Welcome to Episode 46, with Robert Solomon. He’s the author of the must read book for anyone in agency account management, ‘The Art of Client Service’.
In this chat, we talked about:
- why there are fewer account managers doing more with much less experience
- why some people believe the account manager role is becoming extinct and what we both think about that
- and why often the work of great account management isn’t recognised.
Robert also talks us through his approach to managing difficult client conversations. And we talk about so much more.
Robert’s book, along with his workshops and his coaching have become foundational to building a new culture of client service and collaboration at many organisations of all different types and sizes and geographies. Robert is the founder of Solomon Strategic, and he provides marketing counsel to ad agencies, clients, and those in marketing looking for behaviour change. Robert, in his career, was a senior executive at several US based international advertising and marketing agencies. He was president and CEO of Rapp New York, president of direct and digital marketing at Ammirati Puris Lintas, General Manager of FCB Direct West and Senior Vice President and associate partner at Digitas.
Transcript:
Jenny 00:02
Robert, I’m so thrilled to be speaking to you today. I really am. Do you mind starting off by just talking a few minutes about why you wrote this iconic book that is ‘The Art of Client Service’?
Robert 00:14
Well, thank you for having me, Jenny. It’s a pleasure to be here. And let me start by, there’s two answers. There’s a short answer, and there’s a slightly longer answer. The short answer to why I wrote the book is this, I wrote it because no one else wrote it. So I was running a couple of divisions at an agency you might know it’s called Ammirati Puris Lintas. BMW’s very famous agency. And I had a pretty big group and I went looking for a book to help train my young account people. And I couldn’t find one. I found a number of books, including David Maister’s, ‘The Trusted Adviser‘ and ‘Clients for Life‘, a couple of very good books, but they were consultant focused. So there was no book on advertising account management client service. So I wrote the book. So that’s the short answer, I wrote it because no one else wrote it not because I was qualified, or because I can write it better than you could write it or better than Andrew Robertson could write it, or Shelly Lazarus could write it. I wrote it because no one else wrote it, I couldn’t find a book, so I said, well, I’ll write it. So that was the first one. And then the longer reason is I sort of came to a very funny insight. I actually thought, Well, if you do great work, and Ammirati certainly did great work. If you do great work, everything will take care of itself, clients will love you. Well, I discovered that isn’t the case, I said, you can do great work, and clients can really despise you to the point of firing you. So I actually discovered that great work doesn’t lead to a great relationship, it’s the other way around. A great relationship leads to great work. And I don’t want to bore you with the details. But I sort of go into this in the book where I explain how a great relationship allows you to do really, really wonderful work based on trust. And that’s the other reason I wrote it, because I needed to reinforce with all the people who thought great work will lead to a great relationship. No, no, it’s exactly the opposite of great relationship leads to great work. And here’s how you build the relationship. So that’s really the answer to the why of the book. And by the way, Jenny, I’ll just tell you. It’s one of the reasons why the book is existed for as long as it has, you know, in its third edition now.
Jenny 02:33
So that line you just used that good relationships lead to great work. It’s been quoted back to me by the community of agency account managers. So I think that’s one of the most, you know, stand out quotes from the book. And for those people who, you know, the few people that haven’t read it, could you just give us a short explanation for why because I think it would be valuable. I obviously have read it, so I know, but I would love short, just the short answer.
Robert 03:04
So I this is this is what we usually say, when someone asks me this question. Most clients are pretty risk averse, you know, they don’t want to gamble. Because great work is usually pushing the envelope. I mean, you’re, you know, if you think about legendary commercials, like Apple’s 1984, and I tell a wonderful story about how that actually came into being. Or if you think about the iconic work, and I’m sorry, I’m going to quote mostly us advertising because I’m more familiar with it. Although I’m a huge fan of John Heggerty and all the great work that comes out of London and I’m a huge fan of what gets done in Australia. Long story short, great work means that clients have to take risk, and most clients if left to their own devices will retreat to the safe, the average or even the mediocre. So if you want to push for great work, you’ve got to build a relationship based on trust. So to me, if you look at the clients who have done iconic work, Apple with TBWA\CHIAT\DAY, Wieden+Kennedy with Nike, Crispin Porter Bogusky with the Mini, if you could have a list, you’ll find that there is a deep and abiding relationship built on trust that preceded the creation of great work. I mean, if you understand the Steve Jobs story for a second, you realise that when they brought the commercial to Apple’s board at the time, this is in Job’s first tenure. The board turned it down. And they said, Well, where’s the product? We don’t understand this commercial. And it was Steve Jobs literally said if you guys won’t run this commercial on the Superbowl, it was a long time ago, I’m going to pay for it myself. Now running a commercial on the Superbowl at that time, it’s like $6 million. It’s now in US dollars, it’s $500,000. So he was gonna write a cheque to do it anyway, the board relented, and the commercial has descended into advertising heaven. It is like the most famous commercial that’s ever been made here in the United States, and it aired only once. So it’s a story, you know, people say it’s a story about great work. And I said, No, it’s a story about a great relationship between Steve Jobs and Steve Hayden, and Lee Clow. Lee Clow and Steve Hayden were the people who put that advertising together for Jay Chiat at TBWA\CHIAT\DAY. And with that, I’m going to be silent, because that’s enough of the reason why relationships matter.
