All advertising agencies have four basic teams and they are:

1. Client Servicing
2. Account Planning/Strategic Planning
3. Creative
4. Production

Client Servicing people are the first point of contact in an agency for the client. They interface between the Client and the other internal teams. Client Servicing people are given briefs by the clients. They understand what the client’s requirement is, objectives of a particular campaign etc and translate it to the Account Planning and Creative teams.

The Account Planning team then comes up with the strategy/plan for the campaign. The brief given by the Client Servicing team is the starting point for the account planners. The plan laid out by the account planners and the brief given by the client servicing people are inputs to the Creative team who translate the client’s brief and account planner’s strategy into a creative consisting of art (visual appeal) and copy (literature).

After the creative duties are done, the production team takes care of the ad shoots typically an audio/video conveying the message put forth by the creative team. Thus the cycle from a brief to an ad goes through the above phases.