The Art of Account Management: Why It Has To Be More Than Just a Job with Noah Misell
Noah has been with Perfect Storm for 18 months. Since joining the agency fresh from university, he has worked on numerous campaigns for a range of clients, developing his fundamental account management skills across the likes of Etihad Guest, Gong cha, Majid Al Futtaim and Mishcon De Reya.
During this time Noah has become well acquainted with agency life and operations and assembled a plethora of knowledge surrounding the various sectors he’s been exposed to.
LBB> How did you first get involved in account management and what appealed to you about it?
Noah> At university I studied Graphic Communication and Illustration. It was a great course, I really enjoyed my time, and I learnt a lot of skills but oddly enough I left feeling less confident in myself as a creative than I did during freshers’ week (where, to be fair, thanks to a combination of Malibu and commercial lager, I felt pretty self-assured).
Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that I was better suited to facilitating the creative process than creating. It was a happy discovery, and it led me to apply for roles in client services, where I could match my understanding of design with my interest in business and strategy — a good mix, and one far easier on the stomach than the above.
LBB> What is it about your personality, skills and experience that has made account management such a great fit?
Noah> Account management is a very sociable job and I love that most. It’s a game of relationships: both internally and externally. Having been in the role for well over a year I’ve had the chance to work with - and more importantly - get to know some very cool and talented people.
I think it’s critical to be passionate about the industry and the work itself. You have to give so much of your time to it; and what's more, you have to be ready for it to be torn apart, rejected, or passed up on — so resilience and being ready to pick yourself up and go again is huge. This could sound kind of scary, but of course when you do crack a brief and the client gives a glowing review, you feel pretty good.
LBB> What piece of advice would you give to someone just starting their career in account management?
Noah> It’s got to be more than a job.
Again, building good relationships with everyone you work with is key. Asking a designer to make some final (really, final this time) amends to a digital banner at 20:27 on a Wednesday is so much easier when you’re bonded over a book you both thought was crap, a football team neither of you can stand, or which of the 25 falafel wrap places within a 100 meter radius of the office is definitively the best.
Externally too. In my experience, clients would rather spend the two minutes at the start of a Zoom call waiting for someone else to join talking about weekend plans than finishing off your respective emails in silence. Get to know everyone, let everyone know you — it makes everything easier. I totally understand why that’s not for some people, but I don’t see how you can do client services any other way.
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?
Noah> I think that passion from both sides is so important in creating good work, but it’s bound to cause disagreements. The nature of the business calls for people to put pieces of themselves into the ideas they come up with, so it can be difficult for anyone involved to accept criticism, to not take things personally and to let things happen in a way that’s different to how they expected.
Navigating this sort of thing is a big part of the role and it can certainly be challenging to manage differing opinions between passionate creatives and clients. I think crucially, it’s important for account managers to strive to understand what’s driving the differing options and to gain perspective on both sides as this is surely where the solution, and hopefully great ideas lie.
LBB> And what are the keys to building a productive and healthy relationship?
Noah> It’s not easy to do, but I think there’s a lot to be said for not getting overly attached to an idea or creative territory even when you love it. Because it only means your stomach will drop that bit further when the client stays stony-faced after the grand reveal. I think you’ve got to be ready to listen to feedback, especially on things you feel the planners and creatives have nailed.
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?
Noah> Both breed great work, but it’s about balance.
It’s the role of client services to see things from all sides, and to stay level-headed in complicated periods, but not to be void of emotion. Nearly all work is emotional in some capacity and so to remove it from your job doesn’t seem right to me. But, equally, if anyone is going to put their emotions to one side and look at things through a practical lens, it probably should be you.
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?
Noah> It is necessary to mediate on occasion, however if your agency is able to cultivate a working environment alongside its clients where collaboration is integral to the process, there will be fewer disputes to mediate because there are fewer disputes in general.
The characterisation of a ‘mediator’ becomes dated once everyone starts to think collaboratively, and on top of that, it ignores the real art of the job. Yes, occasionally account managers are called to be professional middle men but it’s so much more than that. We have to fully understand the strategic elements of the work, and have strong knowledge of our various clients' industries and operations. This is far more important to what we do than mediating disputes and remembering which clients prefer Zoom and which prefer Teams (although there’s a bit of that too).
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?
Noah> It’s absolutely a varied role, there are numerous plates to spin and seemingly infinite hats to wear. In many cases learning on the job is important, and this is where I think the key to navigating all of it comes in.
For example, I’ve wrestled with a few media plans over the last year. I hate them, in fact. They’re tricky to read, I have no idea what so many of the initialism and specs mean, and just when I think I’ve got it I see there are five more tabs in the spreadsheet. But circumstances like these become all the more manageable when you collaborate.
When you’re a one-man band, it's easy for things to feel more complicated, more vast or more daunting than they are. It's a complex industry, so we need a broad array of experts, but I find when you work together you usually work it out. The key is ensuring we're not doing it alone — somebody, out there somewhere, will understand the different HTML5 sizes.
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?
Noah> In the summertime we took on the pretty massive task of celebrating the opening of one of our clients, tea franchise Gong cha, 2000th store with an occasion we dubbed the ‘Gong cha Global Tea Party’. It was a huge event that scaled social and in-store, in countries across the world with the goal of inspiring customers to step out of their comfort zones, to taste the unfamiliar, and try something new.
On a personal level it was a really important project for me, and getting the chance to cut my teeth chewing tapioca pearls is something I am grateful for. It wasn’t the easiest project by any means — I had to learn quickly, I had to collaborate with creatives and clients and pick myself up after work I thought was great got rejected. But ultimately I came to understand that when you’re part of a good team that you know well, and you’re passionate about whatever it is you’re doing, the results are so fulfilling.
