Marketing Communications

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Marketing Communications

Organizination And Management Of Advertising

Agencies And Advertising Departments

5 Organizination And

Management Of

Advertising Agencies And

Advertising Departments

An advertiser must understand an outside agency to be able to make effective use of such agency.
Advertising agencies are organized using three basic structures as follows:

•    Group

•    Department

•    Combination of Group and Department

The type of organizational structure adopted plays an important part in the effectiveness with which
advertising activities take place and in the economy of operation of the agency.

Most companies employ the services of external advertising agencies; some firms also use the services of
external public relations agencies to assist with their communications effort. A company must work closely
with its external agencies if their services are to be used to maximum advantage. To get the best work from
an external agency, it is essential for the advertiser to understand the agency’s organizational structure.

GROUP STRUCTURE

In this type, each account is staffed with its own account executives, copy writers, artists, media specialists
and production men.

These groups of people work on only one account, if the account is big enough; while smaller accounts
may be assigned specialists, the group does not work on all accounts in the agency.

Advantage of the group plan is that people assigned to the account become experts on the product or
service being advertised. This arrangement leads to better advertising for the client because agency
personnel will be better informed on marketing problems, products, distribution channels and promotion
strategies of their clients.

Disadvantage of the group plan is the cost involved in using agency personnel in this way, work load on
different accounts reach the peak at various times, economic utilization of agency personnel requires
their transfer from one account to another to support where the majority of work has to be done. Group
plan is better used on large accounts where its cost can be absorbed.