The Art of Account Management: Having the Curiosity to Contribute With Cosmo Haskard
As the group business director at Today the Brave, Cosmo Haskard has experience with clients across sport, FMCG, fashion, retail, entertainment, tourism, government initiatives, pharmaceutical, health and fitness.
Driven by creating purpose-driven work, Cosmo cultivates client-led relationships, with an interest in creativity and problem solving.
LBB> How did you first get involved in account management and what appealed to you about it?
Cosmo> Account management found me on a night out while I was at university. I loved the creativity and psychology of the marketing subjects I was doing, but I wasn’t sure where I was meant to go professionally. After meeting an account director from Saatchi & Saatchi on a night out, who painted me a picture of the industry as a wacky world, full of interesting people and stories, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. I kept the contact and managed to tee up a three month internship. It was everything I imagined from her depiction and more. I loved the energy of the office, the organised chaos, work and people. As you can probably guess, I haven’t left since.
LBB> What is it about your personality, skills and experience that has made account management such a great fit?
Cosmo> My parents raised me as an energetic and curious kid, never shying away from meeting someone new. I’ve tried to maintain that energy and curiosity since. The more you throw yourself into something and the more interest you take in the people involved along the way, the more you get back. Account management is no different, no matter the agency or where you are in the world. I’ve found these traits to be quite simple in nature, but incredibly rewarding when exercised.
Account management is driven by an eagerness to build relationships with people, which suits me. Whether it’s banding together specialty departments within an agency, or the variety of brands and teams you end up working with, the humans behind them are an eclectic bunch. I enjoy getting to know them, capitalising on each other's strengths and working together towards a common goal. I hope they’d say I’m an approachable person that’s good at the necessities: finding common ground, communicating well and quickly building trusting, fun partnerships.
LBB> What piece of advice would you give to someone just starting their career in account management?
Cosmo> Be passionate about what you’re involved in: the agency work and culture, your clients’ business, and the people. There’s no substitute for someone who brings energy to a team or workplace because they genuinely want to be there, with an appetite to learn and contribute. If you don’t want to be there, why should anyone else? Be curious and never afraid to ask questions along the way. A good manager and working environment will encourage it.
LBB> Thinking back to some of your most challenging experiences you’ve had in your career, what do you think tends to lie at the heart of the more tense or difficult client-agency relationships?
Cosmo> More often than not there’s something more at play, so try not to take it personally and work through it together. Maybe there’s a feeling of helplessness over a lack of common goal, or the ways of working, whether you and they are getting bogged down in red tape, or there is a lack of clarity over what will drive the project forward next. At the core, it's a relationship just like any other.
If you can approach challenges with empathy and demonstrate your motivation for a solution, it will work out for the best.
LBB> And what are the keys to building a productive and healthy relationship?
Cosmo> Never underestimate the power of really knowing the person behind the employee. Taking interest in their life beyond work really helps the relationship feel genuine. At the end of the day, you’re two humans who will spend lots of time interacting, so find opportunities to enjoy working together.
From a professional perspective, driving the day-to-day in an organised and confident manner promotes clarity amongst team members and decreases stressful instances. But when those stressful instances do happen, remain positive and solutions-focused. It also helps to show empathy to any wider context at play. Break things down into actionable chunks, but continue to remind everyone of the end goal. Find key moments to manage up and down, so everyone on both sides feels in the loop and at ease.
Being receptive and agile enough to adapt your communication style to the receiver is essential for successful and strong relationships. Everyone responds to different types of communication differently. Be mindful of the world we live in, where conversations constantly occur across multiple platforms. Stay fluid and focused on your client’s and team’s styles to ensure updates and decisions are clear, prompt, heard and understood. With clear communication, everything else is always easier.
LBB> What’s your view on disagreement and emotion - is there a place for it and if not, why not? If so, why - and what does productive disagreement look like?
Cosmo> Absolutely there’s a place for it. Debate is healthy. If one side of the partnership is rolling over in agreement every time, it’s not a partnership. Being direct is an asset, but it is also a skill, it should be polite and fair. Releasing emotion can be therapeutic, but don’t make it personal, emotion should live within the passion of the work.
LBB> Historically, account management has been characterised as the mediator in an adversarial client and creative relationship - what do you make of that characterisation, is there any nugget of truth in that or is it wildly inaccurate?
Cosmo> I understand that to an extent, but good account management is collaborating with both sides vs simply being the mediator or messenger in the middle.
LBB> These days, agencies do so much beyond traditional campaigns and as account management you’re pulling together creative, experience, data, e-commerce, social and more - and that complexity can often be mirrored on the client stakeholder side too? What’s the key to navigating (and helping the client navigate) that complexity?
Cosmo> Very true. Our job is to be a bit of a jack or jill of all trades. Appreciate and understand the role and importance of each of those elements in growing a brand or client’s business.
LBB> What recent projects are you proudest of and why? What was challenging about these projects from an account management perspective and how did you address those challenges? What was so satisfying about working on these projects?
Hijacking the Masters, Harry Rosen
Harry Rosen is one of Canada’s oldest and most respected high-fashion retailers, but their outdated image as the place where your dad buys his suit persists. We worked hard to transform this image through the Set The Tone platform, engaging niche audiences and prioritising appealing to younger, digitally savvy customers. One chapter of this was launching their golf offering, establishing them as the experts in golf… style. We hijacked the Masters golf tournament with spots that were designed to look and feel like the broadcast it was interrupting. Our digital-first integrated campaign exceeded retail category norms for recall by 62% and doubled them for favorability.
It was challenging from an account management perspective because our budget was so small and we had to launch in April, although we were in the depths of a Canadian winter so all our local golf courses were snowed under. We had to squeeze a shoot in Tampa Bay, Florida, cutting costs at every turn and finding loopholes to bring the campaign to life. It took a lot of relentless collaboration with the client team, but there was a great sense of trust and we ultimately ended up getting shortlisted for a 2023 Cannes Film Award for “Breakthrough on a Budget”.
Schmackos Brand Relaunch, Schmackos
This was personally satisfying because a small dedicated team brought this to life from within a big agency in London. Working on the Mars Petcare account at the time, Schmackos was the smallest business in the portfolio and thus was receiving less internal attention and focus than the bigger brands. But it needed help too. In what was a very nostalgic experience for a couple of Australians living in the UK, we worked hard to raise its priority and revitalised the brand by refreshing its iconic advertising roots and updating its beloved characters for a new generation. We proved that refreshing distinctive assets was more effective than starting from scratch, returning the brand back to growth, increasing annual sales by 21% and volume market share by 19%.
We were recognised with a Gold IPA Effectiveness Award for reversing a 5-year sales decline and our key client claimed it to be her proudest work. It was incredibly rewarding to pour energy into an opportunity that ended up really punching above its weight.
