Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Aleksandar Jovanović, Media Director, Direct Media Srbija
Many times I had the chance to witness that even those who collaborate with us often do not know the inner workings of an originally media agency, that overtime grew into a media system. Not all of our partners are fully aware of that either, and they are actually the ones from whom we had learned a lot over the past fifteen years – first in the part of how to design a system that will support all of their requirements and business processes. Clients shared with us their requirements and experiences from other, foreign markets, and we fulfilled those requirements. Step by step, we introduced new services to offer, and worked on developing the necessary tools. It was by no means easy, but these very situations and our desire to become that which we are today in the advertising world, have helped us to develop a specific system of operation – such that will effectively meet any client’s request. However, this system is therefore quite complex.
We were the first agency in the region that had specialized media planners for each of the different media – television, print, radio and OOH, which is now the standard in the market. With the rise of the Internet as a channel of communication, the Digital sector was created, and after the introduction of the position of Media planner for social networks, we have recently created a position of Media planner for mobile advertising. The reason is quite clear – each planner is a specialist for their media, and knowledge of each media in detail is important in order to successfully meet the client’s objectives, translated into a communication strategy.
We timely realized that we can’t work without the Research sector, which collected and analyzed the data in preparation of strategies. With extensive experience in all industries that advertise in Serbia, Research within Direct Media is now considered one of the leading in the market. With the rise of social media and the increasing number of qualitative research, this sector further expanded by specializing in areas such as consumer behavior, media trends, brand’s market position.
In dealing with communications as one of the most dynamic industries, we managed to create interesting content and make the client’s message interesting for the target group in a sea of other campaigns in the market. Our Creative sector was initially designed as a service for the purposes of adapting client’s creative solutions, but, again at the request of clients, the service expanded to include the development of creative strategies and content, as well as the creative use of media.
At the end of the process, the Media Buying sector is responsible for the realization of campaigns, providing the conditions for each individual client. It is clear that the media buying conditions have always been an important consideration for any client – budgets are limited, and competition is huge. Therefore this sector has always been considered one of our key segments.
The above mentioned creativity in marketing – and as it turned out in shaping the media messages that we could offer – is actually an important part of what we call the Science + ART approach. Its “scientific” or rather “mathematical” part includes econometric analysis of a modern communication strategy. This in other words means that clients want to see the prediction of the effects of an advertising campaign on their brand parameters and sales, which is what our Business Intelligence sector is in charge of.
Finally, in order to be even better in the monitoring of this process, in the conclusion of agreements with the media and clients, as well as in business analysis, last year we formed the Compliance sector, which focuses on the efficiency of business processes and provision of benefits for the system and the client. It is something that big corporations have, for the same reasons, but as an organizational entity it is a rarity in the world of marketing agencies.
In addition to the constant work on self, the evolution that has followed us as a system and as individuals within it, the colleagues from other agencies and media often say that this “military-like” structure of our system is the trademark of Direct Media. We would add to this list of attributes one more: active work on improving the advertising market. Our market has long been proven to be able to keep up with the more developed markets when our profession is concerned. It happened – it really is something to be proud of – when we received the first license of the ISO Standard certificate for the services of development and implementation of communication strategies in our market. This was also made possible by the system in which, for years, the building blocks of different business processes were arranged and shaped into sectors, departments, software and functions.
The greatest success at the end of this 15-year journey is that we were able to respond to the client’s biggest request: to be a partner who can implement a fully completed process of advertising. We owe them gratitude for encouraging us to create a system that – I will say it without false modesty – can be an example to advertisers on what their communication partner needs to look like inside, so that the services they provide could always be at the top level.