Account Management Moments That Sold the Idea
We often celebrate the big, bold idea – but what about the unsung moment that actually got it over the line? Today, LBB is shifting the spotlight onto the accounts people whose clarity, empathy, diplomacy or sheer guts turned creative ambition into buy-in.
These international stories of tension resolved, trust earned, and perfectly timed truths reveal what makes accounts people so valuable.
Phindile Ndzekeli, business unit director at Joe Public
In a creative industry, the “Big IdeaTM,” as Phindile puts it, reigns supreme. It’s understandable – but without effective account management, the Big IdeaTM can never become a reality.
Phindile recalls an instance when Joe Public had one of these breakthrough ideas. It would eventually develop into Nedbank’s hugely successful ‘Youth Honours Board’ campaign, which raked in multiple awards at the likes of The One Show, Loeries, and Creative Circle. Yet the client almost didn’t go for it.
Slightly risky and non-tradition, the campaign was initially met with cautious skepticism. The client had asked for innovation – but only within the confines of what had worked before.
That’s when Phindile’s work began. “Not in a boardroom, but in one-on-one conversations. No slides. No agenda. No jargon. Just a candid chat based on years of mutual respect, shared wins and carefully laid groundwork, executed long before this tense moment arrived.”
The turning point came when Phindile asked a simple question: “Do you remember our collective ambition? Our goal?”
This gentle nudge brought the focus back to the shared goal, the brand purpose, the why. A reminder that what they really wanted was to make work that prompts people to ask, ‘Did a bank do that?’. To bump the brand from 24th position in 2023 to the top three in the country (Loeries – Africa and Middle East).
“There was a pause. Careers hung in the balance. Then, a small, important shift: ‘You’re right. Let’s not play it safe.’”
Phindile rightfully argues that these moments are just as important as the moment creative ideas are born – because they allow the ideas to live.
“Rather than project management with a smile,” Phindile states, “account management is emotional intelligence under pressure. It’s knowing when to push, and when to pause. It’s reading the room and the moment. And sometimes it's about reminding someone of who they want to be and having the trust in place to do so.”
Brian Blandford, vice president, client services at DAC
A brazen move as a junior taught Brian the value of telling it straight.
He was in an all-agency client meeting, led by a fairly new CMO at a large organisation. Naturally, many representatives from either side were keen to show off the new senior on the block.
Brian, however, notes that it was evident that this CMO didn’t care about all the schmoozing; he just wanted to learn how to improve his business. Despite being a junior that hadn’t even formally met him yet, Brian had the opportunity and the guts to pull him aside – and point out a serious issue in how they were handling a part of the business. Brian saw that it was creating a poor customer experience and costing the company significant potential revenue.
“While others were intimidated by a tough guy with a military background, I immediately earned his trust and credibility by sticking my neck out, telling the truth, and providing a proposed solution,” Brian recalls. “That CMO has since become a client in several roles, leading us to one of the most significant client engagements in DAC history. Over the years, we’ve built a strong working relationship and a genuine friendship.
“It taught me early in my career the value of having an informed opinion and the guts to speak up, even when it’s hard. If you do, you’ll be respected and appreciated for it for years to come.”
Lucy Bairner, client experience director at Collaborate Global
“A good account manager is like a bass guitarist – rarely the star of the show, but without their steady rhythm, the whole song risks falling apart.”
Lucy’s analogy lays bare how account managers – with their clarity, diplomacy, and empathy – are what steer projects towards success. Even when that means playing the ‘bad cop.’
It’s a dynamic she saw play out back in 2023, when experiential agency, Collaborate Global, landed its biggest pitch to date thanks to an account manager challenging the client’s initial idea. The metaphorical bassist had advised them that they’d be wasting their budget activating at a major motor show the way they had envisioned – it was bold, but it built immediate trust.
In Lucy’s view, it’s these account managers who play the long game that are the best. “They won’t chase quick wins if it means compromising client trust. They listen, guide, and influence – knowing exactly when to step in and when to let the lead singer shine.”
Anthony Abrahams, managing director, Iris
Anthony, meanwhile, compares the best account managers to skilled circus performers, balancing tensions between agency planners and client insights teams, creative directors and marketing directors, production teams and media deadlines. If that wasn’t enough, Anthony adds that they “also know the client’s brands and products better than they do, act as the second-best strategist, pull on intuition, and are always reading the room.”
These abilities are crucial now more than ever, as clients increasingly want to be a part of the creative process, preferring to see something earlier in a rough form while they still have the scope to influence it.
Anthony recalls two instances where these skills have led to the biggest, boldest ideas for Iris’ client, Samsung. The first was in 2023, when after a full year of extensive consumer testing backed by robust commercial business cases, the team convinced the brand to commit to a long-term partnership with Skateboard GB to connect with a younger demographic in a relevant way. The second saw a left-field idea bring in success, when Samsung put on the world’s first vertical gig in 2019 to launch its King’s Cross store, complementing the almost exclusively vertical format of phone use and social sharing.
Leah Sanders, SVP group account director at Mythic
Leah tells a story of a client in a rut. This tourist destination knew it wasn’t going to outshine coastal retreats or mountaintop adventures nearby, but it was looking to generate more visitors. It had long leaned on its military heritage and patriotic pride, but playing it safe had now become stale.
So, Mythic challenged the narrative, and challenged the client. Stop competing for the big annual vacation, and go after spontaneous getaways instead.
