WHAT IS THE CRITERIA FOR SELECTING AN INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING

In order to reach a lot of people and potential clients with their products, goods and services, manufacturers and companies have found a way of getting these messages across by various means using advertising as a major strategy. Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services which uses the media with an identifiable sponsor can be described as Advertising.

Over the years, the world has become a global village making international advertising very essential. International advertising requires that one looks for an international advertising agency. An advertising agency or ad agency as is normally referred to can be described as a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its client. Some international advertising agencies are, Ogilvy & Mather which was founded in 1948 by David Ogilvy, as "Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson, & Mather" in Manhattan and AFROMEDIA.

a)      Creativity techniques:  Does the agency use a lot of techniques and procedures to enhance creativity? For example, when they are trying to build or construct a message for the target audience, do they follow a highly structured brainstorming procedure? It is imperative to note that knowledge has increased and the creative needs of people have changed and so an agency that does not have very good creative techniques is not worth hiring.

b)      Legal/ethical guidelines: the Agency that you wish to hire must have certain legal or ethical guidelines that ultimately protect your company, products or services from offending interest groups or even preventing them from staging a boycott of your products. They should also have a written code of ethics that they formally apply to each campaign. For instance, if I want an international advertiser based in the United States of America to promote ‘asaana’ a locally brewed drink in the US, can it be done without them offending anyone?

c)       Capabilities of the team: Because we live in a competitive world, it will be very needful to ascertain  whether the international advertising agency has a capable team with expertise  to handle a product or service which is not familiar to them., finding out whether they have a complete list of clients served who were successful or not.

d)      Competent Research Team: Competence is all about having control of what you do and making it appealing to people. Therefore it should be known whether the advertising agency has a team that knows how to do research appropriately and come out with a comprehensive achievable report based on competence.

e)       Planning techniques: Do they know how to plan a campaign effectively? For example,

do they provide an effective time-line for developing a campaign? Do they consider alternative strategies? Do they have contingency plans? Did they plan this meeting effectively? Much evidence exists that formal planning techniques will improve the performance of an organization. Are they aware of this research and of the recommended procedures.  

In conclusion, if an international advertising agency has these core values then one can rely on it to expertly handle its international advertising needs.