It’s a bold statement, we know.
But here we are saying it – Account Directors are a waste of a client’s budget. The Emperor has no clothes. None. We swear it. Wondering why Account Directors are useless?
It goes a little something like this:
Client: “We just aren’t getting the leads we want from our marketing efforts. What can we do to turn it around?”
Account Director: “Oh, we’ll make it happen. You know we can because we ‘fill in ridiculous over-inflated agency propaganda here’. Just let me meet with the creative teams to find out.”
Why have a middle man who is essentially hired to bridge the gap between you, the client, and the people who actually can make a difference to your bottom line? We’re assuming you’ve all played the telephone game and it never turns out well.
At Cement Marketing, we offer our clients a completely new organization chart.
Rather than sending the client through an Account Director who then meets with the creative teams who then churn something out that eventually makes its way to the client (after the Account Directors have a hack at it), we have what we call “Project Strategists.”
Cement Marketing’s Project Strategists are completely and thoroughly immersed in their area of expertise–Web Design and Development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Social Marketing. Because project strategists know their area of interactive marketing inside and out, our clients save time and money because their point person can answer their questions directly.
It seems like such an obvious and simple concept to us, but then again, most of us were born in the 80’s and all of us, except for a scant few, have never worked at traditional advertising agencies. It means we get to start from scratch with a model that works.
Here’s what it looks like:
Each Project Strategist hears the client’s needs and produces a strategic plan, which is then (after client approval) sent directly to our team of copywriters, link builders, developers and designers. Tell us if you see a spot in this formula for an Account Director. Maybe there is something the big agencies know that we don’t.