Talk To A Naked Copywriter, #2

Dear Naked C:

I have been a Big Agency Art Director almost 5 years and I still can't figure out what account people do. Can you help?

BAAD

Dear BAAD,

Good. Yes, I can help.

The account person has a very important job. It is to keep the client occupied until the creatives can get around to doing the work.

In this day and age, creatives have many more responsibilities than ever before. This includes downloading new music, maintaining their Facebook pages, reading blogs, forwarding hilarious emails, and stalking old boyfriends and girlfriends on line. These activities take time.

In order to allow for this, account people must keep clients busy and maintain the appearance of activity, if not actual progress. The weapons in their arsenal are manifold, and include: meetings, conference calls, offsites, lunches, emails, voice mails, focus groups, ethnography, field visits, store checks, employee interviews, intranets, brief writing, strategy sessions, brain dumps, and brand audits.

These can often take many weeks and allow the creatives plenty of time to make the logo bigger.

Hope this helps,

Yours truly,
A Naked Copywriter