A view from Dave Trott: Great account people

I recently talked to an account person who was reminiscing about their time at Saatchi & Saatchi.

They were a junior account person there when the client warned that their chairman was coming in to fire the agency.

The junior account person thought “I’m not taking the blame for that” so they went to see Saatchis’ chief executive, Tim Bell, and asked him to come along to the meeting.

The chairman came in looking like thunder – he said the campaign Saatchis presented was the exact same campaign that he’d turned down the previous year.

If that was all the effort Saatchis was going to make, he was taking the business away.

Then Bell spoke – he said he understood why the client had turned down the campaign the previous year.

Although it was a very good campaign, the time wasn’t right.

Bell understood the economic conditions would have placed a lot of pressure on the client’s business and, however good the campaign was, it was a risk at the time.

Bell said the economic conditions had changed over the past 12 months and they purposely presented the campaign again because it made more sense to run it now.

Bell said how smart the client had been in waiting for the right time to run it and they were glad he did.

The chairman’s mood changed – Saatchis kept the account and they ran the campaign.

The point of the story is, as they were leaving the meeting, the junior account person quietly said to Bell: “I didn’t know we’d presented that campaign before.”

Bell said: “No, neither did I.”

That story illustrates the role Bell had in building Saatchis.

He sold work that other account people couldn’t sell.

Creatives can write the best campaign in the world, but if it never runs it isn’t advertising.

That’s what the best account people did, they made the best work run.

Mike Greenlees told me his favourite story about Frank Lowe.

CDP had just shot the most expensive commercial ever, for Benson & Hedges in Arizona.

Now they had to present the finished film to the client.

Lowe sat next to the client as the agency producer played the video.

When the lights came up, the client said he had a problem with a certain edit.

Lowe said: “Yes, I wondered about that too.”

He said to the producer: “Play it again three times without stopping and let’s see if we’re right.”

The producer played the film three times, Lowe turned to the client and said: “No, I think we were wrong, I think it’s okay.”

That film ran in cinemas everywhere, it won every prize, and actually changed the way everyone made advertising commercials.

All because Lowe got it to run.

Greenlees used to say: “It’s okay to argue with the client but you’ve got to stop before they say no.

“As long as they haven’t said no you can come back and try again, but once they’ve said no it’s almost impossible to retrieve it.”

I always knew getting a great account person was crucial to starting an agency.

Creatives always think great work will sell itself, which is why so much great work never sees the light of day.

Clients often don’t know what’s a great ad, they’ve never been trained in it.

That’s why Paul Simons’ mantra was: “The client knows what they want. The agency knows what they need.

“It’s the account man’s job to get the client to want what they need.”

Juan Fangio used to say: “All drivers want to drive for Ferrari because he has the fastest cars so they can win races.”

The same way all creatives want to work with an account person who can get their ads to run.

Dave Trott is the author of Crossover Creativity, The Power of Ignorance, Creative Blindness and How to Cure It, Creative Mischief, Predatory Thinking and One Plus One Equals Three