Related Posts
How can I change the project in Accenture?
Hi Everyone I have joined FIS one month back only, I am just Okay with my current project. I see here everybody is leaving FIS and telling it's not good. I have changed Infosys within 7 months.Now, I don't want to switch this early. Can somebody tell me about the good points, pros in FIS. I really want to change my mindset so that I feel happy here and can give back something to organization.FIS Global
Hi
How is the insurance BU project to work? And if we do not like the project what is the process to change the project that we are looking domain for? I am from background of Banking and capital market domain Persistent Systems Limited Persistent Systems Limited Tata Consultancy Cognizant
More Posts
Enthusiast
Conversation Starter
Everyone going office regularly?
Additional Posts in Advertising
NY agencies with unlimited PTO, please stand up!
Anyone transitioned from strategy to UX?
Anomaly, good move or no?
Any fishies in new york have official snow days?
In West Philadelphia born and raised...
How’s RGA for a CW?
New to Fishbowl?
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
What do creative directors do at your firm? At ours, it seems like they just pass our briefs on to the juniors, criticize them, then take credit for their ideas. Oh, and never show up for meetings on time (if ever), take long lunches, leave early, complain about timelines, and bill hours they didn’t work
You know how we hate it when account people assume it’s easy coming up with ideas because they sometimes only see it when it’s in a good place? Well that’s what you’re doing in reverse by asking this questjon
The good ones have conversations with the clients to get more clear feedback from them and help them articulate what they are looking for and also help them understand the agency POV on projects as well as holding their hands through the production process and making sure all the different parts of the agency speak to the clients with one unified friendly knowledgeable voice. Somewhat rare in my experience, but they do exist
Oh you know, just little things like selling in work and securing budgets so that we can have jobs.
Generally speaking, a lot of everything. I’d sum it up to taking everyone’s shit and solving everyone’s problems. If you truly are curious, then I’d recco taking the time to get to know your account team and ask them what they do. Discuss how you can help serve each other to better serve your client and sell great work.
Oh, and meetings... in which we discuss having more meetings.
I’ve worked with some really good account ppl and also some clueless ones. The better account people (at growth-minded agencies) are responsible for year-over-year growth of an account. Protecting the core business (so we all have jobs) and trying to get 20% more revenue than last year so the agency can grow and thrive. Creatives usually don’t want to even think about this stuff, nor should they have to. Good account people will help you sell your big ideas, earn trust, and ensure the relationship stays good.
Account guy here. Loving all the love of good account people. Let me just add: the meetings suck but are critical. I need to be able to represent the agency to my client. To do that properly, I need to understand my creative team’s vision for the work, my producer’s work on what’s feasible when, etc. Getting everyone in a room to talk it through ensures I can get everyone on the same page and fight for the collective team’s POV. My job is not to make blind promises and make you pick up the pieces. I want to sell your ideas/strategies etc but to do that I need to understand it. I hate the meetings too, but I need them
The issue with accounts is it has the lowest (read - no) barrier to entry. So if account people are never trained on what they’re supposed to do - manage relationships, be experts on the client’s brand, understand clients well enough to help work get pitched in successfully - they become essentially paper pushers, and often poor ones at that. I’ve met in my career only a handful of truly expert account folks, but when you meet them you quickly understand they have a skill set. I work in Strategy by the way.
And writing meeting notes with next steps, which of course...includes more meetings.
Account people are the first to be AI'ed away
@ssp1 big firm? Small firm? I started my career in a small agency (like 5 ppl). Can never understand how we make money when so many people do so little. But then I work till 1am for the 3rd night in a row and am like “oh... right."
I work with one who is awesome if the problem you need solved is to create a matrix and populate it with information.
:(
You should have stayed in the hole you dug for yourself @VP. Although, now that your area of "expertise" is known, a string of amusing, generalizations and stereotypes could be thrown about that use sarcasm to underscore the harm of active ignorance.
If an account person can’t say their client’s business goals, market share, marketing objective, and key competitors within 30 seconds of asking they’re not an account person, they’re a glorified project manager who gets to write the scope that includes their own time.
That’s it FCB1. There are good ones, rare, but the best are marketing pros who can see things from 30,000 feet. Who separate the brands from the clients. The worst are cheerleaders for whatever a client said that day. Because clients really need far more than a cheerleader. People are so eager to hand clients back the reigns of “advertising expert.” Undermining an ad agency’s entire purpose.
The oldest role an account person had is still the most sensible: They need to be excellent salespeople for the agency’s recommended solution. Defending every detail. Because the greatest work nails the details. Far too often account folk seem to be champions for compromise.
There’s a reason so many ads are rubbish.
On analytics team. Can confirm... 🙄
Honestly? All you said isn’t wrong, but try to put it all on one person to see how shitty the quality gets. My AMs usually do the part of the job I hate (i.e. public speaking and handling all the politics). As a VP, you should give them some credit. And yes, more meetings :/