Account vs Creative – Hatfield and McCoy’s
Account vs Creative – Hatfield and McCoy’s
Posted on 08/31/2009, by
DMC
Trust is lip service within the halls of many agencies. We’re fighting amongst ourselves in the turf war between the creative department and account services. Why do we fight at all? Lack of trust. Account people don’t trust creatives to speak to clients, don’t expect them to understand that the creative product has to meet marketing AND business goals. Creative people don’t trust account people to have enough backbone to walk into the client and sell the best creative or tell the client no for the right reason. So instead we fight for control when we should be working together to make the work and the client relationship as great as it can be.
Really, look around your shop and tell me how much of your best creative has ended up on the cutting room floor?
The real winner in this battle isn’t account or creative, it’s me. Your competitor.
The struggle between the account people and the creatives for control only leads to mediocre work, unsatisfied clients and churn within your shop. The only answer is to create a level of trust and cooperation within your shop. Here is how you do it. For my fellow account peeps – bring your creative team to client meetings. Let them see how challenging selling creative can be, allow them to participate in that conversation. And challenge your team to sell the business value of creative concepts internally. Isn’t that why we all write creative briefs in the first place? So everyone understands the business reasons why we need a new campaign?
For you creatives out there. Yes, everyone wishes (especially clients) they were as cool as the creative director. That’s not enough.You must be up to speed on all the issues your clients are dealing with – and how great creative and marketing programs can solve those issues. And please empower your account brethren with the tools to communicate the value of good creative so it can more easily be sold.
And the crazy truth is… wait for it… no one is in charge. Realize collaboration and trust do two things that you need to succeed – first, they allow you to work together to develop great creative (see the post on the sin of account people art directing here). Second, it allows you to create a unified front to the client – supportive of each other and all focused on creative that works best for the client’s business challenge. I won’t even go into detail on the business savings to the agency – fewer revisions, faster approvals, increased profitability of projects. And yes creatives, you need to care about these things. Maybe we’ll jump into these topics in a future post.
Or keeping on doing what your doing. Your competition thanks you.
What are you doing within your agency to create trust and raise the level of your work? We’d love to hear about it.
