By Eswara VAN Sharma
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Account Management and Strategic Planning
Let us say you have decided to join an advertising agency as a Management Trainee or Account Executive. You will be a part of a team of account management people (sometimes also called Client Servicing) who deal with one or more Clients. A client is simply a company (ranging from a partnership firm or a small business to a large corporate house) who has hired your agency as their communications partner. For example, McDonald’s or Coke or Bajaj or even a popular restaurant in your city. These clients or accounts may have several brands that are being managed. For example, the Coke account could have Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta. Usually these are handled by separate account teams.
LinkedIn Profile
For Part - 1 Click Here>>
Account Management and Strategic Planning
Let us say you have decided to join an advertising agency as a Management Trainee or Account Executive. You will be a part of a team of account management people (sometimes also called Client Servicing) who deal with one or more Clients. A client is simply a company (ranging from a partnership firm or a small business to a large corporate house) who has hired your agency as their communications partner. For example, McDonald’s or Coke or Bajaj or even a popular restaurant in your city. These clients or accounts may have several brands that are being managed. For example, the Coke account could have Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta. Usually these are handled by separate account teams.
Now before understanding what your role would entail, let us step back a bit and understand what the agency’s role is. Ad agencies are commonly referred to as the brand custodians of the client’s brands. What does this mean? Well, if you look back into your textbooks, you will find many definitions of brands. Most of them will tell you that a brand is a subjective perception of value based on the sum of a person’s experiences with a product or company that ultimately influences that person’s sentiment and decisions in the marketplace. How do people form these experiences? Through the product itself, of course, and through the way they come to know about the brand. This is usually through its advertising. It is the advertising that builds and shapes perceptions about the brand. The language used, the tone of voice, the choice of colours, the messages that need to be conveyed, even the models or celebrities used – all of these, and many more, influence how the brand is perceived by consumers. And all of these variables are in the hands of the advertising agency – of course with limits set by global or local brand guidelines, client needs and so on. Remember - companies make products; consumers buy brands.
That is why agencies are referred to as brand custodians. Ad agencies are also considered the client’s marketing partner because they can offer perspectives on the market and the consumer from outside the client’s business or even from other categories. The ad agency uses creativity to solve the client’s business problems. The problems could be those of perception, of market share loss, of decreased usage, of awareness…it could be anything the client chooses to set as their objective.
Typically, the marketers on the client side decide what to say. The agency is concerned with how to say it.
Right, so broadly that is what advertising agencies do. Now, what is it that you will do? As an account executive, you will likely be the junior most member of the team handling that account or set of accounts (unless the agency has hired some interns or summer trainees whom you can boss around!). Your job will involve the following, roughly in order of what you will be doing in your job:
Learning and mastering how the agency works, who does what and why and where and how – you need to know everything about everything, without exception
If this sounds like very hard work – it is.
Remember that you (and your agency) are in a service industry and therefore your main job is indeed to serve your client and their brand. Think of an account executive as a very good butler. Like a butler, the best ones always anticipate their client’s needs and take action before they even need to be told. And like a butler, account executives can be called upon to do anything at all that the agency does (and sometimes, things that they don’t, such as organizing passes for the senior client for a cricket match). It is your tenacity, your resourcefulness, your passion for the brand you are working on and your thorough knowledge that will keep you going.
In terms of a career progression, you can move up through the ranks to Account Manager, Account Director, Client Services Director and eventually COO and CEO. These positions usually carry increasing responsibility for both a larger number of clients and for revenue targets. Like any other company, the higher you move up, the more you will be responsible for managing people. This is particularly relevant in an ad agency, as people are truly the only asset that an agency has.
Now what does a strategic planner do? Well, in the early days of advertising, there weren’t any planners, and account people used to be responsible for all the jobs you have read about previously. Somewhere along the line, agencies realized that in the process of managing all of these processes and the clients, account people were losing touch with the consumer – who is, after all, the person who is going to be exposed to the advertising. In parallel, the consumers themselves were and still are constantly changing. This is where the strategic planner comes in. Simply put, the planner is the voice of the consumer in the agency. He or she specializes in understanding consumers and connecting their needs, wants and desires to brands. Planners work with account people and clients to understand the brand’s requirements and with consumers as well. They try to unearth consumer insights which the brand and its communication can leverage in its communication strategy. They are creative and use their creativity to come up with new and interesting ways to link consumers and brands. They also help shape the brand’s image, and work with clients to identify a roadmap ahead for the brand. Roles in account planning usually start at junior planner and go up to National Planning Director or variations thereof.
If you go back to the definition of advertising as “salesmanship in print”, it now begins to make more sense. At the end of the day, advertising is always selling something – a product, a lifestyle, a piece of information, a perception, or an offer. Like in sales, there is always a business objective that needs to be met – and so every piece of communication must help meet that objective, in print, or film, or online, or wherever it appears.
