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Moosylvania Blog

I’ve always been a big fan of the Olympics, and the summer Olympics in particular. With the London 2012 Games fast approaching, I can’t help but get excited about the upcoming competitions. One of my favorites is Women’s Gymnastics because of the strength and grace that the athletes exhibit.

In thinking about how to craft this blog post, and give a little advice to our interns and other account service job seekers, I’m drawn to making comparisons between aspects of my career at a full-service advertising agency and gymnastic events.

Let’s start with the uneven bars.
This event symbolizes development of the creative brief, one of the most crucial account service job functions. Why? It entails delicately swinging between the high bar – the business and marketing objectives that the client has provided to you – and the low bar – the insights that you uncover about the consumer, channel, upcoming trends, etc. My advice is to spend the time it takes thinking through it. Ask why, and then ask why again. Top advertising agencies know a good brief takes hours to write, because digging down to the heart of the assignment requires an immense amount of consideration. But, the end result of steering your creative team in the right direction is always worth it!

Poise, grace and some serious balancing skills are required for anyone looking to land a job in account service

Up next, we’ve got the balance beam.
There are many things to balance on a daily basis in account service (not limited to back-to-back meetings and the never ending “to do” list). However, the beam best represents our balance between the client and creative team. We are a liaison. We must genuinely understand and respect both of them. My advice is to continuously nurture your relationships. I make a conscious effort to know my clients and creative team well. Those of us in account service have naturally strong communication skills – use them!

And, we move onto the floor exercise.
Our big show is the presentation. It’s our chance to sell the ideas that we’ve diligently built with the creative team. Although you’ll already be passionate about the concepts you’re presenting, your audience might not be. So, strive to make the presentation strategic and impactful. Consider unconventional ways to engage your audience early on. Then, consider how to recapture their attention once it’s been diverted to their iPhones on the conference table. Present with confidence and don’t forget to practice!

To finish, there’s the vault.
Much like a gymnast running toward the springboard, we are racing against tight timelines and limited budgets. In account service, our role is to keep both of these on track. Stay organized with daily maintenance of each project’s status, and by monitoring calendars and expenses (whether it’s agency time or out-of-pocket costs). As with the vault, you want to directly hit deadlines and estimates. They ultimately catapult the project to completion and there’s no better feeling than seeing your work out in the world!

Like training for the Olympics, these aspects of account service take practice. “Sticking the landing” is something that we strive to do daily, but it can require years to perfect. Just remember to have fun and continue learning on your path for gold.

To learn more about what we do, why not check out our website? And please feel free to comment on functions of account service you think are most important (or just send us a note about your favorite Olympic sport). Thanks for reading!