Advertising Agency Departments

When you see all those awesome ads on television, neatly designed creatives in the newspaper or on the billboards then it's not just one person managing the show. There’s a  brigade of creative people at the back end who manage to put up a great show.

Let’s go through the key departments who play a crucial role in the functioning of the agency:

Depending on the size of the agency there is a management team. If it's a small agency then there is a Managing Director and a Financial Director. But if it's a large agency, then there is a whole management team sitting in to manage the functioning of the agency, a Managing Director, Financial Director and respective directors for every department.

Account Servicing/Client Servicing:

Client servicing are the face of an agency. Once a client is on board the daily co-ordination, the follow-ups for the billings are all managed by the Account Servicing Team. Also Account Servicing is responsible taking a brief from the client, coordinating with the team to execute the task as per the brief and then delivering the end result to the client.

Depending on the size of the agency, the hierarchy differs. However, the standard hierarchy as follows: Account Director, Account Manager, Account Executives & Assistant Account Executive.

What are the qualities that you will need to have if you plan to join Account Servicing? Well, you need to be very patient, very convincing. You need to be a good listener and at the same time you need to understand what your client intends to say.

Account Planners:

Account planners do a lot of strategising stuff. Account planners conduct research and dig in some insights which they use to make a creative brief for the creative team who are going to work on the advertising campaign. When the agencies are small in size the role of account planner is usually done by the account executive. But if the agency is large in size, then there is an entire team who sits for Account Planning

Creative Team:

Creative particularly includes the team of the designers and copywriters. It can be said that the copywriters and designers are the driving wheels of an agency. It's the Art Director who heads the team and at time works in sync with the copywriters for the execution of the campaigns. Also there are visualizers who visualize how the campaigns will be like.

Media Team:

Media team is divided into two broad areas, media planners and media buyers. Media planners are the ones who plan strategically where should be the creative placed to gain maximum visibility. Media buyers are the ones who actually buy the inventory for media placement. Media buyers and planners both have to be exceptionally good at numbers and calculations. Media buyers should also be good at negotiation, since they have to finalize the media slots for which the client pays.

Production Team:

Usually the larger agencies are the ones who have the production team. They are basically responsible for the management of the campaigns, managing the budget, setting in the schedules also they work in coordination with the creative and media team. The creative team also communicates with the vendors like the printers, photographers, etc. If the agency is small in size usually the account servicing or the creative team takes care of these duties

In my next blog I will write in detail about the types of the agencies. So stay tuned know more in detail!