When new Liverpool manager, Jürgen Klopp, was asked how he felt about his team’s first win, he replied, “It’s not enough that we won. We must understand why we won.”
It was music to the ears of this accounts veteran.
When the high fives are done after a successful campaign, it’s the account team that go away and ask “How can we do that better?”
Part CEO, part marketer and part diplomat, the account manager makes it their job to know the nuts and bolts of their client’s organisation. They know the business plan, the personalities and the key audiences. They provide the strategic springboard for creative and digital teams to go and work their magic back at the shop.
In my opinion though, one critical thing accounts professionals bring a client is objectivity. Organisations focusing on day-to-day tasks might not see an opportunity to grow revenue or a shift in the marketplace damaging their competitive advantage. It’s the account manager’s job to point them out before the client even needs the information (more on this later).
In addition, an account manager’s objectivity isn’t subject to an organisation’s workplace culture.
Corporate culture can exert a powerful force on employees – and not always for the best. If a client ever tells the agency “we’ve always done it that way,” accounts should push back. Even things that appear to work just fine can be improved on – look what Apple did to the MP3 player.
The world is changing on a daily basis, and account management has to keep up with the pace that social media dictates. In the blink of an eye (or a click on a phone) brand and customer perceptions can be changed. Just type “social media fails” into your favourite search engine and see what comes up.
We all make mistakes. One hotel account I worked on provided several freephone numbers for a “free night” promotion we were managing. Due to a typo, one of the numbers was for an adult chat line. Imagine what Twitter would have made of that? Fortunately the account manager had dialed the numbers beforehand to check and caught it before it went live.
The industry really does need to take an objective look at itself because with big advertising and marketing holding companies, the bottom line is king and a one-size-fits-all process is fine, as long as it keeps the tills ringing.
Many of the agencies are working with waterfall project management approaches from the traditional media era and can struggle to adapt to very sudden changes in the marketplace.
Just to set the record straight, Clock are an independent agency with the scale and desire to go with the flow.
So, in a reluctant-to-change agency world, I’m seeing a future for account managers who adopt the flexibility of “agile thinking”. An agile thinker doesn’t only think “what will happen if we do this?” (to the process and the budget) but also, “what will happen if we don’t?” (the end result, the client’s business). Agile thinking is adaptive and immediate. It is a customer-centric mentality that can use fast-changing information to make minor course corrections to a project in progress and aims thinking at solutions and away from the next project milestone. It is proactive, not prescriptive.
Here’s a good example: The hotel chain I mentioned earlier analysed competitor blogs to see what their guests were saying, and noted areas where those chains were failing. They then used the findings to inform their current brand messaging and ultimately the business plan and a refurbishment of some of their properties.
This is all achieved by taking the time to look at the information that’s out there, staying current and, most importantly, adapting.
An agile thinking account manager is clued into the pace of change in the digital landscape and one who thinks not just about why we won, but how we didn’t lose the hearts and minds of our audience while we were busy getting to market.
If you would like to speak to David in more detail about any of the points he’s raised above get in touch here.
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