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Rising Star
TBWA NY layoffs today.
What does this even mean?!
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It’s an antiquated model for sure. But account leadership done right is invaluable. The problem is the broken models at agencies no one is willing to fix and account people who aren’t ready for leadership positions (holding clients accountable etc, and keeping creative on track, etc. as well as not adding wasted resources to scopes. All this takes seasoned people, not a warm body, willing to do the job for less money etc.
The biggest problem in this business is the way you have to get the business.
What I did is reduce Accounts to senior level people who focus purely on managing client relationship. Everything else — SOW, deliverables, timelines, costing, all moved over to project management. Staff up on PM/PDs, a few more Strat peeps, even a data/analytics team (insights team). This worked out way better.
It doesn't have to be this way, but the advertising business model is parasitic, and its incentives and ambitions either overlap with those of their paying clients only accidentally or barely at all and are at cross purposes.
Working at a major brand now and cannot underestimate the disdain held for most agencies and the bs they all try to pull.
100%. There were 12-15 account people at my last agency while I was the main strategist. Every call there were 3-4 account people, and kept hiring more. No clarity on which worked on what projects. Then during layoffs of course they lay me off and keep all 12-15 account people. Good account people are keepers no doubt, but the ratio of account to creative/strategy is wayyyyyyy out of whack.
But honestly neither strategy nor creative want to deal with clients and their BS or have to talk to them that much. It will ruin our ability to create for them! We definitely don’t need as many of them (especially the super senior levels like those layers of group account people underneath the head of client services). Most accounts could get by with a senior dedicated day to day person a mid level or two and one to three doer levels like AEs/acct supes.
You don’t need anyone but a few agency leaders and the day to day dedicated person on that business to go that. We could afford to cut 15-20% of them
Rising Star
What about project management? They typically understaff on those too
60-70 % of them are utterly useless
Sorry, what do you do again as an “executive provider”? Please provide specifics as to why you can’t be replaced. I’ve worked in the agency world for over 20 years and can name 2-3 producers that have added value to clients.
Keep delivering off brief ideas and let me know when the producer saves you.
Amen. Preach. 🙏
I think you need excellent (and embedded with client) leaders in strat/creative etc for this to work but if you have that, totally agree.
Account Leadership, in my experience, largely gatekeeps stuff