Internship Week 9: Why Do Things End Just When They Start to Get Good?

Well, unfortunately my internship is nearing its end and just as things begin to pick up of course. The hard work and dedication to my work has definitely paid off in small ways. On Monday afternoon I was approached by my supervisor’s boss to help out on a new business pitched. Even though I was only asked to collect some data, my elementary school acquired Excel skills came in handy. With the data I collected I was able to build out a graph that was featured in the first slide of the presentation deck. It was really awesome to be a part of this experience, especially when I learned we made it to the final round of the pitch process! Overall this demonstrated that my boss not only trusted me but made me realize that I had proven myself worthy of that trust.

Summer Insight Series Take Aways:
So each week we have a “lunch and learn” event with someone from the agency and all the interns where we have the opportunity to learn more about the area of advertising, the people who work at Mullen and their experience of working in advertising and at Mullen.

This week the session was led by 3 members of the account services department that work on Jet Blue, JAMRS, and Google. As an account management intern I was very excited to see my department represented in the insight series. Many interns outside the account department ask me what I do and I believe that these three account people summed it up well. Describing it as “The People Department”. Account managers work as a liaison between the client and the agency. Great account managers must:

1. Be an effective communicator to both sides.

This means letting each side know what they need from one another. Whether it is translating client feedback or selling the creative concepts to the client. Their job is know how to best communicate the information base on the people that it’s being communicated to and what is being communicated. Like letting the creatives know that the client didn’t like any of their ideas and they need to start over is communicated differently than the client loved it and wants to put more money into the media buy.

2. Manage expectations

So much of what the account manager does involves managing the expectations for both those on the client side and the agency side. Sometimes when you’re presenting a piece of creative it is in the most basic form. Account managers must make sure the client understands how the creative will be vs when it’s presented.

3. Maintain the agency’s transparency

Account managers must be able to let the client know what is going on all the time. Between all of the client statuses are manage emails, calls and messages passed back and forth between the client and the account team. Account managers are always updating the client with what is going on all the time.

4. “Provide solutions, not problems”

When a problem arises it is almost always the account managers responsibility to fix it. Instead of dwelling on the problem or passing it on to someone else it is best to find solutions for the problem. If you can provide solutions to the problems you will be more of an asset to the account team.

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