“The win was in shifting the game entirely,” Leah explains. “We reframed the conversation from aspiration to authenticity. Most visitors were already within a three-hour drive. They weren't looking for the pressure of ‘a one-time perfect trip’, but rather something real, unique, and unexpected – and also easy and convenient, with more enjoyment and less stress. In this context, the creative wasn’t a risk; it was a bold challenge.”
Convinced that embracing their real identity was the differentiator, the client said ‘yes’.
“That moment – of empathetic listening, clear insight, and confident redirection – is why account management still matters,” Leah concludes. “We don’t just sell the work. We gather the data points to build confidence to boldly hold hands and be just audacious enough to step into change as a team.”
Tracy Webster, managing director at Saatchi & Saatchi
As Tracy recalls, the key to positively shifting this client relationship began with listening – really listening. Being the newbie, she went on a “listening tour” with her CEO, where they offered clients a safe space in which to be heard without judgement or defensiveness. Some of it was hard to hear, Tracy admits, but her key takeaways were:
- The client felt that the agency didn’t understand the full complexity of its business, which ranged from B2B healthcare to global B2C;
- The client felt the agency lacked the quantity of staff to fully cover the business and its complete needs;
- Every business had different processes – or none at all.
It was the accounts team’s time to shine. Compiling all the client needs, they identified a set of action points to address them:
- Request a true onboarding by the client for the agency team – not just a “data dump of documents”;
- Develop systematic ways of working in a playbook to be circulated broadly;
- Facilitate team building through a game show event;
- Conduct an analysis of staff burn rate relative to client fees to determine which areas were being stretched and come up with appropriate solutions.
Their efforts paid off. “We came back to the clients with a report and a commitment to turn the relationship around, and month by month, we saw improvements,” says Tracy. “By year end, we had improved our margin by 20% and client satisfaction by 26%.”
Hika Yano, account manager at UltraSuperNew Tokyo
Hika defies the brief for this piece – but for good reason. “I can’t point to a single moment that swayed a clients’ decision, because I believe account managers shine through the entire process. Our strength lies in understanding; our team, the client, the ideas, and the cultural context that brings them together.”
Instead, Hika points to how the very nature of UltraSuperNew Tokyo, having both international creatives and clients, consistently requires account managers to step up.
Even the most exciting ideas can fall flat if they don’t resonate with the local audience – so it’s on account managers to ensure that the creative ambition aligns with cultural insight, while still staying true to the brand vision. By demonstrating a deep understanding of the Japanese market in this way, and how a creative idea is mindful of it, account managers win client trust. That trust lays the foundation for a ‘yes’.
“So it isn’t a single moment,” Hika sums up, “but a series of moments from start to finish. We become the bridge between clients and creatives – speaking the language of business for our clients, translating our creative’s emotion and vision, and ensuring cultural fluency is embedded in every idea. That’s what helps the ideas get sold – and where account managers quietly shine.”
Ed Lee, executive client partnership director at OLIVER
Persuading a client to model a bra on a man demonstrated the value of accounts people for Ed.
A previous agency he was at had won an account with sloggi, a challenger lingerie brand dedicated to comfort, due to a shared belief that the brand was perfectly placed to challenge the tired codes of the category.
“We believed that female consumers were sick of having to compromise on comfort to look and feel good, in ways men have never had to,” Ed says. “Like most challenger brands, we couldn’t outspend the competition; we needed a disruptive idea that punched above its weight. So when launching sloggi’s new bra, the first without uncomfortable underwire, we decided on an unlikely model – a man.”
It was a bold move for sloggi’s first integrated European campaign and Ed’s first work for the brand – and one that might even offend or alienate a few. Big discussions and wider group consultations on potential risks followed.
The moment that sold the idea – or rather kept it sold – was a conversation that restated the agency's positive intent, not just for the brand, but for the consumer. The team had the conviction that they had done their due diligence, that they were not punching down, and that while they might make some people uncomfortable, those were the very people that needed challenging.
Greg Masiakos, group account director at Cutwater
Greg sets the scene: “Our backs were against the wall when the brief came in: our brand was in a serious decline, becoming less relevant with every new upstart competitor launching and beating us on price, promotion and modernity. We were in danger of becoming a delisted dinosaur and the hits kept coming: if we didn’t land a global idea that stabilised the business, the client-agency relationship would meet its demise. It was a tense atmosphere to say the least.”
The agency quickly mobilised on a campaign to entice an elusive market: young, multicultural, global men. First, they had to switch up the way they spoke about the category and themselves, bringing sophistication, personality, and likeability to a “brand that had long been lost to years of performance-based campaigns developed to chase short-term sales quotas.”
Getting several stakeholders with all different opinions to unify around one central idea was a political minefield. “Eight rounds. Well, fourteen, if we’re counting the strategic process to land the platform, and two tissue sessions. Four different ones. Well six, when we factored in the amount of stakeholders. And three rounds of consumer research.”
Several moments of diplomacy along the way took the team from tension to triumph.
“When we landed two strategic platforms to horserace against each other, and one came back as the overwhelming victor? A win.
When the tissue session brought us from 14 ideas to 10? Another win.
When we used subsequent rounds to further drill down and design and edit and evolve and tinker to make something that we all felt was beautiful, clever and special? Another win.
From the final research results that got us the concept green light, to navigating the shoot, to delivery and through to successful reporting calls – all wins.”
Thanks to the accounts team’s valiant resilience, the campaign clicked into place, winning awards and stabilising sales. “In the end, it’s the account leader’s ability to guide the team and the client through uncertainty – with clarity, grit, and grace – that transforms ambition into reality.”