Jenny 05:55
Amazing, thank you so much for explaining that, because I just can see exactly why that would be true. So obviously, your book has been described as the industry Bible. So many account managers. It’s true. And so many people, when we’ve corresponded online, lots of people have dived in and, and complimented you on the book. What do the readers tell you about the book? Is there any particular part of the book that they find particularly useful? What do people actually tell you has been the most revelatory parts of the book for them?
Robert 06:30
You know, it’s funny, because in thinking about that, I think there are a couple of sections that jump out, I mean, the book, this is like going to a restaurant and say, What do you recommend and the chef and the waiter comes back to Oh, it’s all great, which is useless to you, because that’s not what you’re asking. You’re asking what do you think stands out? So I could answer, oh, the whole book is great. That’s not the answer you’re looking for. I think there are maybe three things that matter. One is I wrote, for this most recent edition, I realised there was a whole bunch of account management tradecraft that was missing in the previous second edition. So I created an eight chapter section called How to, which is all about tradecraft. It’s rather meeting how to brief a client. It’s how to write a conference report, it’s how to do a budget, it’s how to do a schedule, it’s how to do proposals and chapter by chapter, I walked through a kind of blocking and tackling that you need to do, because I realised that it used to be, back when I was a little younger, I was a younger account person, you can get trained here, and I am reminded of your, you’ll forgive me, Jenny, I’m going to say, your little rant about I can’t take it anymore. And I’m reading this as Oh my God, I mean, Jenny’s going through the same thing that I’m going through here. People don’t train their account people anymore, they sort of they hire them and they alright go with God. I mean, there’s a little bit, so how to was actually pretty important. So I’m not going to assume the very famous quote by a newscaster from an old time ago, a guy named Eric Sevareid. He said, don’t ever underestimate anyone’s intelligence. They’re smart, but don’t overestimate their knowledge. And I felt like, I know people are smart, but they’re not all that knowledgeable. So let me see if I can do this How To. So that was the first thing that I realised that people have told me, that’s super important. I actually do a workshop called How To, which goes through a bunch of these things. So that’s one thing. The second thing that I would say people have pointed out to me, I also do a workshop on this, is on creative briefs. Because so many of the agencies I work I mean, you’re nodding your head so I’m guessing this is true. So many agencies that work with their planners. The planners are mostly charged with the responsibility of doing briefs, but I’m looking at agencies that don’t have planners. I work with a lot of media shops that don’t have players. I work with smaller entrepreneurial firms that don’t have planners, I work with some digitally focused agencies that don’t have planners. So doing a brief if there is a brief at all, for to the account people and they’re not equipped. They’ve never been trained. You’re nodding your head now, so you sort of know so the section on creative briefs is pretty darn important. And because I sort of walk everyone through, this is how you do a brief and I devoted a whole section to it. I didn’t put it in the How To because it deserves a whole section because in my mind, this is an opinion, you can certainly disagree with me, a creative brief is the single most important document an agency creates for itself and for its clients, because the product of the agency is the greatest work. That’s the output and I will tell you I’m going to quote a very famous writer Martin Puris, my ex boss from our office. Ammirati Puris. Martin would say 80% of work fails before the first word of copy gets written, because there is no brief or it’s a bad brief. You do a good brief, there’ll be good work, you do a bad grief, there will be bad work. So I think creative briefs is the second thing that really, really matter. And I think the third thing is the section on new business. Now, I did cover new business in the previous editions, but I really felt like I needed to aggregate it into a section. So I did. And again, I didn’t want to assume that everybody understood how new business is essential to the survival of an agency. You know, if you don’t grow, you’re going to die. I know, as much as I care about developing and nurturing your existing clients, I’m a realist, you’ve got to add new clients. Because certainly, you need to give your people new opportunities. And if you don’t grow, there aren’t those opportunities. So new business is key to survival. So it seemed utterly central to me, that that’s the thing that stands out. So those are the three things that I think people have come to me and said, these are the things that are valuable.
Jenny 11:11
I can totally see why. And that’s 100%. I was nodding my head throughout that thing. Absolutely. You’re absolutely right, Robert, my rant on LinkedIn that that famous kind of post, it was just it came from the soul, the heart. Also, you can probably identify with this, as a young account executive writing briefs, I’ve kind of trembled as I go into the creative department. And I’ve had briefs thrown back at me my face, you know, go back and do it again. But you’re right. I mean, that was my whole rant was about the lack of training. So tell me, what do you see as the biggest mistakes that agency account managers make? Don’t say, where do we start?!
