Who
Are We?

AJ is a full service Direct Response advertising agency based in the beautiful city of Bath. We're unique in terms of the cyclical and structured process in the way we work. Starting with initial analysis then developing responsive creative through to testing a multitude of different ideas. We are also one of the leading late space buyers in the UK and in difficult economic times you need to think smarter to make your media budget work harder. That's why AJ's media trading floor source unbeatable daily deals and late space offers from newspapers, magazines and television stations for all our clients. The result is better prices and far more opportunities to increase response and reduce cost.

Different
How?

Anybody can say they’re different, but we can actually prove it.  Nearly every time we meet a new prospect we’re told their existing agency doesn’t work the way we do.  With many years experience in Direct Response, we understand the need to be accountable and that everything has to deliver a measurable result. In fact, we’re totally results driven.

We also never give up. We never simply blame the market, red tape, product or title for lack of response and come up with new ideas to ensure that we're testing continually to get the best results.  When we hit a “sweet spot” we’re quick to ensure the client is given every opportunity to maximise a winner. This approach has led to us having an amazing track record for growing clients' businesses, many of which have then gone on to to be sold. These include Dial-A-Phone, Toolstation and Aquability

We remain passionate about newspapers and magazines and still see them as key to a Direct Response campaign for years to come despite declining circulations. However, we also understand the importance of multi platform campaigns with each aspect working together whilst remaining fully focused on Direct Response.

We like to be fully involved in a client's business as we can to help them not only generate leads and sales via advertising but ensure they get the best out of their data. We’re not big on ‘Big ideas’ but we have lots of small ones that we constantly put forward.  The whole team at AJ understand that success for a client is success for AJ, they all have the Direct Response culture and work together to achieve the best results for our clients.
In the current climate things are difficult, people have less disposable income, circulations are down, and competition often high. For us it is not just about buying the media cheaper, it’s also about buying it smarter.
As you explore our website, you’ll see lots of examples which demonstrate that we really are one of the hardest working Direct Response agencies in the UK. This means we take an attribution focused approach to everything that we do.

We Never
Give Up

Product claims and substantiation are often one of the biggest hurdles to overcome in direct response advertising. Particularly on television.
At AJ we see any difficulty as a challenge rather than a problem. We're highly skilled at finding a way round an issue whilst still conveying a product or service's benefits. A recent commercial for Nourkrin, a hair restoring product, took countless discussions with the advertising authorities and script revisions. In the end we overcame what we could or couldn't say about its effectiveness through clever filming and careful choice of words. The end result was an impactful and responsive ad and a very happy client.

Knowing What works

In a world where customer journeys are increasingly complex and fragmented, attributing a sale or enquiry to a specific channel can be difficult. If conventional attribution methods are no longer working for you, we can help.

We use a series of tools to greatly enhance the accuracy and quality of attribution across all media. The result is consistently lower cost per sale and improved ROI.

You can see examples of how we have done this in the case studies here.

This means we can drill down and identify exactly which media channel works best, which copy works, which sizes, which publications. This transparency gives our clients a true understanding of how their advertising is performing across the board.

Working in this way means vigorous monitoring of the cost per lead and the cost per sale, resulting in continuously improving ROI for our clients. Furthermore, our detailed knowledge of response data strengthens our negotiating position with the media owners and so we continue to reduce rates and bring down further the cost of sale on behalf of our clients.

Maximising
A Winner

Our Direct Response philosophy is to create profitable off the page advertising for all our clients. Three key elements contribute towards this - a desirable product with a good offer, responsive creative and the right media cost. Once an advertisement has appeared, our first port of call is to look at the response analysis. If we find the response is particularly robust we discuss with the client its roll-out potential within the confines of their advertising budget.

We Grow
Businesses

For all our clients, our single-minded goal at AJ is to grow their business. This becomes a win, win, win situation for the client, the media and for the agency. To deliver this, we have four clear objectives:

	Produce responsive creative and a continual range of fresh ideas.
	Buy media at the lowest possible cost and develop ongoing testing strategies.
	For our clients to produce a desirable range of products with great offers.
	Once active in the marketplace we need continued refinement, which we address via regular analysis review meetings.

Developing this strategy for our Direct Response clients has proven to deliver success as the following three case studies of Dial-A-Phone, Toolstation and Aquability illustrate.

Spreading The Message

One of the strategies we first recommend to help grow a client's business is to establish press as a strong and reliable response channel. Once this is in place, we then look at testing a range of other media vehicles such as inserts, online, TV, radio. The different advertising environments these vehicles sit in enable us to reach different audiences and increase lead volume. We have particular expertise in DRTV, creating low cost, high impact commercials that sustain long-term repeat viewing and generate impressive response levels.

Keeping Things Fresh

It is of paramount importance at AJ that we continually come up with new ideas for our clients whether offer, media or creative led. We regularly review a client's response analysis in order to identify when and where fatigue is setting in and then make the appropriate changes to the advertising to rejuvenate performance levels. Other ways AJ delivers new advertising ideas to our clients is by organically brain storming, having discussions with the media and then coming up with a creative idea to match.

Everybody Has The Culture

The Team at AJ is driven to achieve the very best for our clients. Everybody understands how the AJ business model works and what we need to achieve as individuals. We believe we work harder at this goal than any other agency. Whatever it takes to achieve the best for our clients, we do it. Every day the team is asked to do the impossible, from working to very tight deadlines to our receptionist pulling us out of meetings based on a media rep offering us free space with 5 minutes to prepare the artwork.

We Insist On Trying New Things

Testing is of paramount importance for our clients at AJ. This gives us an opportunity to see if a new idea is worth rolling out. Typically and when appropriate, we perform A/B testing primarily in the Daily Telegraph - an accurate way of establishing the performance of the test through simply providing two media codes and advising the client's call centre of this test. The following 9 varied testing ideas were developed by AJ with the support of our clients.

How To Get In Touch

AJ is a specialist Direct Response, full service advertising agency. We hope we have been able to clearly demonstrate how we work and proved that we can deliver across all areas relating to Direct Response advertising.

If you would like to meet with us to discuss either one stage or two stage advertising, please call Lesley Bowman on;
01225 758222
or email Lesley@aja.co.uk or

The Malt House, 17-20 Sydney Buildings, Bath, BA2 6BZ

We Deliver

Achieving the results we deliver for our clients involves a lot of hard work from everybody in the agency. In the process, we create an amazing amount of adverts, a staggering amount of artwork and make a huge amount of media bookings at short-term rates. The following film shows you, in one year alone, just how much. The figures are quite amazing.