I work on the account side and often feel creative teams get most of the recognition while strategy and client management get overlooked. I get most of what get's 'seen' is contributed by the creative team, but there's no way the ship would sail without the other teams. How do you advocate for your team’s value in agency reviews?

I mean you’ll have a longer career than most creatives so there that

Come on over to Production. We get sh*t from account, creatives, vendors - and mostly work solo without another team member for support. We make miracles happen with non-existent budgets and timelines with team members and clients who don’t understand production. We are never scoped properly yet account will run 3 deep.

lol try being a producer. human punching bags.

We are in service of the creative. Period.

To answer the first part of your question, Creatives compete on almost every assignment. For us it’s like Hunger Games, while every other department sits and waits in the stands to see who wins.

Acct, Strat and production can put their name on and take credit for every project that gets produced. Creative can’t unless it was our idea or we actually made it. So when we do finally get through the bracket and produce something, we deserve to celebrate and be celebrated.

The alternative is making nothing and having nothing to show for our hard work. Which means no raise, no promotion and no way to get another job.

This is something other departments don’t often notice. I know because so many have asked me if I’m pumped about some other team’s work getting up when I had my own work in the mix. Note, I’m speaking as a creative not a manger.

To answer the second part of your question, in reviews, give your team credit for all the creative work that was produced and celebrated. Then watch their titles quickly get inflated above the creative teams. That’s what normally happens.

Your literal job is for the client to like and trust you. If you don’t have evidence of that (emails, texts, thank yous, proof of turning nos into yeses, increased budgets, bigger scope, that they picked the risky idea you fought for, organic growth etc) to use to advocate for yourself and your team… you might not be doing the best job. I know the value of my account people. My clients love them and make it obvious. PS don’t expect gold stars for just “doing your job”

Not to be meta, but Project Management being missing from a conversation about overlooked teams might be the most accurate example of how invisible the role can be.

In strong agencies, no one discipline “wins” recognition. The value is in the integrated team.

Account advocates for the client and grows the business. PM advocates for the agency, protecting resources, timelines, and sanity while making sure the work actually starts and delivers on time. Strategy, Creative, and Production protect the idea and its execution.

When it’s working, none of it is loud. The Client just experiences momentum.

And if someone ever cracks the code for recognizing Project Management the way we do Creative at Cannes or Strategy with Effies, I’d love to hear it. 🤭

But it’s our fault when things suck.

Creatives are the ship though.

Creatives are insecure and need the most ego stroking. We all know that strategy are the actual brains.

Try being a Project Manager. We consistently get left out of pre pro books but are the first person someone is calling when they need something that’s in the dang pre pro book. But seriously, we all need each other to make any of this work, so even if your name isn’t front and center without “you” there would be no ad showing up on tv or winning award.

I think it depends on the account person. I've definitely worked with plenty of account folks who can actually sell through ideas and understand the whys of the creative work but still handle clients with extraordinary diplomacy and I have more respect for them than I've had for CCOs. I've generally always respected the account folks who can do what is 100% not my strong suit. It really depends on the person though. Some agencies don't value the account folks as much, but I think all departments are very complementary. There are other account folks that seem to sort of get in the way and don't understand that they are not the creatives and act like parents and that is incredibly annoying. They don't seem to understand the best way to get the best work out of creatives. Too many arbitrary deadlines that get in the way (seemingly from distrust that the work will get done?).

No one would have a job to do if there weren't a creative department. And advertising could still exist at its core with one creative and a one-person client (they *would* need to hire an outside production team downstream, but could approach media themselves).

Accounts is the most thankless job; as a creative I have no qualms recognizing that.

A great business leadership team can reinvent a brand, just as much as a “big” creative idea can.

In my experience, great accounts people are truthfully few and far in-between, not because they’re bad people, just because the passion isn’t there like it is for the creatives.

Going back to the OP’s point, I think more recognition would be more incentive for our account friends to strive to care more about the finer points of the work - like us creatives labor and stress over.

And for what it’s worth, I think EVERY SINGLE PERSON who contributed to a project, should receive due credit.

We’re competing against ourselves, for insular, shiny trophies and recognition - much like children compete for gold star stickers in grade school. Anyone who thinks it’s important to gate keep awards, is a soulless, spiritually empty person.

When I was a creative director at a midsize Indie a few years back, I instituted a policy that when we entered award shows and won, the award was picked up on stage by the account service person on the team. My reasoning was that without someone advocating for the work it would be very hard for us to win those awards in the first place. It also made it harder for other agencies in the room to locate and poach my best creative talent. 😉

If you’ve been with the client for a while and things run like clockwork and they’re impressed with the strategy, management, production and the creative output - then it sounds like the client is satisfied / happy with the whole relationship.

You could create a performance survey with the client to see areas that are great or could be improved.

Most clients would rather work with a process that works with good creative than a whole system that is problematic and great creative.

I am sure the client is very appreciative but they are paying for the end result.

Sounds like a job well done by all in the agency.

If it’s internal recognition, then it’s a bit lousy from leadership. You could do a recap of the year and share achievements with the agency and leadership.

Otherwise celebrate the clients feedback as a team and continue building relationship together - your colleagues may help/reward you further down the line when people move to other agencies or clients.

I work on the media team and we get the shaft in terms of recognition but the work life balance is strong.

When I was partners in an agency, we not only had the account people go up with the team to receive awards but the client too, if the wanted. As a board member of the local Ad Fed, I advocated to include full team credits on our awards materials. Why not? We see all the credits at the end of movies because that industry realizes the importance of recognition contributing to the future quality of their work. Still, people worship the stars of movies most. We worship quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers and forget the line blockers. It’s the way of the world. As a creative, I realize without a great strategy, without account service keeping great work sold when the client inevitably gets cold feet, our great work would never see the light of day. Don’t get too discouraged if your efforts aren’t in the limelight. You know your contribution. Be proud of your team by example. They may surprise you by reciprocating.

I’m in account as well - the recognition, in my opinion should go to the creative teams. What they develop IS the product. Our roll (again in my opinion) is to clear the road, to guide the client to do more of the product. Account work can be a thankless job.

To quote Jerry McGuire “It is an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about”

to be fair, as nice as it is to get the recognition (at times bc i’m still mid-level so the senior peeps get to take most of the credit) i feel like as a creative, i have worse work life balance than other people at my level from other depts. i would much rather be able to get off work at a reasonable time than to be up all night thinking of net new ideas and comps based on several rounds of feedback. its gotten so bad for me that im now looking to pivot away from creative. words are nice, but work life balance is way nicer