February 28, 2010 /
Agency Accountability
Early on in my career I noticed that there was a distinct difference between those who succeeded as agency professionals and those who didn’t. Then, as I got out amongst clients and other business executives, the distinction held true. The difference was very apparent and it all hinged on one key attribute – accountability. Those who took ownership of everything they did, took responsibility, they were the ones who succeeded in their careers.
Coming up on the creative side of the business, I had the advantage of seeing lots of agency cultures (translation – I jumped around a lot to get my salary up). I quickly realized that this distinction that separated one individual from another also separated one agency from another. In fact, it made some agency’s work far more creative than others. Those who took full and complete ownership of everything they did usually did more effective, arresting, creative work. They thought of things the client needed to do without waiting to be told what to do. The invented, they pushed…they simply cared more.
How and where this shows up in the agency business may surprise you. If it’s really in a company, then it has to be in it from top to bottom. It has to be cultural.
Want to find out if this kind of accountability is in your agency? Send them an email and see how long it takes to get a response. Call them after hours and leave a message. See what time in the morning they call back. Chances are, their response time will be very rapid. After all, they’re your agency for a reason (and there’s a lingering recession). But if it’s not, then you might want to examine a few other things, like the results of your marketing compared to your competitors. Are you being pushed by your agency? Are they showing you things that would truly move the needle? Are they showing you ideas you didn’t ask for?
I see this kind of accountability in Planet Central and I see it in unexpected places.
We have 3 offices which work as one on projects. I recently sent some revisions to one of our art directors in Richmond to make changes on a print job. Within minutes, my IM lit up with a PDF. The changes were already dropped in. The piece had already been spell checked and proofed. All literally within 15 minutes. Back when I was running a big New York ad firm, such changes would have taken over half a day, minimum. Here, the ownership taken by both the art director and the account executive were instant. This gives us a competitive advantage over our competitors and that is the ultimate goal of any corporate culture as far as I’m concerned.