Robert 11:57
I’ll do a couple then I want to go back and I want to make an observation. I’m going to stop right here and digress. I want to make an observation about your first post and, and 1000s of people who wrote you, you touched a chord there with people when you wrote that, and you said it came from the heart, I could tell that it came from the heart. Um, so that was incredibly important. And if there’s another observation, I said I had two and I’ve lost the other one. So we’ll just stop right there. But let me go on and answer your question. What are the mistakes that people that people actually make? Well, the first thing is, and they don’t show up, they don’t follow up. Now show up has become a little more conditioned by COVID, you know, but in the old days, pre COVID, you would be invisible. So that would be the first thing I remembered that years ago, I was working a Digitas. I was a line account guy. And American Express was my client. So we were up in Boston, which is still the headquarters for Digitas. And we would fly down in New York City, and I would fly down to New York City three days a week, three days out of five, I was in Manhattan, at American Express, walking the halls, trying to basically for lack of a better term troll for business. So I got stopped in the hall by one of my clients one day, and he made an observation to me that I think it’s quite telling. He said, Hey, Robert, aren’t you guys up in Boston? I said, Yeah. And he said, you know, my primary agency is Ogilv and they’re up the road, I mean they’re like 15 minutes by car to get down here. I never seen them. I never seen him. And you you’re in Boston, I see you all the time. That really stuck with me the show up part. Now, it’s gotten a little harder and we can address this later with COVID. But there is a way to deal with that. Show up is one thing and the only thing that I would say is follow up. You know, I don’t know how many people who say Oh, client wrote me, I’ve got to do an answer. Three days later, they haven’t responded to client. And the one thing that if you ask clients, when I said one thing they really hate, they hate to be ghosted. So just the sheer fact of acknowledging, Hey, I got your email, I got your voicemail, got your text message. I’m working on it, I’ll get back to you by x, that’s all you need to do. So follow up with a second thing. So that that is your those are pretty big issues. I will tell you this another thing that account people sort of are a little deficient in, which is they don’t communicate as clearly concisely and as frequently as they should. And so you know, I do a whole section in the book about called Speak Up, which is about this. So in any event, that’s the second thing. And then the third thing and I think this is important, I think many account people lack an understanding of a client’s broad based business, and the nuances of the business, they’re not conversant in what clients care about. They think the client’s life revolves around advertising. And that is a small portion of most clients every day reality. So those are the three things, I guess or four things.
Jenny 15:26
Okay, I want to ask you something on this, Robert, this is going to is it slightly left field. But I come across a lot of account managers and different types of agencies, not just advertising, you might have app development agencies or, you know, website development agencies, lots of different types of agencies. And the whole thing about an account manager showing up, and also understanding the client business, showing up meaning walking the halls, looking for new business, looking for opportunities, that takes a time and a focus. And what I find is a lot of account managers have the title of account management, but they’re actually doing this hybrid role of a lot of project management, a lot of kind of tactical delivery, a lot of scheduling, and that piece of their role dominates. Rather than having the headspace and the freedom to look for growth opportunities, look for ways to adding value, understanding the environment. Do you agree? Have you have you found this? And if so, what are your thoughts on that?
Robert 16:32
Well, first of all, I do agree with you, I think what’s happened is certainly at the larger agencies, there’s a whole layer of client service and account management that’s basically been eviscerated. It’s gone, because the big agency holding companies have in order to , their harking to Wall Street more than anything else. So if you’re an Omnicom or a WPP, or an IPG, you’re worried about your share price and in order to make their numbers they need to. They’re not growing on the top line, so what do they do, they cut their way to growth. So you have fewer account people doing more and more work and you have more junior account people doing more and more work and a whole cadre of more senior experienced veteran account people are gone. So you are a young less equipped account person, not very well trained. And if you have a choice between in my 8,10,12 hours a day that I’m going to work am I going to devote my time to try to understand the client’s business which means immersing yourself in it being there on the ground asking a lot of questions reading a lot and observing a lot not only about your client but about your clients competitors or am I going to move this project from point A to point B you are going to default to moving from point A to point B and this is what happens. Now clients are, I think they’re a little unrealistic here perhaps because they’re expecting you to be completely conversant in their business and at the same time do 12 gazillion projects all that were due yesterday because times schedules are getting so compressed so I think this is absolutely the case so if you are encountering people who are just expressing this kind of deep seated frustration with you I’m in violent agreement I know this is happening and yet I know clients get frustrated with it, what do they do? Their answer is we’ll put the account in review and we’ll find somebody else it’s like serial dating. It’s the worst decision a client make
Jenny 19:01
I think there’s some I mean some of the agencies that I deal with and like you say they are struggling in their role I mean some of them even have trafficking on top of you know another thing to do which is trafficking jobs around the agency. But I think it’s it’s sometimes down to the agency owner to separate the roles to say right project management are going to be responsible for the trafficking, the scheduling the cost estimates, the timelines etc. and account managers are then given them free rein to develop that relationship. I think the other thing and I’d love your thoughts on this is when you do meet an account manager with that hybrid kind of role, they have a natural propensity sometimes to be one or the other. You know, I can see you’re an account man through and through, but I I’ve encountered a lot of the more sort of default project managers who are less inclined to want to walk the halls, less inclined. to to want to develop and nurture the relationships. Do you agree as well? I’m just curious.
