Organizing advertising and promotion

Any Integrated marketing communication effort involves various organizations, who with shared roles and responsibilities make the IMC process possible. These participants of the IMC process can be divided in five major categories as shown in the image. Depending on the requirement of the advertiser, all or few of these organizations can be involved in the IMC process.

Every organization needs marketing communication for one or the other purpose. Thus an internal department exists for taking a direct responsibility. The organizations have three options of organizational structure for its needs

1.       Centralized system – Advertising activities are kept alongside other marketing activities like sales, research and planning presided over by the head of marketing.

2.       Decentralized system – Big companies in particular with various brands follow this system. Each brand is separated under a brand manager and the planning, budgeting and evaluation of marketing activities are done separately

3.       In House Agency – Under this system, the advertiser creates a advertising agency owned by the advertiser himself

Many companies turn to advertising agencies for development and execution of their promotion programmes. These AD agencies provide variety of services like full-service, link between the client and advertiser (account service), marketing service or creative service. These agencies are charged based on fee, cost-plus or incentive based agreements. Accountability is built in system by means of evaluation, which can lead to an agency gaining or losing a client. 

Reading: Advertising and Promotion, Belch & Belch.