Survival Tips for an Ad agency Account Executive in India

chillibreeze writer — Supriya Subramanian

The lure of working in advertising is almost too much to resist for any person who considers herself even slightly creative. The thought of being associated with all the glamour, the joy of being involved with the process of creation of effective, entertaining advertising appealing to a wide variety of audience, the absolute power to be able to influence the masses – is enough to make even the sanest individual drool. So off they go to the nearest agency, CV in hand.

But wait. Before you enter the hallowed halls of an advertising agency, make sure you are prepared for what you are likely to find inside.

A typical agency is a small company – with about 50-100 people employed in each city where it operates. Not your usual tens of thousands of employees like many of the software firms that abound these days. So get ready to find the receptionist multi-tasking as the in-charge for couriers, staff attendance, ordering lunch or snacks (if he or she is very kind), being a telephone operator and the multitude of things that she may be required to do as a “favor” for the teeming masses within.

You will usually start as an Account Management Executive (AE) in one of the departments depending on your choice and educational background to some extent. This note is about starting in Account Management and how as an AE you will interact with a few of the other departments:

You will be the interface between the client and the creative, client and the media team -basically client and your agency. You may produce little by yourself – but you need to get loads of things done by large groups of unwilling people in the way your client wants it as well as in the way the creative team is willing to do it; and make sure there is some “value add” from your side so that your contribution is recognized and at the same time make sure that the deadline of the client is met. Sound impossible? It isn’t. It just takes some effort.

You will mainly interact with these teams:

1. Creative: The team of people who you have to make friends with even if you hate them for making you late with a layout or giving you outlandish creatives usually not targeted at the desired audience just so that it can win an award. However, the maximum joy from your job is likely to come with your interactions with this team and what they do with the directions you give. This is why you joined advertising in the first place. However, such thrills are not experienced as many times as you’d like. But usually these are a great bunch of hardworking people – probably the only ones who will come close to working as hard as you will be working.

2. Studio and Production: These are the guys who implement what the creative team proposes. That is they create the final product – whether it is a printed poster, an advertisement or any other publicity material. Basically they handle all the small details of producing the final output.

A lot of preparation goes into it and the department is manned by artists and illustrators working by hand and refining on a computer and technical guys operating high end systems to give shape to the creative team’s imagination. There are also experienced production people who have worked on printing and production for years and have an eye for what may go wrong in the final rendition of the layout who manage each production and printing job.

However, these are also the guys who may hoodwink you at the first given opportunity since you are never likely to know as much about their job as they do, it being a tad technical. So learn quickly how much time something is likely to take to complete keeping in mind that there may be other work in the queue. Once you have an idea about what the processes are to complete a job and how much time each takes and also become friends with this department, then nothing can stop you from becoming a well oiled team functioning to fulfill the agency’s requirements to its clients.

But what is important to know are some survival techniques in the mad mad world of advertising.

Expect to toil long hours and parts of the weekends. This can be specially frustrating when you are new to the field since large parts of your job involve waiting – for the creatives to deliver, for the client to respond, for the changes to be carried out, for the material to be processed and printed etc. Apart from this you are the person solely in-charge of safeguarding the client’s interest in the company. So deal with the tasks with integrity and dedication. You may be a small cog in the wheel, but agencies being small and tightly run ships, much responsibility lies on your shoulders from the very start.
Be calm. Expect errors, emergencies, unexpected setbacks as part of a regular life in advertising. Crisis is the word most often used in a working day. All the numerous emergencies teach but one thing and it is really a life lesson. Panicking does not help in an emergency. Be solution oriented. Think on your feet as to how to solve the current problem and avoid such issues from recurring. Above all be calm and collected at all times.
Be prepared, have a plan. Somebody rightly said, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Think of all the contingencies that can happen and have a plan or an approach to solve them. When you start off it may be difficult to think of any situations where things may not go according to plan. But with experience you will learn to anticipate most of the tricky situations and hence be prepared for them.
Keep a buffer – Take more time from the client than you feel you will require. Give the creative just a bit of time less than you have – so that they have room for stretching the deadline if they want – but not by too much. Basically try and keep a buffer – print a few extra copies of material, proof check one extra time, start 30 minutes earlier than time required to reach for a meeting etc. Slowly this becomes second nature so much so that you adopt it in your personal life too.
Learn to write good briefs - Practice writing briefs – documents which give direction to the creative team as to what is expected of them with regards to a particular marketing collateral or ad. The crisper and more insightful the brief is the better chances of harnessing all the creative talent available to you for producing a remarkable and effective creative. This skill comes with experience – once you see the creative that emerges out of your brief you can work backwards figure out what you said or wrote which brought about that particular chain of thought resulting in the said creative. This will help you refine your brief the next time around and use words carefully.
No job should be beneath you – You may be from a premier business school, but the first few years in advertising are best survived by having a zero ego and not being averse to pulling up your sleeves and pitching in when required. If you can, stay with the team while they finish. Don’t hover, but be around. This may sound like you toned to babysit them but truth be told there are several advantages of this:

a. You know what is happening and you won’t get a nasty surprise in the morning because of a misunderstood brief.

b. The creative or the production teams will feel that you are with them and working as hard as them in getting the job done. This will make them respect you since you are at hand to help when they need it.

c. You are the final authority on what can pass through to the client – so you need to check the material to the best of your ability with a meticulous eye for detail.
Cut them some slack – When you have more time for a job, give the team more time. Don’t create urgencies when none may be required. Be prepared to negotiate and compromise on the time taken to complete a task if you possibly can. Avoid the “wolf wolf syndrome”. Then, when you really need something urgently, you will be taken seriously and people will bend backwards to do your tasks.

In conclusion, no other first job prepares you for life as much as a job in advertising does. So enter the agency gates and prepare to have a rollercoaster of a time where you work hard and play just as hard – and don’t say you were not warned!

The author’s first few years of working life were spent inside a large ad agency and she came out with a whole lot of insights about life on the inside.

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in November, 2009. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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—About our writer:

"Born in Delhi, Supriya now lives in Bangalore after spending a few years in Mumbai and The Netherlands. She has worked in various fields like advertising, online marketing, entertainment and even events. She loves reading and is always found with a book in her free time. Now a mother of an adorable 2 year old, Supriya wants to pursue her first dream - that of being a writer."

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