What I wish I'd known about the brand side when I was agency-side
After years in agency account management, I now work alongside marketing teams on the brand side. From this seat, I can see what I used to miss. Four lessons for those still on the other side.
I spent more than six years in agency account management. It's a role that is, in my humble opinion, too often underestimated. I like to compare it to a tightrope walker whose balancing pole is being pulled on one side by the internal team, who always want to push ideas further, and on the other by clients who, even when they love work that breaks the mould, have to deal with their own imperatives, their budgets… and their own colleagues.
Today, even though I don't work directly with our agencies in my current role, I get to see client-side teams at work up close, and I realize how incomplete my picture of their reality was.
So here are a few recent observations, and what I wish I'd known back when I was in account management.
Lesson 1: Your project isn't the only thing on your client's plate
On the agency side, we often tend to think the big campaign we've been briefed on is the client's top priority. And while it's probably very important to our contact, it most likely sits on a long list of priorities.
Budgets to plan, long-term action plans to complete, reports to read, produce and analyze. Not to mention tools to implement, team issues to resolve and expected contributions to every other company priority. In short, it's not that the campaign the agency is developing isn't important. Quite the opposite. It's just far from the only important thing the client has to manage.
How can you be a better ally through all of this? Clear, regular follow-ups on what you need from the client, heads-ups on upcoming deadlines they can't miss, and saving the insistent reminders for the things that truly warrant them.
Lesson 2: Approvals take more than a quick email to Legal
Often, when we pitch an idea, especially one that's outside the box, we know the client will need to get additional approvals on their end. But we tend to think a quick email to their colleague in Legal will get the official green light, and that's that.
Unfortunately, it's rarely that simple. Beyond Legal, many other teams often need to weigh in: compliance, governance, brand, reputation, not to mention multiple levels of management. You name it! And in many cases, the people who need to sign off discover the project partway through.
What can the agency do? Account management has little control over these internal steps. What matters is building time for them into the schedule, and asking early who needs to approve and what they need to sign off on an idea.
Lesson 3: Help your client sell the idea
That's a lot of people to inform, to bring up to speed on the objectives, and to sell on the initiative. And since a creative idea is fragile, this is often where things fall apart. After all, your client will have to defend the idea in rooms you won't be in.
How can you equip them? A great agency presentation is just the beginning. What really helps the client is anything that lets them present the idea without you: a one-page summary that ties back to the business objective, ready answers to the questions you can see coming (risk, compliance, budget), and examples or data that reassure. In short, give them what they need to defend the idea as well as you would have.
Lesson 4: It ain't over till it's over
On the agency side, once the project is delivered, we might check in mid-campaign, then again at the end for a quick post-mortem, and that's usually where it ends. On to the next brief.
For a client, being able to build on past projects and learnings is a strategic strength that helps align internal teams. An agency partner who understands this and thinks beyond the campaign becomes an ally of choice.
In practice? It means ensuring consistency across mandates and initiatives in development: asking how a decision made on one project could improve another, and how to make sure the assets created can easily be reused down the line.
For even stronger relationships
By better understanding their clients' reality and supporting them where it really counts, agency teams strengthen their role as trusted business partners. A relationship that goes far beyond that of a simple vendor.
And the tightrope walker keeps their balance a little more easily.
