442 The Marketing Book
As in any other kind of service organiza-
tion, the quality of after-sales customer service
is a critical factor in the winning of repeat
business, and it is the account handler’s job to
deliver it. In particular, his or (very often) her
role is to minimize the potential for culture clash
between agency and client. This is crucial
because the atmosphere and ethos of typical
examples of the former and latter could hardly
be more different. Agency creative types do not
sit opposite client R&D people at briefing
meetings; instead, brand managers report client
priorities to account executives, and account
executives propose agency solutions to brand
managers.
It follows that two skills in particular are
essential attributes of effective account execu-
tives:negotiationandco-ordination. The latter is
vital because one person is dealing on behalf of
a whole organization. Without it, advertising
campaigns will suffer the fate of the camel, to
be a horse designed by a committee, deadlines
will be missed, opportunities lost and much
more besides. They also need to be effective co-
ordinators and organizers.
Negotiation is not simply a matter of
standing between the two parties keeping their
respective specialists apart. An essential aspect
of the job is to be the advocatefor the point of
view of each side when with the other.
Although clearly employed by the agency,
account executives have to live in no man’s
land between agency and client. Certainly, if
the relationship is to endure, they must be as
conscientious in explaining the client’s needs
and attitudes to the agency people as they are
in advocating the agency’s solutions and atti-
tudes to the client – however irritating and
petty their colleagues in the agency may find
the client’s tinkering with creative treatments
or media plans. Divided loyalty is part of the
modus operandi– and a positive one, given that
the job remit is in effect after-sales service.
Not all exponents of account handling are
conscientious diplomats, negotiators, facilita-
tors, co-ordinators and organizers, however. As
a former board director of a large London
agency puts it: ‘The best account executives are
shrewd business operators and perceptive jud-
ges of advertising and human nature. The
worst are glorified bag carriers, ferrying mes-
sages back and forth between agency and client
with all the interpretational skills of a yo-yo’
(Mayle, 1990).
However effectively or ineffectively client
service is delivered in practice, this particular
working relationship tends to be shorter lived
than the norm in other professions. Several
surveys over the years have found that, in the
advertising business, the majority last less than
10 years (e.g. Briggs, 1993). The notably con-
sistent and effective advertising for BMW in
Britain that emanated over 25 years from a
single agency, WCRS, is the exception that
proves the rule. Ghosh and Taylor (1990) found
that there were five main causes of failed
working relationships in New Zealand and
Singapore, consistent with those suggested by
two earlier studies in the UK and the USA.
Those were: poor agency performance (a nota-
bly open-ended judgement); changes in agency
policy; changes in client policy; changes in
agency management; changes in client manage-
ment. They remark that a few respondents had
experienced all five at once.
It is thus clear that not only does the very
fact of delegation to an intermediary mean a
loss of control over strategy, but also that there
is an inherent tendency to instability in such
working relationships. In that case, one might
justifiably wonder why marketers do not in fact
execute their promotional campaigns in-house.
There are three key reasons.
First, they often cannot afford to pay the
very considerable salaries needed to recruit
their own experts in the particular disciplines.
Second, because promotional campaigns nor-
mally consist of discrete initiatives rather than
continuously evolving programmes, origina-
tors cannot keep such specialists fully occupied
throughout the year. They find themselves
paying for substantial periods of ‘downtime’, to
borrow an engineering concept. Lastly, few
marketing departments, if any, can offer the