Creative hot stores, brand agency companies, digital marketing companies, integrated marketing planning companies, marketing consulting companies… can you get it?
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “empty hand” (ID: firesteal13) The author is empty-handed.
Just remember to enter the advertising industry, go to relatives on holidays, I said that I am an advertising company, relatives usually have two kinds of reactions: a suspicion, I am not able to describe all kinds of small The other one asked me about the shop to do the store–because the decorating company in Xiaoxian County really called itself an “advertising company.”
In the advertising and marketing world, there are countless types of companies, dazzling names, advertising companies, brand agencies, media agencies, digital agencies, 4A companies, creative hot stores, interactive companies, planning companies, Marketing company, marketing planning company, brand planning company, communication company, integrated marketing communication company, integrated marketing planning company, consulting company, strategic consulting company, marketing consulting company, design company, public relations company, activity company, production company, film and television advertising company Real estate advertising company…
If you are a business owner and want to pick one of these companies to provide services for yourself, or if you are a newcomer who wants to enter the industry, how do you choose?
1
We start from the basics.
What is the advertising company doing? The answer is obvious, naturally it is advertising.
In the traditional era, the main output of advertising companies was TV commercials (15 seconds, 5 seconds, 30 seconds), print ads (newspapers, magazines, outdoor advertising, terminal extension materials), and a very small number of radio ads. .
Into the Internet era, the advertising company’s output form has more web design, Flash, GIF, microblogging, WeChat long graphic, H5, short video (1-5 minutes), viral video, micro Movies, emoticons, app designs, and more.
This is the main job of the advertising company. It is also the advertising work of the advertising company’s copywriting and art direction (including the designer) to think about, create and design.
But if you want to advertise well and come up with good ideas, we have to answer a few questions first:
1. What is the purpose of advertising in a company?
Is the product advantage? Or sell directly? Is it to increase brand awareness? Or improve the image to win the user’s good feelings? Is it attracting new users to place orders? Still stimulating the repurchase of old users? (This is the most basic question for advertising because it determines how the ad is done)
2. Who is the advertisement for?
Who is the target consumer of the brand? What are their needs and pain points? What is their lifestyle and state of mind? (If you don’t answer this question clearly, the advertisement will not be able to do it. This question involves the company’s marketing strategy.)
3. The basic function of advertising is to convey information to consumers. What information should the advertising work convey to consumers?
is powerful? Still cheap? Is technology leading? Still quality is trustworthy? Is it an expert certification? Or is the product popular?
In particular, consider what advantages and differences do you have compared to your competitors? What are the benefits of the product that consumers value?
(This involves the issue of brand value and product appeals. If you don’t answer this question clearly, you can’t do advertising. To answer this question, you must understand the company’s marketing strategy, competition, brand strategy, etc.)
4. After the ad is made, where is it delivered? What is the media budget of the company?
(Because different media formats will affect the way advertising works. For example, the same is to create a print ad for outdoor use and for magazines. The design is definitely different. Because the outdoor is Absorption experience, people go far and by, so outdoor advertising can not appear so many words, at most one sentence. And magazines are immersive experience, people can read closely, so magazine ads can elaborate product information.) /p>
(The media determines the amount of information and the way in which the content of the advertisement is expressed, and also determines the form of the advertisement itself. If the media budget of the company is only a few million, then it is useless to take a 15 second TVC advertisement, because this is Money is simply not enough to put on TV. Therefore, before advertising, advertisers must understand the media and budget of the company.)
Of course, there are still many questions that the advertising company has to ask before creating the advertising works, but the four questions I think are the most basic and the core. If you don’t answer these 4 questions, you can’t do advertising.
In fact, this is the advertising company’s brief – creative briefing.
Brief is telling the creators of the answers to the above questions. The clearer the Brief is, the more accurate and wonderful the ads can be.
So don’t underestimate the power of this piece of paper. In the advertising company, you can write a brief report, which is actually a good customer and planner.
Okay, now the advertising company is looking for customers with these questions – please answer the above questions, we have to start making ideas.
Customers look at these issues and legislateTwo types –
A type of corporate customer can answer these questions very clearly, and then the advertising company can follow the answers given by the company to be creative.
However, these customers are only a very small number. Most of them are large enterprises with large market scale and good performance, and mature enterprises that have been in the market for many years. Because usually only large companies and mature companies have a clearer strategic plan, they know what they want.
And most customers don’t have an answer to these questions, and they don’t know what they want to be.
Even many customers will ask the following question: “If I know the answer, what am I looking for?”
What are you doing?
Okay, business still has to do, advertising companies have to eat.
