How to Shape Human Behavior

Account Manager for Ogilvy, Anne Cerutti has +8 years experience advising and managing advertising teams and financial budget supports.

What’s a misconception clients commonly have about the industry? There’s often a big misunderstand about budget and time needed, especially with online advertising. It’s easy to think that just because the advertising is digital it’s inexpensive and fast, or at least less expensive than television and print advertising. But that is often not the case.

How do you deal with this problem? I need to thoroughly explain why we need the different steps, such as:

• Why we need to do a photoshoot and not just take a photo from Google photos.
• Why we need to pay for professional actors and models instead of just using an unknown person.

For example, when doing an online voice over, we cannot simply use a person from the advertising agency to do the copy or radio spot or appear in the ad campaign for several reasons:

1. Our job is to create successful advertising campaigns, not be represented in them.
2. It’s hard work to speak on radio, etc. and that requires an experienced professional.
3. It’s illegal to use people who aren’t officially represented by a model agency because if every ad campaign did this it would destroy the acting and modeling industries.
4. And finally there’s the question of royalties.

What’s an important lesson you’ve learned? Clients need to focus on 1-2 objectives at a time, with all actions responding to these essential objectives. If the client wants multiple objectives, then advertising efforts won’t  be as effective. 1-2 objectives max.

In today’s market, it can be easy for people to think that they can do an advertising agency’s job as good as well as the ad agency, which can lead to an inequal relationship between client and the ad agency.

What’s your favorite ad campaign?

Advice for someone who wants to do your job? Be diplomatic. Learn how to motivate people. Learn to organize budgets, deadlines, and priorities.

I have a small advertising budget, any advice? On the internet, at the beginning of the project you must build your website to have an organic search (SEO). Have a community manager when you can afford one.