Northern Planner

Here's to account handlers (not client service)

I’m a failed account handler. Too shy, too disorganised and too easily bored to be successful suit, only surviving thanks to doing planning (yes planning, I still struggle to call it strategy) on the job without realising.

I could write good briefs and coax great work out of creative people, even if I couldn’t get the invoices right. I was even told to get out the industry at one point, however one kind soul told me I was in the wrong department, otherwise I’d be a teacher, an academic or maybe a lawyer right now.

My current colleagues probably wish I was a headmaster or human rights lawyer instead, sorry about that, but at least it means I respect great account handlers, in fact I’m in awe of them.

But I mean account handlers, not client service. The ones who not only make things happen on time and make it look easy, they work in partnership with planners, they have an opinion on creative work, they make ideas people feel safe, make horrible people play nice. They won’t let creatives act like children, yet allow for them being wired differently. They won’t allow intellectual planner wank, but make space for brains to play.

Even better, they ‘handle clients’ they don’t ‘serve’ them. This is no disrespect to clients, I couldn’t do their job either. By handling I mean not just saying yes externally and ‘the client won’t like it’ internally. They build a relationship, not a culture of subservience.

The ones who nurture ideas through their building and then through the client building, not the ones who shut things down.

The ones who partner clients, who look to deliver good advice and help them succeed, rather than the ones who simply say yes and make everything seem transactional.

The ones with more than charm and charisma, they build trust.

Increasingly, agencies have become a lot more about client service than client handling. There are many reasons for this of course, a big one being the increasingly competitive nature of our industry and growing cost pressures.

Yet the agencies we tend to talk about and the work we tend to celebrate, don’t just serve clients they handle them. They make money from delivering ideas clients couldn’t do themselves, even in-house. Not just because of talent and craft, because of positive friction – working on anything for too long makes you snowblind, but outsiders you trust provide the spark you rarely get in house.

Yes, there are great in-house teams, but the internal culture required for work that isn’t a box ticking exercise is the exception not the rule.

And more client service has led to less proper account planning too.

At their best, planners do a lot more than the ‘set-up’ for the creative work. They have a direct relationship with the client, a genuine partner with client services in the relationship.

But that link is increasingly severed, which also severs the most important link of all, the link to the ‘consumer’.

Planners are having less scope to go beyond primary research, to uncover the real truth and show clients possibility not of predictability. There is less of of planning as the first idea, more of planning as the first few slides.

A couple of days to do the set-up for creative work, then not even able to nurture the work itself.

As the relationship with client disappears (partly down to client services jealously guarding it as it becomes their only reason for being, but also because a transactional relationship makes the discipline nothing more than a powerpoint factory) there is more of just putting client research through a process, colouring in the client brief, or even just post rationalising creative work. Now let’s be honest, in many cases, post rationalising great ideas can be a good thing – but you need great ideas first and client service often doesn’t like them so they get filtered out. Or they allow mediocre creative to go unchallenged (but that’s another story).

Strategy was invented to be bridge between research and ideas, it was valued part of the client relationship. If it isn’t this anymore what the hell is it for?

So yes, here’s to account handlers, who do the most amazing job.

I’m obviously grateful because they allow me to do actual account planning.

I couldn’t do their job, but then again, neither could most client service.

50 small bits of advice forged by failure

It's common for people turning 50 to share the fruits of their experience.

I've just reached that milestone but I won't.

Because I know I'm nothing special.

Because most of these kind of posts are edited versions of the truth.

(Like the case studies that help no one)

Because failure is the greatest teacher.

Because it's useful to know that no matter how old or experienced you get, we all make it up as we go along. 

So I'm going to share 50 hard lessons, forged in the furnace of failure and fuck up.

 

Never crash into a the client CEO's car

Never be more than two drinks behind a client in any situation

Never click reply instead of forward to a client email

Never ignore someone who says you'll never make it to account director  because your grasp of detail is shocking

Never agree to lead the agency rebrand or positioning

Never work in an agency where you are judged by how many hours you put in

Never do an all nighter in a converted Church unless you have nerves of steel 

Never join an agency with a bad reputation that tells you it's changing

Never criticise someone else's work in an all agency

Never use pretentious words to look clever, it makes you look dumb 

Never write propositions like headlines, unless you want your brief to be ignored

Never get cross in creative reviews

Never get cross with people in LinkedIn

In fact never get cross, store the energy to do something about it - change what what you can, endure what you can't

Never speak first in a creative review - let others talk crap while you work our what you think

Never speak first in any meeting if you can help it

Never talk about a client on train, you never know who's listening (it lost someone I know a pitch)

In fact don't talk about work on a train full stop

Never stay in a job the moment you think you don't trust your boss

Never write a strategy with an ad in mind

Never write a great proposition, creative will automatically do the opposite - frame a problem instead

Never fail to serve good tea or coffee to visitors - little things say it the loudest

Never turn up to the wrong venue for a key client meeting

Never work with your client's offspring

Never question the research in the research presentation (kill it later)

Never assume a few people liking your blog or LinkedIn content makes you any good at the actual job

Never sell work with 'according to how brands grow'

