- Be resourceful — every good account executive finds a way to get things done. This goes especially far with clients and your creative team. Jump through hoops to make their jobs easier. It will pay off in the end.
- Enthusiasm — advertising has its share of ups and downs, but often, you’re going to be the bearer of bad news. Telling the creative team they can’t fly to Europe for that big idea. Telling the client that they can’t frankenstein two creative ideas together into one. With all of the craziness that surrounds the world of advertising, agencies and clients rely on their account people to be enthusiastic and upbeat. Don’t be the account guy that mutes the client to talk trash about them. That only brings the whole team down.
- Respect — to be successful you have to respect people. So much of what we do is relational, so if you burn someone they will remember and be gun-shy of you for that next time you need them to stick around late at night or over the weekend. In fact, if you need your creative team, media team, planning team, or developers to come in on the weekend — bring the donuts. That’s seriously the least you can do, and full bellies produce results. In addition, just because the client said the copywriter needs to be “more creative” or “clever” doesn’t mean you need to pass that along that feedback verbatim to the creative team. You have to learn to build people up in the process.
- Pick your battles — one lesson I learned early on in my career was that you need to pick your battles. People have breaking points, and if you’re constantly nagging them like a dripping faucet they will grow to hate you. Sure, you can’t allow people to walk all over you, but pick your battles. When you review creative in an internal meeting, don’t dwell on the ideas that stink — talk about what you like about the work. No one wants to spend 30 minutes to an hour hearing the account team drone on about how the clients will never pick a piece of work. Just tell them what you like and what they can be encouraged to continue to refine. You will win more people over with encouragement than picking apart their ideas.
- Be proactive — last on the list, but perhaps the most important. As an account exec you have to be proactive. Anticipate what the client will say, anticipate what the creative team will need to be successful, anticipate what the planner would like to know from the client to build the brief, anticipate what sort of budget you’ll have for the media planners. However, anticipation is just part of the process. Once you’ve identified those needs, you need to act on them and be prepared to give an answer.
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