Account Service Thursday
The following is the fifth in series of articles written by Josh Copeland for people with careers in account service. This feature will appear every Thursday.
Last week I wrote a post recognizing the need to prepare a portfolio of my work to present during interviews and new business meetings. Since there isn’t really such thing as portfolio school for account people, I asked for your advice.
I heard some great things:
Art Director Amanda Trogus had plenty of feedback (thanks for that) – but one particularly noteworthy item: to include materials that contributed to a creative brief—even those that would have been provided by the client. There’s likely privacy issues with sharing proprietary information, so I’ll edit the amount of info I share, but the context is very relevant: because what clients provide always has an effect on what we in account service learn and then translate into a brief with useful insights.
I also spoke with a copywriter and colleague of mine at Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Jordan Buntain shared a number of jewels that I’ll be incorporating, but here’s a couple shiny ones:
- Show me what creative gets you excited to sell and what stuff would make you hate the job after 6 months of churning it out. Every client has good work and bad – show me you know the difference.
- Make sure your portfolio holds stuff you’re proud of and you want representing what you want to do next. Seeing as you didn’t make the creative, this could be hard, but pick the pieces that you would remake over again – and explain why. Use a breadth of work covering different industries, and bookend it with your two favorites. Start and end big.
Armed with this feedback and more, I’ve gone back into my archives (you save all your project work too, right?) and pulled together 21 examples of work from 11 clients. That’s way too many examples to discuss in one meeting, so I’m considering the following pieces..
- A comprehensive integrated campaign for a major CPG marketer (one that ultimately failed)
- A competitive insight in the consumer durables category
- Proven business growth in the energy sector
- Emerging technology risk that was successful
- A cogent digital marketing strategy for an architecture client
- Unique (I believe) insights in early childhood education marketing
My challenge now? Gathering the full results of each campaign and preparing the story… Here’s what I don’t know:
- Do I have enough time to highlight seven items in a short meeting? What do creatives do when showing off their work? Do they present the whole set?
- For those in account service, is it more relevant to focus on the insights gained or the business managed? My opinion would be the latter, but at this level I believe insights are an important differentiator…
- Do I prepare something to always leave-behind with my interviewers?
I’m up for more comments as I move into content development. What say you?
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Josh Copeland is a 10-year digital account service veteran with experience managing Whirlpool Corporation, ExxonMobil, Frito-Lay and the Clorox Company. Josh has worked for Tribal DDB, Arc Worldwide and Elevate Studios, and his campaigns have been featured in AdAge, Adweek, OMMA, ad:tech and Creativity Magazine.
9 Comments
An Account Guy’s Quest For A Portfolio – By @jbcopeland | Please Feed The Animals http://bit.ly/gaiHz #pfta
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Hey man, I don’t have a lot of insight into how to prepare an account service portfolio, but my one piece of advice would be this: for every piece of creative you show, be prepared to talk about what you gave the creatives that led to it, and how they used it to get there. It may seem irrelevant to talk about someone else’s creative process but I think it’s important to show you don’t just hand off the brief and wait, but that you understand how the creatives interpreted what you gave them and that you worked with them to craft the final piece.
Thanks Jim. Each agency views its discovery & strategy processes differently, and I’ll call that out. At some agencies I had more of a direct hand in the insight-gathering. At other places, we had a team of brand planners who focused on the brief piece with my input.
But I hear you speaking of the evolution of work too– and how I had a hand in pushing for what I think is better work. Maybe I’ll use one example to show that (I can think of one where it would really matter).
Thanks for giving me more to think about.
Kudos to a great idea and one that could make both your chances of landing a job and the agency that hires you better all-around.
I think the filter you run everything through is “how did I make the work better?”
examples:
-Did you take a convoluted strategy from the client and direct them into a unique key selling strategy that focused the creative to a winning campaign?
-Did you pre-sell any campaigns so that by the time the creatives presented their work the client thought it was a no-brainer to jump on a scary/new direction.
-What key insights/background/experience do you bring to the table that sets you apart from most “yes-men” Account Service folk?
I don’t think 7 examples is to many as long as you keep it focused:
-mission
-Key strategy points that you helped pull together
-Final Creative
-results
Of course you should have all the finer details ready if they want to go into further detail.
The only other advice I’d give you as a Creative about to how to pull a portfolio together is that our rule is:
Only put your very best work forward.
Still think this is a great idea: An Account Guy’s Quest For A Portfolio – By Josh Copeland – http://shar.es/1GqMj
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
What is your market?
Is it an advertising agency? Who are you trying to impress there? Is it a numbers person that would love to see your Excel charts, or creative that wants to know that you’re supportive of their vision?
These are all the tough questions that clients have as well. How do you help them define their communications strategy?
Are you showing only old world advertising or are you communicating that you know how to speak the new media language and can bring in that business in as well?
Ask your art director friends to share what other photographers are using to market their work. As freelancers we are constantly looking for new work.
Most of us include an email campaign and promo cards to the mix as well. Your audience isn’t jaded to this approach yet and they could be very impressed with this addition.
Thanks to @jbuntain’s advice on my portfolio— mentioned it in yesterday’s post on #PFTA: http://j.mp/2Mh9kw
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
@Amelie — I’ll keep those filters in mind. While I’m confident the seven I have are top-notch, I’ll consider the filters for the others I didn’t pick to see if any are relevant for one reason or another.
@Mark — Since I’ll have two “markets” (one for communications firms [ad/pr/digital] and one for direct consulting clients) I’m heavily considering a secondary portfolio for the consulting side. The potential clients there seem to care more about a wider net of knowledge and project guidance and care less about deep relationship-building.
One question though: are you suggesting I include an email campaign in my examples, or are you suggesting I create a listserv for interested folks to sign-up for? I’m not sure if email marketing is necessary (since I already utilize twitter, posterous and my blog to share ideas and connect with people).
Thanks to all for contributing ideas. It’s really helping me sharpen the focus.
I think the point here is that any creative you include should be a prop to ‘tell the story’. You are not trying to show off how good the creatives were, you are trying to show off how good you are. Sometimes the worst creative in the world can be ideal if it tells a good story about how you managed the process. I’m not so conversant with the offline world but if you are talking about the online world I would encourage you to develop a knowledge of overall end to end digital marketing strategy. I’ve included the link to show you what I mean. Hope you don’t mind. All too often digital is thought of as a production task which is focused on individual disciplines like Search, email, social media, media buying or web design, but I think clients are looking for an overall solution that is joined up. Showing you have an understanding of that and demonstrating how you created and delivered a brief to the creatives from that point will stand you in very good stead.
Anyway hope that helps.
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