Ryan Sperry, a SUNY Oswego Alumni, gave an extensive presentation on his current employer, Butler Till Agency. Butler Till Agency is an advertising agency where Sperry practices digital media buying and digital media campaign. Sperry first shed light on the early beginnings of the agency as well as some current facts.
Butler Till began as a media and communication agency started between to women. The company is completely employee owned, meaning everyone has a stake in the company with quality ownership, retirement benefits and the benefit of not paying taxes. The company is currently located in Rochester, NY with a second office in Morristown NJ. The agency works to serve clients and market across the U.S.
After a quick run-through of the background history and current details of the agency, Sperry gave us a more detailed look into his daily job routines. He first gave the class a quick vocabulary lesson on the key terms you need to know in this business. This was one of my favorite parts of presentation as there were so many terms I felt I didn’t understand and was confused as to why I hadn’t learned them already through my courses. Surprisingly, Sperry noted that a majority of these terms were taught to him once he began working there.
Many of the terms we learned were frequency, CTR (click through rate), CPM (Cost per million impressions, CPC (Cost per click), CPA (cost per acquisition. Each of these terms all have to do with the analytics you may find on Twitter or Facebook. But these are the terms Sperry uses on a daily to keep track of ads. These terms are what helps him to see if people are taking notice and clicking on the advertisements while also checking in on how it is costing the agency.
When working with a client Sperry must go through certain steps to achieve the highest and successful goal. First Sperry goes through the “input” stage where he accesses what the client is trying to accomplish whether it be awareness or a direct response. He also considers how this campaign will be measured through KPI’s. Once he gives a complete brief through his input stage he must also make sure that every plan or sentence said must be measurable to show a form of results as to whether it is working or not. His brief also includes a consumer profile that is based off data that the agency or Sperry himself researches. This consumer profile will have quantitative data, qualitative data, a media landscape, geographical personalities, brand and competitor indices.
Once the consumer profile has been completed Sperry moves on to the next step which is researching the audience. By researching the audience Sperry is able to understand the demographics in which who will be more likely to buy the product or service of the client Sperry creates the ads for. When a target audience has been set in place he moves on to the strategy planning which means knowing where the ads will be placed and if it will have a cost. The various places ads pop up are print, television, radio, mobile, magazines, cinema, outdoor, banners, direct mail, and SEM. These are considered paid spots for ads the next is finding the tactic in which the ads will show up in these specific places. For example, if it is an ad that will be placed on a phone it will have pop up adds on apps or mobile sites.
Once that has all been completed the campaign is set in motion but is measurable while it is active to the public. Sperry will retarget the audience and see how well the campaign went. All in all this was a very informative presentation that I feel lucky to have attended. I learned many key terms and phrases that are necessary in the public relations field. Sperry gave a good presentation and seemed a little nervous. His only disadvantage was sharing information on the internship with Butler Till because he lacked the information most students asked such as how long the internship was, when it began, and other information.
Yesenia Torres // Portfolio 