Never believe case studies, they are the Instagram version of what happens

Never fail to actually try whatever you're being asked to sell

Never fail to actually shop for what you're selling

Never fail to meet your audience in real life (don't go to the zoo, go the jungle)

Never defend a strategy because it's cool

But never fail to persuade if you know when you believe in your work

But then again, never fight a losing battle

Never forget an idea that never made it, ideas are connections make it fit something else

Never refuse to post rationalise creative if you like it, good work is hard to come by

Never forget to be kind to junior suits,  they could end up as you boss, or a client

Never allow people in your team who clearly don't care about the work

Never do a job interview in lycra

Never tolerate a bully (they are still around)

Never fail to defend someone against a bully - one day it could be you

Never criticise another agency's work on LinkedIn

Never tell the client their pitch brief is wrong (let them discover how it inspired you)

Never bother stressing over a pitch until you have wasted half the time (some things never change)

Never write powerpoint without knowing what you want to say

Never lend books to colleagues, yoy never get them back

Never try and look smart - everyone hates smart arses

Never reject the obvious, everyone else does too

Never play contact sport with a client

Never take anything we do seriously, it really isn't life or death 

 

Solve real problems

So I had a bit if a cold recently and saw my work on the back of the tissue packet.

This is from a few years back. You may remember Keep Britain Tidy, who still exist to stop lazy Brits littering everywhere. 

They wanted to criticise litterers and make them aware of the scale of the problem.

I told them that would only reinforce behaviour, and a mere 're-brand' wouldn't work.

The thinking was a simple re-framing of the problem. UK folks are increasingly proud of their community (especially young folks, who are still growing in this area today would you believe) but don't connect litter to community spirit.

So the idea was to change the logo from 'Britain' which is too big and impersonal and show that every decision not to litter is little act of community building - my proposition was 'love where you live', which was buried in the client's literature already. 

And it really worked.

Nice to see they are still using it.

Oh, and the moral of the story is, define the real problem in the behaviour of real people driving the issue.

And, sometimes the client has the answer, they just don't know it yet. 

And yes, it's behavioural science in action, but really, it's simply thinking of people as people, not a 'target'. 

Incremental gains - real and illusion, they all work

 

I ride my bike a lot. A lot.

Consequently I’ve got quite fast and quite thin - and now tend to spend more than a couple of quid on kit that will make me go faster. Lighter wheels actually make me go quicker, deep rims on said wheels cut through the wind when I go over 20 miles an hour, which is more frequent than a man of my age might expect.

Controversially, as far as my wife is concerned anyway, I also own a couple of ‘aero jerseys’. Skintight tops that don’t flap in the wind and manage air turbulence. I haven’t the foggiest if these actually make go faster, but here’s the thing…because I feel faster, I go faster.

They’ve tested skin-suits on cyclists and found that the ones with bad design, that do naff all to slice through air resistance, make them go faster as they BELIEVE they will.

That’s right, you can con yourself into being better than you are. For a planner and agency folk in general, that’s massive.

Because the other things about all this overpriced cycling gear is incremental gains. Lots of little changes and adjustments can add up to a lot.

Your clothes, dressing like you think a brilliant planner should dress, will probably make that presentation easier to write, or put you on top form for that critical meeting. For some that might mean a corduroy jacket and spectacles. Others, I’m afraid think it means Birkenstocks and Queen T-shirts. But whatever works.

Your environment. I can be very critical of agencies who insist on locating themselves in Shoreditch, Manchester’s Northern Quarter or The Meat Packing District. I believe they need to be closer to where real people live and feed off that. But then again, if you believe you’re in a place full of creative energy, it will drive you forward in a way working in non-descript business park will not. There’s plenty of evidence working in a buzzing city makes you naturally better at creativity and ideas.

Your office. It’s easy to laugh at impossibly well designed, achingly cool offices, but they do help, as long as they’re places you can relax and flourish in, that foster collaboration and allow space to think alone. They don’t have to cost the earth, but they do have to suit you. I guess, whatever you think a brilliant agency looks like, make it look like that and it will actually make you a little more brilliant.

Your work-space and tools. Surround yourself with quality and what you think clever, creative people like and enjoy and it will rub off on you. If you think they drink amazing coffee, make sure you get an aero press. Overpriced fancy notebooks? Do it. Walls you can write on? Feel free.

Real incremental gains. But it’s not just the placebo effect, there lots of little things you can do that actually do work.

1. Choose your colour wisely. A blue room fosters deep thinking, a green room fosters creativity (the light wavelengths work on your brain in different ways). So put some green into your workshop. Put pot plants around the office.
2. Make caffeine widely available, it actually does stimulate brain function.
3. Read lots about everything. Ideas are just new connections between different things, the more you have in your brain, the more likely a new connection will form.
4. Enforce time outs. The subconscious works on problems for you. Which means you need to not think about stuff for a while as it does its work.
5. Talk to lots of people about your project. The mirror neurons fire when you talk to someone else, you see your work from another perspective and enables you to edit and precis a lot quicker. I often find a have a maddening ‘smudge’ of an idea or direction and talking someone else through it usually results in them saying, “So what you mean is…” Most of my propositions where written this way when I was in a creative agency.

Anyway, whatever works for you probably works, no matter what others might think.