Robert 20:05
I will tell you Jenny. I’m a little ambivalent on this because I understand the role of project management. And by the way, I go back far enough in advertising that project management sort of evolved out of the traffic function. And you may remember this too, we had traffic as a department, which was mainly responsible for two things, building schedules and literally, literally the word traffic isn’t meant figuratively it was meant literally, they literally would walk around the work to secure approval. So you know, someone would do, I’m going to use an old term, an old storyboard, now it all gets done electronically, but they literally would take storyboards around and get the signature from media, and production and account management, and they would secure it, they go to the client, they do all that. And they manage schedules. Well, project management kind of grew out of that. But what’s happened here is, this is something I’d love to discuss with you, because what I’m seeing is planning has co opted the strategy function. Project Management, has co opted the execution function, and account people who are sort of in the middle, no longer know what their remit is. This is what’s happened. And so, account people have lost their strategic chops. They no longer are responsible for moving things from point A to point B, and I have one client, tell me, very senior guy. A CEO of a major health care agency, by the way, who said to me, Robert, the reason I’m bringing you in for a day of workshops is my account, people have become glorified appointment schedulers. What they do when a client makes a request is they can’t solve it themselves. They gather people in a room, and they let the experts solve it. And what’s happening is account people are becoming extinct, they no longer know what they need to do. So I want you to come in and actually reintroduce them to the world of account management. So I’m a little ambivalent about the whole issue about this because on one hand, you think, well, I’m an account person, and I’m saddled with a lot of execution. But on the other hand, in the agencies that have project management, they don’t do the execution. So they’re sitting in their offices, and well, what do I actually do today? I don’t do strategy. I don’t do execution. I’m the owner of the client relationship, but I have no currency with which to trade to. And so I actually think there are some people, I hope they’re in the minority, but I think there are some people who think that account people are becoming extinct; we’ll have creative, we’ll have planning, we’ll have project management.
Jenny 22:59
I think that definitely is what some people are saying, I do not think that they are extinct. And I think there is definitely a role here, which I think, I believe is a commercial role. It is the one that drives the business forward that looks for growth opportunities, that has a future value focus. And they’re responsible for spotting the trends, bringing ideas before the clients thought about them, in order to capitalise on opportunities or move away from challenges. I think the strategists are very absorbed in the weeds in the deep, deep depth of however many accounts they’re working on at one time. And obviously, we’re talking about multiple different sizes of agency. So every agency is going to be slightly different. But I do believe I’ve been contacted, Robert, by smaller agencies who have got rid of the account management function altogether, who told me that they had some fantastic blue chip clients, but they no longer have them. And I think, Oh, I wonder why that happened. Because, if you want the client to deal directly with the designer, and the designer perhaps doesn’t have the drive or the skill set, or the want to nurture that relationship to kind of look for more business to offer more ideas, they just want to do the work they were given, then obviously, that relationship has got a shelf life, because at the same time, I’m going on a rant now, but your clients are being contacted by multiple different agencies, all bursting with brand new ideas to give them to take them away from you. So it is a constant kind of continuous job. So I don’t know what you think about that.
Robert 24:47
What I tend to agree. I tend to do this little, I do this little four box chart that I try to describe the roles and responsibilities of these groups. I say, look, the creative people are the voice of the agency, because they create the product. And the product is a basically the manifestation of your agency in it. And the creative product, generally, is what distinguishes average agencies, from good agencies, and good agencies from great agencies. So I say the creative are the voice of the agency, and that I say, well, the production people and, to a certain extent, the project management people are the voice of authority, because they’re the experts, they have the technical knowledge. So whether you’re a programmer, you’re doing HTML coding, or you’re doing traditional production for television or print, and you have the technical knowledge, or you’re even a project manager who has the technical expertise in scheduling and budgeting and whatnot, you are the voice of authority, and then I go and I say what are the planners? They are the classic voice of the consumer. With the consumer being defined broadly, the consumer can be a B2B entity, or it can be a B2C entity, and it can be highly specialised, or can be very general, but the planners are the voice of the consumer, they are the ones who mirror back to the agency; this is what our marketplace is telling us. And then I say what are the account people? You’ve got the voice of the agency, the voice of authority, you’ve got the voice of the consumer, my position is that they account people are the voice of reason. They are the people who are the great, for lack of a better term, they’re the great orchestra conductors, s my friend, Christy Faulkner likes to say. These are the people who pull it all together. And they are the ones who are the great problem solvers. And they are the ones who look most deeply into the clients business, and at the competitive set, and look for strengths and weaknesses and look for opportunities. So this is what I think agencies need to reclaim for their account people, they need to understand that their account people have not a less important role, but a bigger and more complicated role than ever before, I will tell you life was a lot easier when it was confined to: we’ll make a TV ad, we’ll make a print ad, we’ll make a radio ad. Life is much, much more complicated.
Jenny 27:34
Agreed. I think not only do they have to understand multiple different channels. But I’m really glad that you brought that point up because I 100% agree. They have that emotional intelligence, to be able to pull people together to make it all work and still be sensitive enough to how it’s going down. So that they can jump in and steer things in the right direction. I’ve seen so many masters of account management, stop a meeting, and just turn to the client and say can we just tap the brakes? Can you just let me know how we doing on this? Having the courage, the bravery, the emotional. I keep calling it emotional intelligence, but it’s that social awareness. So it’s a bit of an intangible, isn’t it?
Robert 28:22
Oh, absolutely. And you’re 100% right
I think so much of great client service work gets done in the moment. And almost doesn’t ever get acknowledged. There is that point in a client meeting where a really prescient account person, forget rank for a second, has a sense of not just what’s being said, the text of what’s being said, but the subtext, what’s not being said. And then has the presence of mind in that moment to craft the perfectly calibrated question, which the client may not have even known it needed to ask.
