charges and fee and cost based system. Recently
Agencies are being evaluated on both financial and qualitative aspects, and
some clients are using incentive-based compensation systems that tie agency
compensation to performance measures such as sales and market share. Now
marketing has taken a very integrated approach where apart from mass media
there are several other techniques being developed to woo the customer. As a
reason of this apart from using ad agencies firms are using the services of
other specialist service providers such as direct marketing agencies, sales and
promotion agencies, public relation firms and interactive agencies. Now it
depends upon a marketer whether he wants to employ different agencies
specializing in different activities or he wants that the integrated marketing
communication be developed by a single ad agency which provides all these
service under one roof. Recent studies have found that most marketers believe
it is their responsibility, not the ad agencies, to set strategy for and
coordinate IMC campaigns. The lack of a broad perspective and specialized
skills in non-advertising areas is seen as the major barrier to agencies’
increased involvement in integrated marketing communications.
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