Think Twice Before Axing Account Management

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- His name doesn't appear on creative credits like the names Lee Clow or Duncan Milner do. But his importance to TBWA -- and one iconic client -- can't be overstated. He's also a dying breed. At a time when agencies are increasingly downgrading dedicated account-management roles, it's rare to find many James Vincents. When New York shop Amalgamated launched some years ago, for example, it did so without the function, and more recently Publicis-backed Bogle Bartle Hegarty is rolling out a new agency model that more directly ties senior executives to client business. 'Biggest marginalization' "There's just not as much talent in the middle as there used to be," said Jennifer Seidel, senior VP-agency relations and membership at the 4A's. "The account people [who are left] are expected to do more and more." "It's definitely the part of the business that's seen the biggest marginalization," said Marty Stock, who runs DraftFCB's MillerCoors business. "At a lot of places, it's devolved into basically a professional golf partner or lunch buyer." That reputation of account men as glad-handlers in grey wool suits, wining and dining clients, has been hard to shake. But people like Mr. Stock, who has spent more than 20 years in the beer category, are far from that mold. Ask him, and he'll say his job is to balance the creative and business objectives in order to best grow a brand. "If creative gets too important, you might as well go write a screenplay," he said. But if creative gets too reined in, the "magic" of a great campaign -- and its multiplier effect on sales -- isn't possible. And above all, Mr. Stock says "my job is to worry." That's something that clearly resonated with his client, MillerCoors' Chief Marketing Officer Andy England, who earlier this year told Ad Age that Mr. Stock "often knows I have a problem before I do." Helping team 'score' Mr. Stock worked on Anheuser-Busch brands at now defunct D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles before joining Foote Cone & Belding to work on Coors 21 years ago, and has seen virtually every imaginable mistake beer marketers can make play out; as such, he is well positioned to help his agency and its client avoid them in the future. "When I played football [in high school], I was a lineman, and my job was basically to clear out the obstacles so my teammates could score," he recalls. "I think it still is." It's a sentiment that Microsoft would agree with. "The single-most important piece for success for agencies we work with is actually orchestration," the company's chief creative officer, Gayle Troberman, told audiences at the Ad Age Digital Conference earlier this month. "Account management is the most important function in our agencies, not creative." In other words, shops just might want to think different.

Think Twice Before Axing Account Management

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