This is the kind of perception I think you’re sort of alluding to or driving at, and it is hard to teach. It is much more instinctual than anything else. And I will remember as a young account person, how did I develop this muscle, basically because it wasn’t born in me it wasn’t innate. And I will tell you, the one thing that helped me and I don’t know if this is still true, but it was true back when I was a line account person, I watched some amazingly talented senior client service people in the moment, demonstrate that skill. From years ago when I was at Foote, Cond Belding, there was a wonderful account person named Jane Gardner. We were talking with a precursor to Verizon, it was the old Pacific Bell on the west coast of California and Jane, in the moment with the CEO of the company had the perfectly calibrated observation to counter what that client was saying in the nicest possible way. It was a piece of brilliance that was lost. It was immediately perishable, Jenny, it just disappeared. It’s like air. And yet, it was so stunning to me to watch her actually handle this. And by the way, that’s one example of dozens of really, really good people in the moment during the very thing that was needed. There is a colleague of yours. He’s a UK native, his name is William Eccleshare, I don’t know if you know him, a very senior guy. He worked for Clear Channel. Many years ago, he worked in Ammirati, very senior guy, very thoughtful guy had a moment in a meeting where he stopped a client cold with the perfectly calibrated observation and question about a situation, the client was beating up the agency. And William had the courage to your point, to start to stand up and say, this is not right. By the way, there’s a story about the legendary David Ogilvy stopping a meeting and saying, we are no longer going to work with you, because you are no longer going to beat up my people. And, I think it’s a story that’s in either ‘Confessions of an Advertising Man’ or ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’, I’m not sure which, but it’s a pretty legendary story, where he said, we are no longer going to represent you, we’re not going to be your agency, because you cannot treat my people like that. And you cannot treat this agency like that. And here here for him, even my agency, Ammirati & Puris at at a moment when BMW put the account in review Ralph Ammirati, the name on the door, he was the person who said, we will not defend this account, we have done great work for this company for many, many years. We are the creators of the ultimate driving machine. And we will not actually defend this account. It was an act of bravery at the time. So to your point, yes, there are moments like that. And how do you learn it? You learn it from others. The problem today, Jenny, there are fewer people to learn it from.
Jenny 32:36
That’s that’s certainly true. I can see that totally. But I’m glad that we’ve had this discussion, because I do think it’s that missing thing that people don’t talk about that it’s so hard. And a great account person can spot another account person and it’s brilliant, isn’t it? It is and only another account person will recognise it. Exactly. It’s lost on people.
Robert 33:00
I mean, there are a lot of people assembled in the room, there’s some creative people, maybe there’s a planner, some production folks, whoever, and media people, the only person who will acknowledge this little kernel of brilliance is probably another very self aware and in touch account person. I mean, so much of the best tradecraft gets done, never gets recognised, the truth is. Because really good account work is invisible. It is, you know, it’s pretty perishable stuff.
Jenny 33:36
I was just thinking someone listening to this thinking, wow, but we’re allowed to celebrate account management, because sometimes I think they get a bad rap. There was a report in the IPA saying, is this the end of account management? And there were lots of kind of negative comments. And I personally think it’s one of the hardest, probably the hardest job, because it is so multifaceted. But listen, I’m desperate to ask you a question about, because it’s something that lots of account managers ask me, is how do I deal with difficult clients? And when people ask you the same question, what’s your kind of go to pieces of advice for them?
Robert 34:21
Well, you know, we all have difficult clients, you know, we absolutely do so. And I actually teach a workshop called ‘One agency meltdown equals two clients disasters equals three difficult conversations, and how to navigate them’ because I literally do this kind of case history problem solution approach. I talk about serious problems. And I will tell you,
clients get upset about three things, basically, they get upset about money. I mean, if you reduce client issues, they’re about money. They’re often about the schedule – meaning money is ‘we don’t have enough’; schedule – ‘there’s not enough time’; or the work, ‘it’s not good enough’. I mean, there are other things that can happen. But they’re ancillary.
