My limited experience buying ads...

While working as an Assistant Account Executive in Ogilvy & Mather Mexico, we handled the advertising campaign for Cottonelle, made by Kimberly Clark. The selection of media was critical to ensure that TV/Radio spots and print ads reached the target audience. I attended various meetings with the Media Buyer and remember feeling overwhelmed with the costs and complexity of the process. Fortunately, they were experts in the subject and as a result we achieved high ratings with Nielsen.

Years later, while working for an International Relocation/Immigration firm based in the US, I was asked to design and develop the content for two ads to be printed in the major newspaper in Madrid-Spain announcing the upcoming opening of a new office in that country as well as job posting for local attorneys, immigration consultants and an IT support technician. Initially, I tried to establish contact with the newspaper via email to avoid expensive long distance charges since Skype was not an option in those days. Soon I realized that I was not getting any responses so I picked up the phone and contacted the “classified” section. It took several attempts to transfer my call, waiting on hold, being disconnected before I could finally speak to the person responsible for ads. Then, we began the negotiations and signed the required paperwork. My request was to run the ads on Sunday for the following two weeks. I liaised with my contacts in Madrid and realized that the ads had not been ran that Sunday. On Monday morning I contacted the paper to complain and was told that it was a mistake on their end and that the ad was going to run the following weekends and we will get an additional weekend at no charge.

That ended up working to our advantage since the following weekend the International Relocation Conference was being held in Spain and our ads were visible to key players in the Industry. The response to the job postings was overwhelming and in just a few days, we found qualified candidates for all the positions! Overall, the ads were a success and I was glad for the opportunity to handle the process.