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 

 

If you want better answers, ask less questions

If I was any good as maths, I would have been a physicist instead of planner. Such is life.

That said, I've always kept a passing fascination for the subject, especially particle physics.

There's a weird phenomenon when things get very, very small, which blows my mind.

You have to assume tiny particles are in multiple places at once, yet if you actually observe them, you affect their behaviour and they appear in one place.

In other words, the more direct questions you ask a tiny particle like an electron, the less reliable the answers you get back.

Researching real people is like that. 

Make them feel watched in a focus group and they'll tell you what they think the rest of the group wants to hear (or agree with the loudest mouth).

Even when you talk to then one to one, without knowing it, they'll won't tell you how they really feel or what they'll do.

Partly because they can't help telling you what they think you'll want to hear.

Partly because the mind plays tricks, the further away they are from the experience they're talking about, the less they'll remember or predict it right.

You could ask them questions in the wild, where the experience happens, this is much better. 

You'll still get a bum steer though, because the problem isn't just where and how you ask the questions.

It's asking the questions in the first place.

Asking questions about brands, new behaviours and most categories, like it is with electrons, changes their natural state.

Which is to not to give a flying fuck.

By asking questions, you're getting then artificially interested in things they usually just don't care about.

You're asking them to think about things that normally happen on autopilot, or not at all.

Even worse when we test creative and ask them what they think.

No one wants to think about advertising apart from the people who make it.

The first task of advertising is getting noticed in a busy world, yet most research forgets this.

Asking questions in research creates false interest and consideration.

Which leads to false answers.

So most research is a waste of time. Sorry.

If you want to know, don't ask. 

The things they never teach you number one- be more like waiter and less like a rockstar

There are some things you are formally educated on when you join an agency.  Like most clients expecting a clear role for communications, or the framework of issue/insight/thought.

Then there are more informal and craft rules you mostly get taught. For example, make the creative briefing as inspirational and focused as you can, because creatives always have briefs they'll put everything into... and briefs they'll just get out off their desks.

But there are things few really tell you, that you have to learn yourself, usually the hard way.

Much of that is about the work you do, even more is about how you do it.

Let's start with a 'how you do it' one. The best strategy types are like waiters, or like Satan.

We do our best work when people forget we exist.

It's a hard lesson to learn, but we rarely make anything. We create the framework for others to. The launchpad and the little nudges for the best, most effective work.

There's nothing more annoying than a waiter, or shop assistant who marks your every move, or asks if you need any help when you clearly don't.

Just as them not being there when you DO want them is equally frustrating.

The best feedback I ever got from a client was when they said, "We're not quite sure what he does, but when he's involved it's all easier and the things we get are just better". 

The worst feedback when I was a lot younger was, "Stop trying to do my job". 

Which means a big part of how you go about your day to day is losing the ego and being really kind and generous with your thinking. 

Because suits. creatives, media planners and whatever all get judged on the quality of their work and naturally need kudos for stuff that does well. If they get a sniff that you'll steal some credit (even if an idea is yours) they'll do everything they can to do the opposite.

Strategy types ultimately get judged on the quality of other people's work, the creative output, the media plan, if the work get bought without too much pain and suffering.

For example, the dark art of the imperfect creative brief (more on that another time)

The trick is strike the balance between appearing invisible and the people who matter knowing what you contribute. 

Of course, there are moments to own and shine. The trends presentation, the comm planning day, but still, it's amazing what happens when you approach it as time to energise others, rather than a chance to look good. 

This also applies to clients. Don't let anyone tell you you're the 'brains of the operation'. Especially clients - clients are the brains of the operation. Our natural response to smart arses is either to ignore them, or compete with them. Another time we'll go into the sneaky ways of making people feel it was their thinking all along.