These are the three things that really, these are the problems that actually happen. And so I tried to deal with this. And one of the things that I will often say to people is sometimes it’s a matter of casting. So there are moments in time where your chemistry and the chemistry of the client isn’t going to work. I mean, it happens. So when I have a client who comes to me and says, I am unhappy, the first thing I think about do I have the right people in this business? Could I reshuffle my client service deck, move someone from here to there, they might be a little better suited move this other person over there, maybe it will work a little better, because the change will actually be salutary. So I looked at casting first, do we have the right people and with no criticism here, because I’ve been the world’s worst client service person for some people. I will tell you I’m going to digress for a second. I had a client at American Express, her name was Ann and she was a wonderfully brilliant woman, she ran a big division for American Express. And she hated me. She absolutely hated me. But Jenny, she loved my creative director, Christine Bastoni, she loved her. And so what I would do, I couldn’t change the casting, I was running the American Express account. So the only thing I could do was fire myself. So I couldn’t do that. But what I could do is I would recede into the background at any meeting I would disappear. If I wouldn’t say to Christine, look, I will introduce you, I will get out of the way in 30 seconds. And this will be your meeting. And I will tell you that Christina and Ann had this curious bond that was a mystery to me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care. So I just what I wanted to make sure was that he was happy. And if she wasn’t happy with me, she could be happy with someone else. I had another client now. I was working with the founder. This is also American Express and I was working with the founder. This is an example of finding a way in. I was working with the founder, Michael Bronner, who was the precursor to Digitas. We had a client named Lou Taffer, who was a very senior guy at American Express. And Lou had nothing but contempt for Michael. Now he sort of tolerated me. He sort of tolerated me. And I spent I don’t know how many hours trying to figure out a way into what what made Lou Taffer click What did he care about? Well, I found out that he cared about clothing. Now this is unusual. I’m going to be a little bit gender biassed here. Men don’t generally care about clothing. Well, Lou Taffer was a clothese horse. So I found out this and I actually broke through to him by making him a wager. I said, Lou, you and I are disagreeing on something. How about if we betthe winner gets to go to Louie’s famous clothing store in the United States goes to the store and buy anything they want in the store. So we took that bet. And that was the beginning of breaking down that barrier. Lou and I actually forged a bond over men’s apparel, which makes completely no sense. I had another client, this was Compaq computer, I was at Ammirati, where I was actually able to bond over their children. Because I would always ask him. So do you have children? Are you married? When you get to a certain stage in a relationship, you get permission to move the professional, a little more into the personal so if someone says, oh, you’re back from vacation, where did you go? Did you have a good time? And if the client says, Yeah, my kids love that. I said, Oh, really? How old are your children? Now we don’t, Roberta and I don’t have kids. But you know, you can be sort of attuned to this. And you almost always if you have a client who has children, their kids are the sun and the moon and the stars. And that is your way. The second thing is to find the common ground, see if you can find the place that you can relate to. I have a lot of clients, I think they say this in the book. I’ve never played a round of golf in my life. But I have clients who are passionate about golf. So what do I do I become very conversant in golfing. So when I walk in and on a Monday morning I see a client and the US open ended or the British Open or the Ryder Cup just happened the day before I say, did you see the results of the Ryder Cup you guys creamed us. That is water cooler conversation. In the United States, this is probably true in the UK. So on a Monday morning, you probably have water cooler conversation about Manchester United going up against Manchester City. Because, you know, football in the UK is like a religion. Well, it is also true here, we often will use sports as the metaphor for a connection. So this is the second thing that you can do. And the third thing I guess I would just say about this is you have to be resourceful, and not defensive. And when clients get upset with me, I don’t come back and defend the agency, I ask a bunch of questions. I try to de-escalate every difficult conversation with a client. So when client says, blah, blah, blah, blah, I let them vent. I say now why do you say that I want to try to understand this better? And I will try to see if I can arrive at a place that might solve the problem, I will never try to solve the problem on my own, I’ll solve it with my colleagues, but I will do the best I can try to get to a solution that actually will ameliorate the problem. And by the way, that’s what the workshops about, I don’t solve any of these problems. I just sort of de escalate them.
Jenny 41:08
I couldn’t help but think as you as you were talking there that we have this lost art, don’t we have communication skills, rapport building, just consciously making an effort to understand your client, their interests, consciously asking more questions, I think it’s brilliant advice. I think it’s so solid, and sound and much needed, particularly now, nowadays, when everyone’s running at 100 miles an hour. So thank you for sharing that. I think they’re fantastic tips. Another thing I really want to ask you is, what trends do you see in the future for account management?
Robert 41:49
Well, we alluded to this earlier.
There is a school of thought that says, account people are becoming extinct as a species. They’re caught in this vice between planners on strategy, project management, or execution, and they are losing their sense of self worth and worth to the organisation. How do I add value? And you are quite right to point out, look, you have to add value by being immersed, and conversing in the clients business. But then you quite rightly observed, how do you do that when you’re in the weeds of execution? So this is a dilemma with no easy answer. So the future for enlightened agencies, for me, is to acknowledge that account management has never been more important. In an environment where client agency relations are ever more precarious, with clients shifting agencies, as often as they shift channels on the TV every night, you need to be building relationships that are deeper and stronger and more trust based than ever before. And your client service people are the tip of the spear on that.
Everybody has a vested interest in the client relationship. But the person who’s at the point is your client service person. And so for me, rather than being diminished as a skill and a value that enlightened agencies should pay attention to it should be elevated, celebrated, and I think you would agree with me better trained. Now, the unenlightened agencies will try to go it alone. But again, to your point, Jenny, the agency that sort of said, well, we don’t need to count people we have project people, we have planners, we have creatives. And they said, oh, we suddenly lost some clients. There’s something wrong here. I will tell you one story and I’ll let you move on to the next question. Martin Puris years ago, he came from an agency that was known as Ally and Gargano. Very, very famous agency in the last century, did some legendary commercials for Federal Express, ‘Fast talking Man’, and Martin said to me, you know, when Ralph and I founded (he said this to me personally) he said, look, Robert, when I founded this agency, Ally and Gargano was a great shop, we did wonderful creative, but six months later, we had to go find new clients. It was like a shopping bag with the bottom out of it. We put things in the top and it fell out of the bottom. He said Ralph and I didn’t want that agency. We don’t want to be a creatively driven shop. We don’t want to be an account driven shop. We don’t want to be one of those shops. We want to be a balanced shop. We want to have a balance between both because we think account people are utterly central to doing really, really good work for clients. They were way ahead of their time in this set. So enlightened agencies getthis, unenlightened ones don’t. The future should be quite bright. Except I’m a little worried, honestly. Because you get into this doom loop. You don’t train your people, they don’t add value say they’re not necessary, you eliminate them. This is something that we actually have to reverse.
