The Art of Account Management: Why You Should Keep It Real with Ella Russell-Kennedy

Ella Russell-Kennedy is senior creative project manager at creative agency, Formidable. Blending the art of account management and production, Ella oversees creative campaigns and strategy for brands such as The LEGO Group and Amazon. Seasoned in producing multi-channel brand activations, Ella's career has taken her from the UK to Australia and back, working for the likes of Freuds as an account manager within the luxury sector, to Klick X as an account director for Australia, Asia and South Pacific's biggest lifestyle brands, before joining the Formidable team.

LBB> How did you first get involved in account management and what appealed to you about it?

Ella> Curiosity and an intuitive read on my personality from mentors. In my younger years I had ambitions to work in the shiny world of ‘media’, however, I didn’t know what that was exactly. Research and gaining insight grafting at summer internships across advertising, PR, and media agencies made it clear where my skills could have an impact. Before I graduated, I had been hired by Freuds and it’s been a wild ride since. 

LBB> What is it about your personality, skills and experience that has made account management such a great fit?

Ella> I have always been resourceful and get a huge amount of satisfaction moving projects of any shape or size through to successful completion. I remember at one stage I thought I might want to be a car mechanic, and I think that gives a good insight into how my brain works. I try and use good humour and judgement to coax the best results from my immensely skilled colleagues and clients alike, from graphic designers to in-house producers.

LBB> What piece of advice would you give to someone just starting their career in account management?

Ella> Keep it real. You can be in a pressure cooker of stakeholder angst; the timeline has gone out of the window due to external factors and your KPI’s are sailing into the sunset alongside the global economy. Cut the sh*t, absorb the pressure, and facilitate honest and strategic conversations. As soon as you start talking circles and telling the client what they want to hear instead of what is important, you’ve lost your credibility and that hard-built trust goes down the pan. 

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?

Ella> Complex campaigns can lead to a house party of complex problems and tension. When human emotion and personal investment are involved, those are the hardest situations to navigate through. I am lucky to work with people who care very deeply about the outcomes of their work, it’s when those emotions overcloud judgement that tension can really peak. Being able to stay objective, rational, and keep all of your parties focused on the overall objective are king (or queen).

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?

Ella> Diversity of opinion is beyond valuable, if that leads to disagreement that is ok and often inevitable. How you facilitate a way through disagreement to get your team to a productive end result is up to you. I have already waxed lyrical about how emotion can lead to tension in projects, but at the end of the day if someone is emotional about something it says they care, better to be working alongside someone who cares than a robot. Is this question now about AI? 

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?

Ella> There is truth to this of course. Diluting pressure from both sides of an agency x client relationship is incredibly important to ensure work doesn’t suffer as a result. You can’t have an editor on a time-crunch looped into a 72 email thread negotiating the position of a logo or we wouldn’t get any work done. The days of agencies/clients having adversarial relationships are also ebbing. Project-based work is on the rise against the traditional retainer model and clients are too busy to be dating agencies they don’t see eye-to-eye with. Have your emails about logo placement, but if your values don’t align the chances are they never will.

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?

Ella> Always do your research. Don’t get caught out on a call where you haven’t spent time researching what each unknown acronym stands for. Part of the joy of working in an agency is the variety of work that can come through the door, if you don’t enjoy that or want to learn more then you’ll probably get stressed quite quickly and that will be felt by clients. Don’t be afraid to parachute in specialists. Do I know how to build a virtual football kit in AI? No, but I do know a damn good person who does.