The advertising company must first answer these questions and then create an advertising work based on their own answers.
At this time, the advertising company’s job is not only to create creative works, but to help customers develop marketing strategies and brand strategies.
At this time, the professional talents that the advertising company needs are not only responsible for the creative copywriting and art, but also the planners who understand the market and understand the brand.
(David Ike, the originator of brand equity)
So in 1991, when the American brand leader and authoritative scholar David Eck published “Managing Brand Equity” and proposed brand equity theory, the famous advertising company Ogilvy proposed “brand.” The management concept of the housekeeper.
The four words of brand steward tell the company that the advertising company not only wants to create a work, but also helps the company to establish a brand and manage the brand. The advertising company is the brand steward of the company.
The advertising company has become a brand agency.
The emphasis on brand and brand management expands the advertising company’s business scope and influence on customers. Because the brand is one of the most important assets of the company, it is the direct factor affecting sales.
Each advertisement should be created under the guidance of brand strategy. Each advertisement should be a long-term investment in the brand, which should reflect the core value and image of the brand.
Before and after Ogilvy proposed brand stewardThe major 4A advertising companies have successively put forward their own brand management concepts, such as JWT’s all-round brand creation, BHP’s brand essence / roulette, from advertising companies to brand agency companies, advertising industry from creative revolution to professional Strategic company evolution.
At the same time, with the increasing variety of media formats and the advent of the era of information explosion, a time when media and a media have been eaten has passed.
In order to achieve good communication results, it is impossible for a corporate advertisement to take only one TV film and only one print, but it must use a variety of advertising formats in combination with multiple media.
So, how do you mix and combine? Therefore, advertising companies can not only give brand strategy and advertising creative works, but also give communication strategies.
(Father of Integrated Marketing Don E. Schultz)
With the publication of “Integrated Marketing Communication” by Professor Northwest E. Schultz of Northwestern University in 1993, the concept of IMC has become increasingly popular. Therefore, Ogilvy, who proposed the brand stewardship, upgraded the “brand steward” to “360-degree brand steward”.
Emphasize that every point of contact with the consumer must be fully managed to deliver the same message to the user.
In Ogilvy’s brand steward, it includes six aspects of product, image, consumer, access, visual management and business reputation. This is a complete brand strategy + communication strategy. Advertising companies are evolving toward more and more comprehensive service capabilities, providing integrated marketing communication solutions for enterprises.
The advertising company has once again become an integrated marketing communications company.
Today’s mainstream advertising company, which is what we call 4A advertising company, whether it is international 4A or local 4A, basically belongs to this category, namely brand agency company, integrated marketing communication company.
Integrated marketing solutions are noisy, including the presentation of various creative creative works (such as TVC, print, H5, short video, event marketing, Weibo topics, etc.), including various Application and combination of different media forms (such as TV, outdoor, dual micro, vibrato, OTT, video website, vertical website, information flow, SEO, etc.).
The more the PPT of the advertising company is written, the more it will be three or four hundred pages.
In the spirit of division of labor, the agency is divided into brands.Agency companies and media agencies.
The brand agency company is responsible for brand strategy, creative works, communication programs, and media agency companies are responsible for media strategy and media plan execution, media procurement and negotiation.
In fact, the earliest modern advertising companies, when they were founded, were all newspaper publishers, and slowly began to help customers write newspapers, newspapers, and texts, from media agents to advertising creation.
Brand agency companies and media agencies, like a pair of brothers, often need to work closely together to serve customers well, after all, media and content are not separated. Therefore, some large-scale communication groups are owned by both branded companies and media agencies.
The past media agency companies mainly do traditional four major media TVs, outdoor, newspapers and magazines, and radio. With the rise of the Internet, the distribution of Internet media has become more and more important in the marketing budget of corporate customers. As a result, some new media agencies have emerged, which are responsible for the strategy and execution of Internet media. This is the digital agent. the company.
There are some large companies that, depending on the internal requirements for careful division of labor and the financial principles of finding multiple agent services, will separate the traditional media agents from the digital media agents when looking for a media agency, looking for suppliers.
However, traditional media and digital media are not separated and each has its own merits. Instead, they should be integrated and coordinated with each other. Today’s large-scale media agency companies basically do both traditional media and digital media.
This is the backbone of today’s advertising industry, with brand agents + media agents as the backbone of the business, providing customers with brand strategy + advertising creative + media communication integration services.
2
To have the above-mentioned service capabilities at the same time, the requirements for the talent team and comprehensive strength of the advertising company are still very high. Some medium-sized and small-sized advertising companies do not have such comprehensive service capabilities, so they specialize in the parts they are best at.
