Advertising

The advertising industry’s primary focus is to create, revamp, and promote brands, with an aim toward increasing product sales, improving clients' revenue, and also enhancing the perception customers have of companies and their brands. David Ogilvy, who helped build brands such as Dove, Maxwell House, and IBM, defined a brand as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised.”

Agencies use a variety of tools to give brands substance and personality. They make use of network television for advertising national brands. From prime-time shows to news, sports, and children’s shows, advertisers can match the program’s demographics to the target audience for the product or service. In spot television, advertisers buy advertising time on a market-by-market basis. For example, if a brand is new to a geographic area or is only offered in a few markets, it may need that extra branding push only in certain locations rather than across the country or worldwide.

Cable television provides programs for “narrowcasting”—targeted to specific demographics or interests—that give advertisers direct reach to specific consumers, minimizing wasted audience (those who fall outside of the demographic or interest group). Print advertising enables advertisers to speak at length about the products. Ads with longer content are placed in consumer magazines, which focus on certain subjects, trade magazines (for professionals in particular industries), and newspapers. Other conduits for advertisers include radio, which is divided into network and spot (local) like TV, and out-of-home ads, which range from billboards and bus signs to kiosks and enormous signs in places like Times Square. There’s also transit advertising, where ads are placed in or on public vehicles such as subways, buses, and commuter trains.

Advertisers also provide clients with online advertising services, including paid search and contextual advertising. With paid search, which is also known as search engine marketing (SEM), advertisers help clients gain more online traffic through paid ads on search engines. These services are usually sold on a cost-per-click or pay-per-click basis. This can be seen firsthand by opening a search engine such as Google or Bing and typing in the search word “advertising.” Ads move to the top due to the number of clicks they receive: the more clicks, the higher the visibility. The ads with links to companies' and products' Web sites that appear at top are optimal for the most viewers and clicks, which is why this is known as search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines like Google and Bing get paid this way. With contextual advertising, also known as in-text advertising, the ad content syncs directly to the Web page content that the user is viewing. For instance, while on a cooking Web site reading a recipe for an Italian dish, an ad pops up about a special deal on a Tuscany culinary tour—that’s contextual advertising.

Agencies build new brands or revive preexisting ones by first looking at the product, its function, and its name. They study and understand customers’ purchasing behavior, which means learning about customers’ perceptions of the product, its reputation, and the level of trust they have in the product and brand. For example, customers may stick to certain brands and products for many years because that is their family tradition, going back generations. Or, they may buy something because they want to experience the glamour they see in the print ads or TV commercials for that particular item. The advertising industry gives emotion to the products by giving people stories they can connect and/or aspire to. Consumers buy because they anticipate the rewarding experience they see in the ads, and also because the products or services align with their specific needs and personal values.

Full-service advertising agencies provide a range of services under one roof, such as marketing strategy development, ad creation, media planning, media buying, account planning and research, and production. The focus is on advertising. Agencies can provide all of these services as one package, or clients have the option to contract with separate agencies for separate purposes; for example, they could hire one agency for creative, another for media planning, and still others for non-advertising services such as direct response mailing and public relations. According to Insider Intelligence, the leading agencies are WPP (London), Omnicom Group (New York), Publicis Groupe (Paris), Accenture Interactive (Dublin), Interpublic Group of Cos. (New York), Dentsu Inc. (Minato City, Tokyo), Deloitte Digital (New York), and PwC Digital Services (Hallandale Beach, Florida).

Creative boutiques offer fewer, and more specific, services in a less corporate environment. Copywriters and art directors with years of experience and established reputations leave full-service agencies to start and run these small, creative agencies. They provide clients with fresh, alternative approaches to campaigns and brands at rates that are generally lower than at full-service agencies. Holding companies also spin off new boutique agencies to create campaigns and breathe new life into brands. For instance, full-service company WPP had its agencies (e.g., JWT, Mindshare, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, Wunderman, and Young & Rubicam), under the name Team Detroit, handling the Lincoln car account for years. In 2016, WPP rebranded Team Detroit, combining it with two other teams, and it is now known as Global Team Blue. This group is now dedicated to working on Ford car accounts, and has offices around the world.

The television show Mad Men gives a good idea of how sleek ad agencies looked back in the 1960s. That attitude toward office design and form and function continues in agencies to this day. A large part of the business of advertising is pitching to clients, and first impressions mean a lot, particularly when trying to win a customer over. Clean, organized, creatively designed, and inviting work spaces are what prospective clients want to experience.

Advertising professionals usually work in offices that have conference rooms, full kitchens (often with coffee machines and free coffee, vending machines, dishware, dishwashing machines, and the like), screening rooms, design studios, and more. Some agencies have on-site gyms, children’s daycare, employee cafeterias, rooftop bars, and games (like pool tables and foosball) to help employees relax and free their creative juices. International agency TBWA\Chiat\Day’s setup is a good example of this: They know the importance of play and have surfboards for conference tables and a basketball court in the lobby. This “West Coast” theme was Chiat\Day’s setup back in the early 1990s. The theme continued after the 1995 merger with TBWA, and has since expanded to New York City and other markets. In addition, in the early 1990s, Chiat\Day hired well-known architect Frank Gehry to design its “Binoculars Building”—a building in the shape of binoculars—in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Google now occupies the building. Advertising agencies are not only pioneers in office design, but also in bringing new energy and creativity to neighborhoods, which often leads to the renewal of those areas.

Individual work spaces vary depending on the job level and the company. Some agencies have open floor plans, where everyone can see (and hear) each other. The transparency is meant to create worker equality and ease communication. In more traditional setups, managers and more senior executives are usually given the offices with doors and windows. Junior executives, assistants, and interns typically work in the cubicles situated outside of the offices and in the center of the floor plan. Many advertising agencies also have flexible work schedules, with opportunities for employees to work remotely for a specific number of days. Since the pandemic, advertising agencies have recognized that employees can continue to be productive on certain projects while working from home and other locations outside of the office.