Fire Your Account Team
I didn’t want to be so blunt about it. Really. But the more I think about the current state of agencies, and how they need to blend in to the changing landscapes of creative product, the more I keep coming back to this point: Account Teams are toxic.
First, let me define an Account Team. These are conglomerations of well-dressed, well-spoken, and genuinely likable individuals whose sole purpose is to address client needs, while managing work flows for the creative team. Sound innocent enough, right? Sure…
If you, designers, think that being strategically negated, slaving under fantastical expectations, and being coddled like an infantile mongoloid to the point of your own professional rot is innocent; if you, clients, think that paying out unquantifiable figures of your hard-earned revenues, being patronized and sheltered from the real creative downpours, and generally barking orders in to a whirlwind is productive; if you, agency owners, think that paying a group of people exorbitant salaries to make your business run with less efficiency, less quality and an underlying fear of immediate apocalypse, then yes, sirs and madams, Account Teams can be quite beneficial.
A Modest Proposal
If, instead, you feel that your agency could use a swift posterior bruising toward progress in the early reaches of this third millennium, consider the following:
- Owners: exalt your designers. Let them deal directly with your clients. Let them run projects and set deadlines. Let them present ideas. This can only streamline communications, and will empower your clients in the process.
- Designers: sort out your social anxieties. Get used to talking to clients. Get used to the idea that they may have a bad idea sometimes, and you may need to talk them out of it. This will make you a stronger designer, and will coach your clients in to a better co-existence with your creative majesty. Your ideas, and therefore your responsibilities, persist beyond the pixels on screen or ink on paper.
- Account People: find a seat before the music stops. You are talented; that is why you are where you are. Find your strengths in this industry and play to them. If you are a thinking account person, you could be a valued, project-minded addition to any creative team. If you are a connector: there is always room for people working on new business.
I can think of no better way for an agency to really put themselves out there as a creative collective set apart than to shed the fetters of mad-men era schmoozathons. Dissolve your account team and show your clients how you pass the savings of time and hard-earned cash to them. You needn’t fire everyone; absorb the talented minds back in to where they can do the most good. And as for those whose paycheck has thus far hung on how well they play telephone: well, there are higher-paying jobs with way more integrity out there… in other industries. Godspeed.
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Comments (4)
This is really a wake-up call for designers masquerading as a shot over the bow of the account team. Designers, take off the headphones every once in a while and sit in on a client meeting. Your manager or creative director is doing you no favors by sheltering you from the realities of client communication.
I’ve been thinking about this same topic recently. Thanks for putting it into words.
Designers working directly with clients is especially crucial in the beginning stages of a project. Much can be lost in translation when the account executive is the go-between. Not that they misrepresent the information, but a lot of the small nuances of the early conversations are lost. Such as how the client gets more excited about one question than another, the ad hoc follow-up questions, etc.
How would you solve the larger workload that designers would inherit (managing clients, phone conversations, etc.)? My answer I suppose would be to hire more designers. Would incoming clients be assigned a designer with which to build a relationship?
(Love the new design by the way!)
@David Yeiser: I can really only speak to how we solve for these issues here at Unit, but yes, we do assign one designer to a project, and they build a relationship with the client. Andy or Angela could probably speak better to this, but from what I have seen: more work does equal more designers around here, or it gives us the opportunity to cherry-pick the projects we are the most excited about.
Nathan, I agree that most agencies need an overhaul of their current agency model.
Too many times, designers are sidelined as just work for hire and offered no real stake in a project. I’m a very hands on person and prefer to be involved in a project from the discovery process all the way through to the end of it, but a lot of designers prefer that the account team interact with the clients so they don’t have to. I’ve been told by some that it’s distracting to have to stop in the middle of a project to “deal” with a client.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment about playing up everyone’s individual strengths. Whether we’re talking about the account team, designers or the receptionist; agencies would definitely benefit by recognizing the strengths of individual employees. They may be surprised what they discover. Who knows? Maybe they’ll fire their account team.
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