Any kind of marketing strategy and brand strategy, I specialize in creativity. This is what we call creative hot stores, interactive advertising companies and digital marketing companies.
The creative hot store focuses on video ads, print ads, event marketing, and helps customers do campaigns (phased communication programs).
Interactive advertising companies and digital marketing companies are also creative outputs, but they are more focused on microblogging, WeChat long graphics, H5 and other forms of Internet advertising, which is what we call two micro-shake.
One type is like a public relations company.
Familiar with various media editors, responsible for publishing and retracting, providing public relations services to customers.
One type is like a design company.
Specially responsible for the brandLOGO and VI design companies, and design companies specializing in designing product packaging.
One type is an executive company.
Because advertising companies are usually only responsible for helping customers out of the program, they are not responsible for implementation.
For example, an advertising company is generally only responsible for creative ideas, scripts for video advertisements, and scripts must be turned into pieces. This requires a production company and a post-production company that are responsible for video production. Of course, the advertising company will also send a special person to supervise the entire shooting process. He is also responsible for helping clients find professional directors and other production teams and production companies.
It is also worth mentioning that film and television advertising companies, they are not only responsible for shooting, but also help customers to script, create ideas, and even help customers to do brand strategy, communication programs. But their core output is a TV commercial. This is the film and television advertising company. This type of company also had a tall name in the early years: cultural communication company.
In addition to video advertising executive companies, there are event execution companies that help clients implement various marketing campaigns, conferences, exhibitions, and more.
There is also a category that specializes in an industry that provides more sophisticated integrated marketing services, such as real estate advertising companies.
Real estate advertising is a special existence in China. When China’s property market was hot more than a decade ago, advertisements were casually made and houses were sold. At that time, a large number of creative and stunning classic real estate advertisements were born. Real estate advertising companies flourished in China for a while.
However, real estate is more of a policy-led market. The impact of advertising on consumer demand and consumer decision-making is minimal, and the one-off sale of real estate is not really branded. Therefore, with the downturn of the property market, the real estate advertising industry has also been hit hard, and the situation has gone from bad to worse.
Today, advertising companies in second- and third-tier cities lack large-scale brand customers (large enterprises in second- and third-tier cities, and are usually more willing to invite Beishangguang’s comprehensive brand agency services), and there is a demand for industries that are willing to advertise. Not much, so they usually serve real estate, as well as a small portion of the restaurant industry.
This is the main company of the Chinese advertising industry.
3
In addition to brand strategy, creative communication, and media agency, there is another type of company that strives to extend its reach to customers and provide customers with market planning and marketing solutions. That is 4P.
For example, product strategy, what products should the company focus on? What features are important to develop? How to design the product packaging? How do product lines combine when a company has multiple products? Who is the main selling product? Who is the image product? Who is a profit product? Who is the placeholder product against competitors?
For example, pricing strategy, how should companies price, how to set profits?
For example, channel strategy, in which channels should companies sell their own products, how to develop channels, how to control them? How to attract business, how to stimulate distributionBusiness enthusiasm?
This type of company is a marketing planning company. However, in order to make themselves sound more powerful and taller, they usually call themselves marketing consulting companies and strategic consulting companies.
But what we usually call a consulting company is a company that provides management consulting, financial consulting, and technical consulting like the Big Four and MBB. And companies that provide market strategy consulting.
But now the consulting company has also started to get involved in the advertising industry.
Accord Interactive, a subsidiary of consulting firm Accenture, has become the world’s highest revenue digital agency. Accenture Interactive’s revenue has surpassed Havas, one of the top six advertising communications groups in the world. In the past five years, Accenture Interactive has acquired 22 creative companies, content production companies and digital marketing companies.
The Big Four accounting firms PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte (DTT), KPMG (KPMG), and Ernst & Young (EY) have all entered the digital marketing arena.
Deloit Digital was established in 2012. After acquiring more than a dozen digital marketing companies, the services that can be provided now span strategic, creative, digital marketing, e-commerce, and big data analytics. Deloitte Digital CEO said: “We are the only one-stop company that offers customers integrated user experience, core business operations, innovative technology and ad execution services.”
The boundaries between different companies are becoming more and more blurred. Consulting, marketing planning, creative advertising, media agency, and other different institutions are rapidly converging. Digital marketing will undoubtedly be the future. The main battlefield of the advertising and marketing industry.
After all, we judge a company, what type of company, not how they self-proclaim, but their final output.
If the final slogan is still a slogan, the industry leader/sales lead is far ahead, then it becomes a video or plane, and the customer is going to slap the media. Then you can advertise that you are a strategic consulting company, and it is useless. what.