In my youth, feelings of gross musical inadequacy were common. I liked Blur, but my friends liked Blur more. I loved Tina Turner, but older family members knew the backstory far better. I rocked to Jagged Little Pill, but I could hardly lay claim to fully appreciating its genius. I was too genre-agnostic to be a true fan.
That is, until I grew up and realised that what I really loved was pop. The catchy choruses. The earworm melodies. The radio edits that give you everything you need and nothing you don't. The sheer VARIETY of what can be defined as "pop".
As Peter Robinson, the legend behind Popjustice, says: “Pop is not a different genre to all those other ones – it's the lightning rod that grabs the best bits of other styles and makes them all sound better."
And that, weary account people, is what brilliant account management and brilliant pop music have in common. People who are brilliant at the former are a little bit planner, a little bit creative, a little bit brand manager, a little bit producer. Just as pop music grabs the best bits of other styles and makes them sound better, they grab the best bits of advertising's cast of characters and give them the topspin required to bring them all together and produce amazing things.
But just as good and bad pop music exists, so does good and bad account management. And from my vantage point of fan, rather than practitioner, it’s clear how great account people pull it off. For that, I turn from pop music to TV…
Create the conditions, like Kirstie and Phil
Fans of Location, Location, Location know three things to be true:
That tricky conversations are best handled in a pub or, at a push, in a café
That staging matters – or else those whose homes are featured would not have tidied up to an extent I have never seen in "real world" house viewing
That people matter. Inside knowledge: a friend of mine appeared on the show and confirmed that Kirstie is, shall we say, a "presence" who inspires decisiveness.
Kirstie and Phil are the masters of creating the conditions for good outcomes, and so are great account people.
They spend time with the client outside meetings, building relationship capital to cash in later.
They cast the right people on the right briefs and with the right clients, knowing chemistry is everything.
They give everyone complete clarity over where next, even if (especially if!) the client struggles to do that themselves.
They strive to make as many conversations as possible face to face.
They get the right people in the room at the right time, being attuned to which conversations are run-of-the-mill and which ones might benefit from the gravitas of an ECD or agency principal.
They engineer the customer journey to put the client in the best possible mood. Welcome them at the door. Pre-order really good catering. Do a trial run in the room to avoid tech problems. Have printed back-ups.
And then they quietly orchestrate and stage manage the whole meeting so everyone feels in safe hands.
They are to the process of making advertising what Kirstie and Phil are to the process of buying a house. And without someone doing that job well, nothing gets bought.
Lead like Leo
Perhaps the only TV show I love more than Location, Location, Location is The West Wing, and specifically the President’s long-serving chief of staff Leo McGarry.
Leo is often cited as a fan favourite because he does two things that should act as inspiration to account people: he displays egoless leadership and he builds and exercises soft power.
First, egoless leadership. Great account people aren't successful because they're larger-than-life, gregarious characters. They're successful because they have extremely high emotional intelligence and they make room for all of the many egos involved in making creative work. They rarely demand the spotlight for themselves, instead feeding others’ need for it.
Second, soft power. Account people, like Leo, don’t typically have the luxury of hierarchy – you can rarely tell people what to do, be it clients or creatives or planners. Instead, you have to persuade, and sometimes that's a function of a great argument but more often it’s about the quality of a relationship.
Be Beyoncé to your core
I know how dispiriting life as an account person can feel: like you’re only on the end of horrible conversations; like your primary job is organising things; like you’re always in the room but rarely seen. But trust me, without you doing your job well, nothing good happens.
So be Beyoncé to your core. Love your job, because you (like pop music) are the lightning rods that grab the best bits of everyone else on the team and make them better. And by creating the conditions for good outcomes, by role modelling egoless leadership and by building and exercising soft power, you’ll be as important to the creative process as Carly Rae Jepson’s Call Me Maybe is to the world.
Ross Farquhar is marketing director of Little Moons, and a former managing partner at both Grey London and 101
Photo: Ariana Grande at the 2020 Grammy Awards (David Crotty / Getty Images)