To be Continued . .
That is why agencies are referred to as brand custodians. Ad agencies are also considered the client’s marketing partner because they can offer perspectives on the market and the consumer from outside the client’s business or even from other categories. The ad agency uses creativity to solve the client’s business problems. The problems could be those of perception, of market share loss, of decreased usage, of awareness…it could be anything the client chooses to set as their objective.
Typically, the marketers on the client side decide what to say. The agency is concerned with how to say it.
Right, so broadly that is what advertising agencies do. Now, what is it that you will do? As an account executive, you will likely be the junior most member of the team handling that account or set of accounts (unless the agency has hired some interns or summer trainees whom you can boss around!). Your job will involve the following, roughly in order of what you will be doing in your job:
Learning and mastering how the agency works, who does what and why and where and how – you need to know everything about everything, without exception
- Learning and understanding how the client works – what is their business, what is their product, who are their competitors, what are their market shares, how are they advertising, what are the key messages put out by your client and the competition, and so on. It is your job to know all this inside out and be able to share it at a moment’s notice when required
- Meeting the client along with your colleagues to take a brief or understand what the client’s requirement is, then recapping the meeting for all attendees by way of minutes or a contact report, that may include a timeline and the client’s deadline
- Figuring out a creative solution to the problem that has been placed in front of you. The solution may not necessarily be an ad. You may, if you know your client’s business and market inside out, suggest a change in packaging or product placement in-store. For this example, let us say it is indeed a print ad.
- Writing or helping to write a creative brief for your colleagues in the creative department and then briefing them on what the client wants; this may be done with the collaboration of a strategic planner. This brief encapsulates your understanding of the client problem, the brand, the consumer, the market and the competition and provides a roadmap for your creative team to come up with ideas to solve the client’s business problem
- Providing costs to the client in the form of an estimate, following up with the client for approval, then with agency finance for billing and again with the client for payment
- Following up with the creative teams on the status of the job and managing the timelines, while keeping the client updated on progress
- Reviewing the work internally and presenting it to the client. Usually the creative team will develop one or more options
- Understanding the changes required, if any, and making sure that everyone is aligned on them, and then going through the briefing and subsequent processes
- Once the client approves the idea (for example, a print ad or print campaign), getting into the execution of the idea, which means coordinating with the creative team, external suppliers (for example, a photographer) while managing the timeline, coordinating the print shoot, making sure that the image is approved by the client, managing the agency studio people who are going to develop the final artwork, getting client approvals on the artwork and then handing over the final material to the media agency for release
- At every stage in this process, checking, double-checking, triple-checking and then checking one last time (and then once more) to make sure that there are no mistakes anywhere – brand guideline errors, spellings, grammar, image faults, sizes, specifications, factual errors, dates, times, and so on.
If this sounds like very hard work – it is.
Remember that you (and your agency) are in a service industry and therefore your main job is indeed to serve your client and their brand. Think of an account executive as a very good butler. Like a butler, the best ones always anticipate their client’s needs and take action before they even need to be told. And like a butler, account executives can be called upon to do anything at all that the agency does (and sometimes, things that they don’t, such as organizing passes for the senior client for a cricket match). It is your tenacity, your resourcefulness, your passion for the brand you are working on and your thorough knowledge that will keep you going.
In terms of a career progression, you can move up through the ranks to Account Manager, Account Director, Client Services Director and eventually COO and CEO. These positions usually carry increasing responsibility for both a larger number of clients and for revenue targets. Like any other company, the higher you move up, the more you will be responsible for managing people. This is particularly relevant in an ad agency, as people are truly the only asset that an agency has.
Now what does a strategic planner do? Well, in the early days of advertising, there weren’t any planners, and account people used to be responsible for all the jobs you have read about previously. Somewhere along the line, agencies realized that in the process of managing all of these processes and the clients, account people were losing touch with the consumer – who is, after all, the person who is going to be exposed to the advertising. In parallel, the consumers themselves were and still are constantly changing. This is where the strategic planner comes in. Simply put, the planner is the voice of the consumer in the agency. He or she specializes in understanding consumers and connecting their needs, wants and desires to brands. Planners work with account people and clients to understand the brand’s requirements and with consumers as well. They try to unearth consumer insights which the brand and its communication can leverage in its communication strategy. They are creative and use their creativity to come up with new and interesting ways to link consumers and brands. They also help shape the brand’s image, and work with clients to identify a roadmap ahead for the brand. Roles in account planning usually start at junior planner and go up to National Planning Director or variations thereof.
If you go back to the definition of advertising as “salesmanship in print”, it now begins to make more sense. At the end of the day, advertising is always selling something – a product, a lifestyle, a piece of information, a perception, or an offer. Like in sales, there is always a business objective that needs to be met – and so every piece of communication must help meet that objective, in print, or film, or online, or wherever it appears.
To be Continued . .
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