I’ve always been a bit of a fanboy of the Ideation and Design Thinking firm IDEO – and I’m finally taking some courses at their school here in San Francisco. My second class, “Storytelling for Influence” is packed with creative thinkers from all over the world and already proving to be a great experience.

This week saw us creating a brief that outlines our first story idea. Enjoy.

Title:
The role of a great Account Manager in successful adverting campaigns.

Synopsis:
The best creative ideas only in advertising only exist because the Account Manager in charge was able to influence the client to take a chance.
OR
Spending all day at a whiteboard only to see a ham fisted AM butcher your concept and end up executing the client’s safe/tired idea.

Motivation:
Attempt to influence how agency leaders think about and staff their AM roles.

Brief:
Who’s your audience?:
Advertising professionals in both traditional and digital marketing.

What are their needs?:
They want to be successful and run a respected and profitable company.

What are you trying to achieve?:
I’d like to challenge the perception that Account Management is all about making a client happy and delivering what they’ve asked for. It should really be about examining what the client/product actually needs and what will serve their goals the best. They came to us for a reason, let’s not take the easy way out and take the path of least resistance – that serves no one in this type of relationship. By working with the creatives, delivering research, goals and insight, they’ll deliver the best work that they’re capable of. By tweaking the ideas and designs into something that you both believe in, and then fighting the good fight – we end up delivering what they need and what will move their needle – Avoiding the trap of delivering work that produces the least pushback and simply gets the project out the door.

Core Idea:
If you want inbound leads, earned media and a glowing reputation driving your sales funnel, pay more attention to how your agency handles Account Management. and how you Account Management handles their creatives.

Medium:
Podcast / Blog / Series of Tweets / Linkedin Posts / Facebook ads. I am planning to run this as a campaign using several media channels and mediums – this will help me flex my integrated advertising muscle and turn this into a case study.