Just three years ago, we held our inaugural Account Management Conference, during Advertising Week 2005.
Back then, my predecessor, Burtch Drake, opened this conference by asking one simple question, “Why is the 4A’s holding the Account Management Conference?”
It’s an uncomplicated question, and one that I’ve even asked myself as we prepared for today’s program. The answer, however, is somewhat more complicated.
During his remarks, Burtch explained that since the Association’s inception more than 90 years ago, the 4A’s has held national conferences on virtually every agency discipline—account planning, agency public relations, creative, finance and talent management, leadership, and media—but up until just three years ago, the discipline of account management did not receive the attention we all believe it deserves with a dedicated conference.
Why was that?
“..because the discipline of Account Management has been so inextricably tied into the DNA of the agency business, it has been taken for granted,” Burtch said.
As an advertising professional who has spent more than 25 years as an “account guy,” I can say that I whole-heartedly agree with Burtch’s assessment. At least at that time.
But boy have things changed quickly.
Now everyone’s asking the question: What happened to Account Management?
As I was preparing today’s remarks, I found this short video on YouTube that nicely illustrates the perception of account people. Let’s take a look…
What I love about this video is that not only does it smartly poke fun at account managers, but also suggests where we are going.
The role of the “entitled” account manager has undergone—and continues to undergo—a dramatic transformation in our industry.
No longer is account management the only career path to climb from the assistant’s cubicle to the CEO’s suite.
No longer is account management simply about “handling” clients and sparring with creatives (and account planners, for that matter).
And no longer is account management the obvious job for smooth talking, often privileged, almost always white men, despite what we see on “Mad Men.”
In fact, I would say that account management—and so-called account people—today bear very little resemblance to what it was and what we were 25 years ago, 15 years ago, or even 5 years ago.
Before you start thinking that the discipline of account management and the role of account managers is in free-fall, let me state for the record: I believe that there is no role more fundamental, more central and more exciting in advertising today than account management.
I’ll repeat: Account management is the most exciting job in advertising today, bar none.
I realize this may be counter-intuitive to almost everything that you may have heard or felt over the past several years working on the account side, but I hope that today’s conference will help to shift your perspective a bit, inform you about the possibilities of this dynamic discipline and re-energize you when you return to your jobs.
Today’s account manager is equal parts juggler, mediator, father confessor, mother creator and brand steward, all rolled up into one exacting and brilliant mind.
Account management, in many ways, has more in common with the work that an executive producer performs for a big-budget Hollywood film than it does with acting as a go-between for the agency and its clients.
Because account managers have always been at the center of everything that’s happening between their agencies and their clients, and because other disciplines have risen in prominence and importance over the past several decades (see media and digital), account management as a discipline has struggled with an identity crisis over the past decade or so.
As I see it, there have been a number of basic shifts in our industry that have led to—and in some cases accelerated—the many changes we see today in account management.
- These shifts include:
The introduction of account planning in the United States in the 1980s
- The increasing adoption of technology, both in the workplace and with consumer usage and behavior
- And the transformation of the white-collar workforce, particularly as it applies to gender and diversity.
At our Account Planning Conference this past July, I was only half kidding when I said I’ve always considered myself to be an account planner.
Like any account person worth her chops, my initial reaction to the incursion of account planning here in the States was that planners were taking away the best parts of my job.
It wasn’t until I worked at TBWA when I realized the indispensable role that an excellent account planner—and a well-run planning department—can play in the process of creating great advertising.
But it was also then when I realized the distinct roles played by account planning and by account management, and rather than fight with planners about who deserves credit or recognition for the “big idea,” my role as an account person was to understand how to fit all of the pieces together to make great advertising, from insight to creative to media to analysis.
Even back in 1982, when I started my first job at W.B. Doner in Baltimore, one of the first things I had to grapple with as an account person was technology.
Keep in mind, this was back before the Internet as we know it, before Blackberries, before iPods, before much of the digital technologies that surround us and we take for granted today.
But I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to work on consumer technology clients, because that early experience helped to pave the path for me to be a more effective and informed account person for digital clients throughout my career.
What has happened to some account people is that they didn’t keep up with technology and are now being left behind.
This is truly unfortunate, and requires an honest reassessment of the new skill sets required to be a rock star account person, and much of this has to do with being technologically savvy, both as a consumer and a professional.
Finally, my last point about how much account management has transformed is rooted in the changing workforce.
As we can see from the attendance of this conference, today’s account managers don’t necessarily look like the men at Sterling Cooper. (At least not all of you.)
In the past, agencies may have cast their account people to look and act like their clients; that is to say, white men.
But today the cast of characters that make up account management are more representative of clients and consumers, more diverse, ethnically and racially, and in gender.
So why is the 4A’s holding the Account Management Conference? Hopefully we’ll shed some light on this thing known as account management, and bring the discipline and its disciples into the 21st century.