Jenny 45:17
I absolutely 100% agree with this. What you’ve just said is just spot on. I think another additional thought here is, I looked atbecause I’m doing some research, the top four fastest growing biggest digital agency networks in the world right now by revenue are all management consultancies. Three out of the top four are management consultancies, Deloitte, Accenture, PwC, what are management consultants good at? Consulting. Navigating organisations, making their way to the C Suite, they have that skill set, they’re very good at what they call ‘land and expand’. And if we are facing or coming up against these types of shops, because Accenture has been certainly one of the most acquisitive management consultancies, they’re buying up, Droga 5, they’ve bought up all of these agencies, they’ve got not only the consultancy cloud, they’ve got the creative cloud. So we need really well trained account managers at the forefront of our business, who do have those consulting skills, because during COVID, you’ve probably come across this as well, but procurement has become more and more important for clients. They’ve risen to the top. The CPO position I read recently didn’t exist 10 years ago, but now it’s ever more present. So they are becoming more central to purchasing power and looking at their supply network and making sure they get the value. So we do need to be nurturing relationships.
Robert 46:57
Oh, absolutely. I will make an observation here. I think Accenture appointing Dave Droga to run that organisation is shot across the bow to every big advertising agency holding company in the world. Because the one thing that was missing at Accenture was the creative piece. And in Dave Droga, they’ve essentially tried, I’m not saying they’ve solved it, but they went a long way in terms of establishing a credential by appointing him the global chairman. And so I think that’s a real wake up call for holding companies that are paying attention to this. And I agree with you. You know, it’s funny, McKinsey, not one of the consulting companies you alluded to, because you talked about the other three, and I’m very much aware of Accenture here in the United States. but McKinsey always had, what they would do, you talk about land and expand, and what were they notorious for? They would go into a company and they’d have their consultants live there. And my client at American Express was a guy named Ken Chenault. What was Ken Chenault before he joined American Express? He was a McKinsey consultant. What McKinsey does is they they literally seed their consultants into the organisation. And at some point, the McKinsey consultant becomes the CEO. And of course, what does that CEO do? The first thing, they bring McKinsey in to actually help them. This is their land and expand strategy. And by the way, I mean, I know Ken Chenault, he’s a wonderful CEO, which is really excellent. But this isn’t the only example of McKinsey actually, their consultants ascending to the ranks of actually leaving the organisation. Another American Express one is Lou Gerstner, who actually left American Express at a certain point, what did he become the head of: IBM? What was he before he was a McKinsey consultant. The guy who runs on Omnicom, John Wren, what was he? He was an Arthur Andersen accountant. Before Andersen became Accenture. People don’t realise how the consulting firms have infiltrated the advertising business. And they brought their consulting skills into the ad business. And of course, the consultants have a seat at the C level table and agencies have been so diminished, they’ve been pushed down in the organisation, they’re at best mid level. Although I will tell you the best relationships that do the best work there’s a connection between the CEO and the agency There’s an enlightened CEO understands the value of advertising and marketing.
Jenny 50:04
I was gonna ask you actually, do you have any examples of where agencies do have a seat at the C suite table?
Robert 50:10
Well, the two that I are not with me, but certainly I know them, certainly with Phil Knight who runs Nike, the huge global brand and Dan Wieden of Wieden+Kennedy, that relationship has, I mean, basically Wieden was a little agency in Portland, Oregon. And Phil Knight was a shoe company selling shoes out the back of his car. And today, they’re both enormously well, Nike’s a global brand and Wieden+Kennedy’s a huge and important agency. That’s one example. The other example, of course, is Steve Jobs with Lee Clow, and originally Steve Hayden, and then later with other people, I don’t even know who actually it was really Lee Clow, who, who’s who just retired, who had an enormously tight relationship with Steve Jobs, an enormously mercurial figure who they were able to figure out. So these are two really, really good examples. I will tell you, I’ll give you a third example. So Lou Gerstner goes to IBM. You probably know about this. He goes to IBM and within six months, he does the world’s biggest account transition. He moves all of his advertising agency work. Where does he go to? He goes to Ogilvy and Mather. And what was the connection well Lou Gerstner? He joined from American Express and who does he bring over? He brings over a woman named Abby Kohnstamm, who was his chief of staff. She was my client for a while. Abby Kohnstamm he brings over to IBM, who does Abby go to? She goes to her good friend, Shelley Lazarus, who was at that point, I think, was working for Charlotte Beers. She was the number two she ultimately became the very powerful and effective Chair of Ogilvy. She does, without a review, she transitions, IBM to Ogilvy. This was enormous. Now I’ll give you another example from my own experience. My colleague, Tom Nelson, godspeed, he just recently ascended to the advertising agency in the sky, I just wrote about him. But Tom and I went up to Canada with a bunch of other people to pitch the Labatt account. And the CEO at the time after Tom had finished the presentation turned to Tom and said we will do business together and he moved Labatt back to Ammirati. We opened our office in Toronto, Tom Radin and Tom had an enormously tight relationship with the Labatt CEO. There are these are examples of a tight connection between the organisation’s CEO and a very senior advertising personnel. Labatt’s not the size of IBM, or an Apple or Nike. But these are all examples. I can give you another example. I mean, Pat Fallon, Fallon McElligott, with United Airlines, very tight relationship at the top, basically survived when Fallon created the world’s most god awful advertising, which was the United Rising campaign, it’s in my book, it survived. Because why? Because of the relationship. So yes, there are examples of this, and there should be more of them. There absolutely should be more of them.
