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Introduction

Background

Advertising is an enormous global business. Annual expenditures on advertising in the United States totals about USD 350 billion, with nearly USD 515 billion spent worldwide. Worldwide advertising expenditure has been growing about 9 to 10 percent/year, with the United States, Great Britain, Asia, and Latin America leading the way. In the scenario of Bangladesh, this expenditure has increased by more than 8 times from the early nineties till date. During the starting of the nineties, the total amount of advertising expenditure was around BDT 500 million, which jumped to almost BDT 1200 million in the year 2000, further increasing to BDT 3900 million for the current year.

There was very little advertising practice in Bangladesh before independence. Due to inadequate industrialization, demand for specialized advertising agencies was very limited. Pioneers in the field such as Bitopi, East Asiatic (now Asiatic), and Interspeed entered the market almost simultaneously in the year 1967. Their clientele comprised of multinational companies like Lever Brothers Bangladesh Ltd., which had started to increase the range of its products. Other advertising companies started operating after independence.

The reasons that are, and will be, contributing to the development of the industry are:

• Increasing amount of MNC operations in Bangladesh.
• Increasing number of local players in almost every sector.
• Increasing number of international advertising networks’ affiliation with local agencies.
• Growing competition and declining monopoly businesses and brands.

Various local agencies are getting affiliated with international advertising networks, such trends introducing huge changes in the local advertising practices.
There is no formal way of tracking of advertising agencies in the country. However, there is an association, known as AAAB (Advertising Agencies Association of Bangladesh), which was formed back in 1977. Currently, 37...