There are exceptions at two ends of the spectrum: In the largest shops, assistant account executives are hired directly out of school and are put into formal training programs. Assistants are inoculated with progressive doses of responsibility. In the smaller shops, novitiates may step into account management roles from "general handiman" positions, merely because "they are a warm body." In either case, the opportunities are few and far between.
The account executive (AE) must be an excellent communicator both in terms of written and oral work. In addition, formal presentation skills are important along with informal skills. Above all, the AE must be able to deal with people.
As a program contributor, the AE must be analytical and alert to problems and opportunities. At the same time, creativity is critical.
As a project coordinator, attention to detail, patience, and the ability to systematically cover and plan all aspects of a program are informal training programs, trainees "rotate" through media, creative, production, traffic, and account service departments. Training consists of a mix of "over-the-shoulder" observation, "go-fer" work, and formal classes. Major benefits include meeting the players and getting the "feel" of the business. Duration: four to six months.
Learns ropes by participation. Lots of "go-fer" work. Some client contact. Limited input to decision-making sessions. Likely to spend consecutive "all nighters" on own interpretation of plan, only to find that a miniscule portion is used.
Responsibilities include evaluation of account management, personnel, client contact at upper levels, source sales, and coordination and planning over service accounts. May assign accounts to individuals. (Originated the concept of "three-martini lunches.")
Administration of the entire account management group. Personnel evaluation, planning, and control. Major sales (account acquisition) role. Participation in agency strategy. Some upper-level client contact. (Has lunch at five-star restaurants. Works in award-winning designer office.) important. Being able to motivate other contributors is also a factor in this role.
Education requirements are straightforward-get a college degree. If it happens to be in a field related to advertising, such as marketing, public relations, communications, graphics, and so forth, it wouldn't hurt.
Individuals with an M.B.A. or a related master's degree recei the lion's share of attention from the big agencies. Still, some undergraduates manage to sneak in; some because of contacts, some because 4.0 GPA's [and pristine purity in all things), and others because "bumble-bee" determination [nobody told them they couldn't).
The average individual is likely to require three things to breed into the business: (1) a few years of experience in a related field, (: determination and perseverance and (3) luck.
When I got out of the training program, I was an assistant ac-bunt executive for several months. Then I became an acting account executive about two months ago. They needed someone very quickly to like over a spot on one of the other accounts, because the planning period had just started. They assigned my boss to a new account, so just keep that I took over. I started in a sink-or-swim situation. I went from being an assistant on several accounts to being the acting account representative on two accounts. I was putting in a lot of weekend work.
Q - What are your responsibilities?
A - My responsibilities are to my clients. I have eight clients at the present time. The process starts with me coming up with program ideas or the year and recommending a suitable budget. My ideas are usually catered down somewhat by budget limitations, but we try to recommend more than the clients need or could afford, so they can pick and choose from this "menu." Thus we can come up with a program that night include a mix of advertising, public relations, editorial articles in magazines, literature, direct mail, or whatever else we feel the market would be most responsive to.
Time is money, especially in our business. All of us keep time meets, so that every quarter hour is accounted for. This is true for the creative department, the art department, the account executives, anybody who works on the account. They assign their hours or minutes to the account. This does not include the production department, because their responsibilities are so scattered and diverse it would be pretty hard for them to keep track of every phone call or note they have to write. So, they're part of our overhead as are the billing department and some of our administrative people. Anyone who deals with projects or with clients keeps a time sheet, so time is of the utmost importance. We bill our clients based on that time.
As an account executive my responsibility is to give people ii the agency work, guidance, and correct information, so they can do their work. For instance, I may have a research question that I need answered in order to design a test market. I contact the research people, tell then what the problem is, give them some background, ask how to find this out, or have them find it out. They'll talk among themselves and come back with a point of view, with which I may agree or disagree. We then go back and forth. Perhaps I have to get the client involved, because it could mean some cash outlay for research.
But I cannot order my research people to go do this or that. They may be assigned to my particular account, and they are there to serve my account when I need them. But they are also servicing many other accounts. So I'm actually competing for their time. Getting support people to work for you can be a problem because there are always crises. De pending on how efficient you are in giving good instructions and how easy you are to work with, you can get the work done a lot quicker and e lot better if you work with them rather than fight them. The same thing happens with creatives when you give them an assignment developing commercial executions of a particular creative strategy.
