Saturday 9 January 2010

This blog has now moved

This blog has now moved to www.forum.spotlightideas.co.uk

Thursday 5 June 2008

Online Media Planning and Buying Courses 2008

In case anyone is interested in doing some formal training in online media planning and buying the following courses organized by e-consultancy might be of some value to you:

Online Media Planning and Buying - London Seminar - September
Online Media Planning and Buying - Manchester Seminar - September
Online Media Planning and Buying - London Seminar - November


Who is the courses aimed at:
The course is described as being an 'intermediate-level course' designed for professionals who want to acquire customers online as well as for building up brand awareness - for people such as account handlers, brand managers, digital marketing managers, and so on.

The course covers topics such as:
understanding the scope and tools of online advertising; how to develop online advertising strategies; analytics and tracking; and more. The course, also, looks at how the internet differs from other marketing channels; audience behaviour; who is spening and on what; and more (for a full list of details, as well as for more information about the course in general please go to: e-consultancy)

Sunday 30 December 2007

Advertising Jobs

The following is a brief overview of the types of roles available for graduates looking for jobs in advertising.

Account Handler Jobs
The account handler is a sort of project leader - the project, in the case of the advertising agency, being the campaign. The account handler ensures that the client is satisfied throughout the course of the campaign. But it is also the job of the account handler to develop a long-term relationship with the client. Account handlers must be good with people, negotiating, all forms of communication, disciplined, good at time keeping, enthusiastic, persistent and energetic.

Account Planner Jobs
Account Planning is representing the consumer in an advertising campaign. The account planner must find something that differentiates the brand to competitor brands and that will offer a real benefit to the customer. Account planners must be lateral-minded, strategic-minded, excellent at research (in most cases qualitative research), good at communicating ideas and strategies, and more.

Copywriter and Art Director Jobs
The account planner approaches the copywriter and art director with a creative brief (containing the 'big idea' for a campaign). The copywriter and art director must base their creative concept around this. Although the copywriter specializes, obviously, in copywriting, and the art director in visualizing, in reality they both often wander into each other's territory. Copywriters and Art Directors normally work together in teams of two, and will often arrive and leave an advertising agency, as a team.

Production
Production are responsible for the finished look and quality of the finished products (whatever media that may be).

Media planners and buyers are often employed by advertising agencies, working, closely, alongside the account planner (the account planner and the media planner overlap, very much, in their focus on consumer behaviour, creative thinking, and so on), as well as others. Media planning is now very much embedded in the new types of media available today. New media (internet, mobiles, digital TV, digital singnage), relative to traditional media, is a complicated business. It is complicated because of all the different ways these types of media can be used to carry out advertising. And it is also complicated because of the variety of consumer groups within the broad spectrum of new media. Therefore you need different sorts of people in advertising with different (and similar skills) coming together to offer an overall, integrated package for the client.

Media planners and buyers can also be found outside advertising agencies. But at the end of the day, graduates looking for media planer and media buyer jobs need to be aware that working closely with people inside advertising agencies, and knowing how advertising agencies work, and the whole process that goes into the creation of a campaign, is something that media planners and media buyers have to become familiar with, and knowledgeable of.

New Advertising Job Board.

The Power of Viral Marketing

Firstly, what is viral marketing?
Viral marketing involves the forwarding from friend-to-friend / colleague-to-colleague of emails (normally with with funny or eye-catching video clips) or the sharing of clips on video sharing sites, with the name of a brand appearing somewhere in the clip or email.
Viral marketing is a very useful tool for the media planner in that the email or clip takes on a life of its own as it gets passed on word-to-mouth or, rather, computer to computer. It is the 'word of mouth' or free publicity that is the key behind viral marketing.

Viral marketing is a really good example of how knowing your audience and knowing the way social networking on the internet is very important in the world of advertising today. This is the kind of thing that the media planner (or digital media planner) working in an advertising agency should be looking at and thinking about as a really useful tool in media planning, or rather, as something that is tied up with media planning. 'Advertising agency' because this is where the media planner is able to work most closely with the account planner, the account handler, the copywriter and art director behind a campaign. This is also a good example of the importance of integration in advertising. As well as a good example of the power of digital media today.

How Important are Blogs as an Advertising Platform for Media Planners?

The problem with blogs is that there are millions of them. How many blogs have you come across that seem to have run out of steam after a just a few posts? How many blogs contain poor quality content, are poorly put together, and, so on? As a media planner / media buyer you don't want to be associating your client's advertising with rubbish.
But the other side of the coin is that there are a lot of very good blogs out there too. Blogs that are written with real professionalism and enthusiasm. Blogs that offer the media planner (/ media buyer) good quality, traffic. The problem for the media planner is the time it takes to look, and research, for the right blogs. It's not easy. But if the media does his (/her research) well there are great opportunities to be enjoyed.

Media Buyer Jobs - What Do You Need to Get Into Media Buying ?

For graduates looking for media buyer jobs, here are a few guidelines.

- Try and get some sales experience under your belt. Media buying is about getting the best value for media advertising space or slots. So some sales experience would be a great asset.

- There is no point in buying media space or slots if what you buy turns out to be a dud for your client. If you are starting off in media buying then you will most likely have to do media planning as well. Media planning involves understanding the audience as well as being being lateral-minded, good at research and numbers, strategic-minded and more. You can pick up some of these skills by research on the internet, by networking and getting to meet people who work in media planning, by reading books, but above all, by doing some work experience for a media or advertising agency that has media planning / buying as one of its disciplines.

- It is also important to learn something about the world of digital media planning and buying and new media, in general. Even if the company, you are applying to for a job, is still heavily focused on traditional media, knowing about, and being interested, in new media will demonstrate commitment and interest to media buying.

- You will need to research, carefully, each of the companies you apply to for media buying jobs. Are they more focused on traditional or new media? What sort of clients do they have? How are they different from other companies? And so on.

What is Media Buying?

Media buying is about the purchasing of media advertising space or slots (in both traditional as well as new media).
For people starting off in this area of media, media buying will often be combined with media planning (understanding who the audience is, understanding the different types of media options available and their suitability or relevancy to a particular brand, and so on).

The rise of digital media has made the task for media buying that much greater. When media buyers only (relative to what we now have in new media) had to deal with TV, radio and print, it was much easier to get to grips with the technology and the people who worked in these areas of traditional media. But with new media things are very different. The spaces and slots for advertising are far more widely dispersed and it is much more difficult to get to know the people behind them, and to build up working relationships, and so on.

Media buyers are employed in the following sorts of organizations: in general media agencies (that carry out media planning, media buying, sales, marketing and so on); in agencies focused on digital media; as well as in both traditional and integrated advertising agencies.