Jenny 53:35
Well, there’s a gem of an idea there for agency leaders actually, listen, Robert, I’m very conscious of your time. And I think we need to do a part two. So I need to get you back because I just feel like we could just talk forever, because you’re just such on my wavelength. Before we wrap up do you have any kind of parting words of wisdom for an agent, agency account manager who’s listening to this and is seeking – help me with my career? What would say to them to give them some advice or inspiration?
Robert 54:16
Well, the first thing I want to do is I want to acknowledge they have an incredibly hard job, and an incredibly thankless job. And they’re not getting a whole lot of help. So I would say to them, look, stay the course. There was a young account guy who came to me, he was out of college, and he was just starting and he said, what advice would you give us said, look, don’t give up, do not give up. Do not accept defeat, you have to be resilient. So I would say to most account people, I don’t know how inspiring it will be. The thing that will serve you well as you go through your career, is that you are resilient in the face of obstacles, you won’t be defeated, you will learn, you won’t be defeated. And you will be consistent, be consistent. And I will leave you with a quote. I don’t know if you are familiar with a guy named Jordan Peterson. He wrote a pretty well known book called ‘12 Rules for Life‘. Now, I am not a Jordan Peterson fan for a whole lot of reasons. But there was one quote, and we could talk about that, it’s a separate moment. There’s one quote that he said that really struck me, he said,’ attend to the day, but aim for the highest good’. Now what’s attend to the day? Take care of business, do the things that you need to do, the very basic things that clients need expect and want from you, but then aim for the highest good, which is what you were alluding to, which is aspire to be something that your clients cannot do without. So that the first person they call, when they have a problem, or an issue they want to talk through isn’t their consulting firm, it isn’t someone else in the business, they call you. Because they want to talk it through with you. Because you have become that you have become the kind of trusted colleague, consigliere to them that they so desperately need. And they, instead of dreading your calls, they welcome your calls, and they want to they seek you out. This is when you sort of reached Nirvana. And oh, by the way, you know, you have reached the exalted land, the Promised Land of account service, when someone in the agency has an issue or a problem or something they want to talk to, they come to you, because you are the person who they want to converse with. Doesn’t matter what your title is, I don’t care how big your office is, you are the person who they most rely on for the kind of sound thoughtful, measured, balanced, and occasionally inspiring advice. The person who listens really well, as you are doing with me today, kudos to you, and asks the right questions, those are the things that really matter.
Jenny 57:22
I think that’s hugely inspiring. I was listening to that feeling very inspired myself. So thank you, thank you for sharing that. And Robert, thank you so much for joining me. It’s been a long time coming and I just can’t believe I hadn’t invited you sooner. How can people reach you because you’ve mentioned so many things that you’re doing, which I think are hugely valuable for agencies and obviously we’re all working in a remote world. So how what’s the best way people can contact you?
Robert 57:53
I’ll tell you a funny story and then I really will let you go. So I’m doing the third edition of my book and I put my email address in my bio and the editor comes back to me, the John Wiley editor comes back said no no no, we don’t really want that there because people will get in touch with you. I said what do you mean, you don’t want it there? I do want it there, I want people to get in touch with me. I want to be the most visible person in the planet. My point is I do want to be in touch with people. I so welcome people who email me and every LinkedIn message I get I respond to, every Facebook message I respond to, every Twitter message I respond to. You can find this pretty easily if you google Robert Solomon, you’ll find it but it’s robert@solomonstrategic.com. If you email me and you want to talk with me, no problem. My phone number is very public and in the United States, and we can do a Zoom call much the way you and I are doing a Zoom call. I am always happy to get on the phone with people to talk with them. I’m always happy to try to answer questions. There was a there was a professor at the University of Canberra, her name is Sally Webster and years ago she reached out to me so my students need help so I became an informal mentor to people at the university campus even though they were 15 hours away from m,e I was in New York at the time. They’re a little closer now. And I just wanted to help them so they would ask me questions, I would do answers I wouldn’t be on the phone with them or I wouldn’t do zoom calls with them. But I would talk with them by email all the time to try to help them because I’m a hugely invested in this journey. I want account people to succeed, I genuinely do. And I want, to the extent I can, to try to help them solve the problem so if they can’t afford to hire me as a coach or they can’t do a workshop with me and say, look, if you’ve got 15 bucks, you can buy my book. And that’s a pretty good investment. And if that doesn’t work, just write me, I’ll write you back.
Jenny 1:00:05
Your passion just shines through. And I can see why you were such a brilliant account person, Robert. Absolutely wonderful, and I’m sure people will get in contact with you, because you’ve just been absolutely charming and so knowledgeable and this book is iconic. You even mentioned that you were also mentoring people who were older in their careers, and they’re looking to make career changes. You mentioned that at the beginning, which is again, fantastic. You’re such a giving person which is so lovely. But if anyone hasn’t read this book, ‘The Art of Client Service’, I highly recommend you read it because it absolutely is the industry Bible for account managers. So Robert, thank you. Thank you so much for joining me, this has been superb.
Robert 1:00:52
I loved it. I look forward to chatting again.
Jenny 1:00:56
Thank you.
