Advertising Agency Hierarchy

Your agency’s hierarchy defines your organization’s structure—it groups staff members according to their responsibilities and shows reporting lines, which helps in aligning with strategic goals and improving client collaboration.

Without a well-designed hierarchy, your agency can experience lag times in workflow, which can increase and lead to unhappy clients.

Whether you’re hiring new employees for the first time or taking your team from a boutique operation to a full-service provider, this post will outline the most common hierarchy structures and variations so you can better understand your agency’s hierarchy.

What is an advertising agency hierarchy?

An advertising agency hierarchy is structured to facilitate effective communication, project management, and creative output. While the specific roles and their organization can vary by agency size and type, a general framework can be outlined.

It is structured to facilitate effective communication, project management, and creative output. While the specific roles and their organization can vary by agency size and type, a general framework can be outlined.

It also shows how roles are structured so that everyone knows who is their professional superior. They come in two main varieties, mechanistic and organic:

While mechanistic structures centralize power and create formal relationships between team members, organic structures, on the other hand, allow for cross-divisional collaboration and reduce the “gatekeeper” mentality that can surround division leads and slow process.

High-level positions at an advertising agency

• CEO/managing director: The role is responsible for the overall strategic direction and financial performance of the agency. They make critical business decisions and oversee all operations
• Chief creative officer (CCO): This role includes the big-picture creative vision of the agency, ensuring that all creative outputs align with business goals. The CCO often collaborates closely with the CEO
• Creative director: Responsible for leading the creative team, the Creative Director oversees the development and execution of creative strategies and campaigns, ensuring quality and alignment with client needs

Middle-level positions at an advertising agency

• Account director: They manage specific client accounts and account managers. They ensure that client expectations are met and that projects are delivered on time
• Account Manager: Acts as the primary liaison between clients and the agency. The role manages day-to-day communications, project updates, and client satisfaction
• Media director: They oversee media planning and buying strategies to ensure effective ad placements across various channels

Low-level positions at an advertising agency

• Art director: Focuses on the visual aspects of advertising campaigns, guiding graphic designers and collaborating with copywriters to create cohesive visuals
• Graphic designer: Responsible for creating visual content for advertisements using design software. They work under the guidance of the Art Director
• Copywriter: Creates copy for ads, including slogans and promotional copy, ensuring that messaging aligns with brand strategy

The most common hierarchy organizational charts for agencies

The traditional model

The traditional model has long been the go-to structure for large advertising agencies that offer a variety of services. It tackles the issue of managing numerous employees by centralizing authority, making it clear to whom everyone reports to:

The organization is broken into different divisions, such as creative, production, client services, and finance. Each division is led by a department head, for example, an Advertising Manager or Director of Advertising, and includes all the team members who specialize in that specific field.

While this model brings clarity to the roles and responsibilities, it also silos people off and impedes cross-divisional collaboration. So, it’s not a great fit for agencies that offer several different services to the same client and depend upon constant communication.

The matrix model

The matrix model keeps traditional divisions and division heads but is flexible enough to allow for the formation of cross-divisional teams:

With this model, full-service advertising agencies can meet all of their client’s needs without creating large communication barriers between divisions. It tries to blend the best of both mechanistic and organic hierarchical structures.

However, this creates confusion between whom team members should report to at a given time: the project lead or the division lead.

The pod system

In this system, each pod operates as a small, autonomous unit within the larger agency—made of cross-functional team members who collaborate closely on specific client accounts or projects. This setup allows for a more focused approach to client needs.

A typical pod includes various roles, such as:

• Account manager: Manages client relationships and ensures project alignment with client goals.
• Strategist: Develop strategic plans tailored to the client’s objectives.
• Designer: Responsible for visual aspects and creative design.
• Content specialist/copywriter: Creates written content and messaging for campaigns.

When necessary, the project leads delegate tasks to other team members within the agency.

The main objective of this model is to shorten approval process times, eliminate extraneous senior positions, increase peer accountability, and encourage what Leahy describes as “fast and furious” creativity.

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Variations in hierarchy by agency type

Not every advertising agency will offer all the services that a full-service agency does. What an agency specializes in will influence what organizational structure works best for it.

