Now, the thing to remember about the account director is that he or she isn't a creative. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It's an important point -- not least because, without exception, they always think they are.
How many times, for example, have you sat in a meeting where the account director has "a great idea"? Except, of course, it isn't a very good idea at all. It's crap. But while you can tell the account executive to shut up and get out, the account director, by merit of the width of his or her shoulder pads alone, commands a little more respect. Only a little though.
So the "great idea" hangs there like a sweat stain in the crotch of your running pants because no one is prepared to kill it quickly enough. And that's fatal, because now the account director's off on one about how the client will "luuuurrve" it and how they could really see it working "with maybe a photo shoot in the Bahamas or something..."
But that's always going to be the thing with account directors. I mean, no one sets out in life to be an account director. No. You set out in life to be an advertising or marketing creative genius. You worship at the shrine of Saatchi, Parker and Puttnam and you truly believe that you're better than all of them. You just need the chance to prove it. But if you can't draw or colour things in nicely and your ideas are actually total crap, well, you're pretty much screwed. And that, ladies and gentlemen is where account directors come from.
Just imagine traveling through life like that for a second. I mean, every single morning when the account director looks in the mirror they're thinking, "God, I'm a failure". Which is tough, but it's also divine retribution for their being such big-mouths. It also kind of explains why they're so stressed and arsey all the time around the office. Obviously, they'll claim it's the pressure of strategic planning and budgetary spreadsheeting, or whatever it is they do. But when you strip away the dental-flossed veneer of account handlery, the stress is there because they're crap at drawing and their ideas suck the big one.
In fairness though, once in a very blue moon, the account director will actually stumble their way on to, over or across a plausible concept. More often than not, this will be an idea that the creative team have been kicking around for a while, but hasn't been considered good enough. The account director will pick it up, claim ownership and threaten to "scream and scream and scream until I'm sick, sick, sick" unless the concept is worked up for them to present. Anything for an easy life, eh?
So come the day of the big presentation, it's no real surprise to find the account director spending 10 seconds on each of the other three killer concepts and then proceeding to wax lyrical for the next hour-and-a-half on "my idea". On a bad day, the client will approve it -- for two reasons mainly. Firstly, because it's lunchtime and they're hungry. And, secondly, because the jury's still out on precisely how many degrees of separation there actually are between "client" and "account director".
The account director returns to the nerve centre of the agency with arms uplifted and palms outstretched as if they'd scored the decider in the World Cup and demands that everyone "KNEEL before Zod!". Oh please. Why didn't their mothers just give them a colouring set a couple of years earlier?
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