A creative director's perspective on account management, with Joey Tackett
Welcome to episode 93. If you’re working in creative agency account management you know how essential it is to have a positive relationship with your creative director built on trust. I asked Creative Director, Joey Tackett, to join me and discuss what’s most important to him about working with account managers so we can see account management through the lens of the creative team. Joey shares:
The key skills he believes AMs need to be respected by their creative team
Where the relationship can break down and why
How he diffuses tension between the AM and creative team
Some useful tips for making your client presentations more impactful I hope you enjoy the insights from my chat with Joey and pick up some tips to help you in your account management role.
I have seen some situations where account managers stop at the client, they are very much advocating for the client, which is the job. A key part of it though, to get there and to be successful, you really need to understand the team you are working with as well, because then we can work together. So I think that's a big thing that some account managers have not come in the door with, in agencies I have worked at and I have had to sort of coach them on that to help them understand. If we listen to each other, we are going to create a better relationship.
I am thinking of one particular account manager that I worked with actually more recently and this account manager had worked, I think, at smaller agencies before they got dropped into the agency situation that we were in together and really understood how creativity worked, even though this account manager was not a creative professional individually. This idea of understanding the strategy, what went into making things possible and the most important thing is, this AM listened to what we said, understood what was important to make the creative, to honour the creative solution and to really make sure the client was happy.
There was a sense of paper pushing happening by this account manager. It was more, I am doing the relationship thing. I have too many projects and I am not looking at anything that's coming through, and part of this role was project management as well. So in the sales process, for example, we ran into a huge amount of problems because the team was extremely busy. I am the one working, also supporting business development, and I ended up carrying a lot of the weight of that project, things that the account manager, in my mind, should have been doing, and in fact, was part of that job description. So that was very problematic.
When I am working on a branding project, for example, which is obviously a big agency deliverable, I never make it about, we like this, and the client likes that. It's always more about what do their clients care about? They are hiring us to solve a problem for their user, their buyer, their customer and when we do that what it does, it diffuses the conversation because we are talking about this objective third party over here that has opinions and they matter more than ours. I think that trifecta makes a lot of sense and I have tried to apply that to the account manager, project manager and creative role as well. It's not about me and you fighting, it's more, we care about what the client cares about, and ultimately, we all care about who's buying their product, right? Or who's engaging in their website or whatever the outcome is. I think if we remember that, it diffuses the conversation.