SEO agencies

While a full-service advertising agency may incorporate SEO into its services, an SEO agency specializes in building a business’s online visibility with services like:

• Website analysis
• Structure optimization
• Content production
• Social media management
• Conversion rate optimization

As such, an SEO agency might only need three main divisions: strategy/project management, technical SEO, and content marketing. A traditional hierarchy model can work for an SEO agency because the services offered are usually specific, and there aren’t as many divisions needed as a full-service ad agency.

Creative agencies

A creative agency usually develops and produces visual products that are used in a client’s existing marketing strategy, including:

• Art direction
• Copywriting
• Branding design
• UX design
• Web design
• Video production

These services require a lot of collaboration. For example, copywriters and ad art designers will need to work together to create a deliverable. Therefore, a matrix model might work best for a creative agency.

Variations in hierarchy by agency size

For agencies with multiple locations

Agencies with more than one location give geographically diverse clients more opportunities for face-to-face interactions. It can also increase your odds of finding top talent.

Your organizational structure with different locations might look like this:

In this model, authority is decentralized into geographic regions. This allows work to happen quickly, but if you’re not careful, a lack of communication between regions can lead to confusion, such as a fragmented brand voice.

For example, if the North American and Asia-Pacific Divisions above both launched a marketing campaign to their local target audience, they should still coordinate with each other to keep the overall messaging and brand cohesive.

For large or full-service agencies

Bigger agencies offer a comprehensive list of services that can fulfill many, if not all, of a client’s marketing and advertising demands, whether they need help designing brand visuals or SEO specialists who can improve their organic search listings.

As such, it makes sense for large agencies to have a department dedicated to account management. Account managers serve as the liaison between the client and any team members in other departments involved in a project.

This improves the client experience by allowing them to develop a relationship with one central point of contact. The account manager is also able to deliver a cohesive message to all departments, reducing the chance for a “he said, she said” situation.

A structure like the matrix model preserves divisional authority while allowing account managers to work with a team comprised of different division members that meets all of a client’s needs.

For small agencies

Team members in small agencies typically wear many hats and have more informal, familiar relationships with their coworkers. Their roles are flexible and change daily, if not hourly.

As such, these agencies are well-positioned to experiment with a more progressive organizational structure like the pod system. Clients can access all team members without being overwhelmed, and team members don’t need to go through an unnecessary gatekeeper like an account manager to avoid causing confusion in communication.

Tips for improving the efficiency of your team’s hierarchy

You can’t rely on an organizational structure to keep your team running smoothly. Here are some tips for developing the right advertising agency hierarchy for your needs and then executing it efficiently.

Establish employee buy-in

If you’re restructuring your agency’s hierarchy, seek the involvement of your managers and staff, not just your top executives or board of directors. Your employees will be the ones who operate within this new organizational structure day in and day out, and they probably have some insight into what will work best.

Be flexible at first

Bob Sanders from Sanders Consulting Group, an organization that helps agencies with their strategic goals, recommends that you approach restructuring as an evolutionary process, one that should be allowed to happen organically.

This allows you to feel out and test new structures before committing to something that doesn’t make sense for your team.

Turn senior people into coaches

Senior team members and executives have reached their status thanks to their considerable knowledge acquired over years of practice. Too often, their expertise is squandered on only approving or signing off on deliverables created by the team members they oversee.

Encouraging senior positions to also act as coaches for their team can not only increase the expertise of more junior employees but also improve the quality of the final product you deliver to clients and prevent mistakes.

So, which advertising agency hierarchy is best?

Despite their reputation for creating silos and stifling collaboration, traditional organizational advertising agency hierarchies still work effectively for agencies that offer specialized services.

Other organic models, however, can create exciting synergy by decreasing formality between team members. While something like the pod system might be too loose for a larger advertising agency, the matrix model shows promise by allowing flexibility while retaining clear lines of authority.

In the end, the best hierarchy model for your agency is the one that helps you keep employee and client retention rates high.

Developing the right advertising agency hierarchy is only part of the battle. To ensure your clients are happy with your advertising work, you need tools that help you achieve big things for them.

This is where Instapage comes in. Find out how the platform helps you with creating, testing, and optimizing your landing pages today, Sign up for an Instapage 14-day free trial.