Advertising Process
June 13, 2015
Mr Asad Rizvi, Managing Director of Walter, a division of WPP Marketing Communications, delivered a session on Advertising to the MBAs on June 3, 2015 at the Lahore School.
Asad Rizvi, one of the most senior and well respected Advertising experts in Pakistan, and an old friend of the Lahore School, spoke on the structure and role of advertising as well as on the process of ad-making and the role of an advertising agency.
Asad noted that advertising was meant to persuade and the idea behind a good ad can come from anywhere or anyone – the famous “thanda matlab coca-cola” line came from a peon. Creativity thus had to be discovered.
He explained at length what an Ad Agency was and did – it could be a full service agency, a creative agency or a media agency. An Ad Agency usually had many departments such as the Client Service or Account Management, often staffed by MBAs, who interact with brand managers of the client company – These were the “nucleus” of the Agency and can rise to the top of leadership because of their exposure.
Then there were the Planning Department people who are in the background but collect data on the consumer and do research. It was the Creative Department which generates posters, billboards (Graphics) or writes what you read as magic punch lines (Copy and Concept). Media focused on channels to reach say youth or housewives, and digital was catching up fast these days.
The key to good advertising, Asad asserted, lay in understanding the inner desires of the consumers, turning them into the big idea and then good execution – if the execution was bad, all efforts would go down the drain.
The Ad-making process consisted of asking the client about their timelines, budget, duration of ads, writing the TVC script (idea), specifying format (digital, negative), and delivery. The client and agency agreed on The Ultimate Brief (TUB) which will tell you what the Brand stood for, the Director was finalized and details such as style board, location, look and feel, wardrobe were specified in advance.
Asad pointed out that contrary to what most people think, the business of Ad-making was NOT glamorous but involved a lot of data crunching and hard work. This led to Post Production which included telecine processing, clean ups, animation graphics, voice over and such activities.
Asad responded to a large number of questions, including the relationship between Agency and Client, effect of ad bombardment and payment methods. He in the end emphasized that to become a good ad maker one had to have passion, integrity and the will to work hard.
Labels: Guest Speaker
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 6/13/2015 10:30:00 AM,
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