Account sucks

In my heart and liver I feel that I am ‘a Creative’. One can differ whether I am a good one or not; but most creatives are insecure, so whatever. But: I have worked as ‘that girl from Account’ for one and a half years. I wasn’t very good at it, but it did give me a different and useful perspective on my beloved Advertising World. Here it is: Being an Account person sucks. Big time. Because you can NEVER do well. You ALWAYS do something wrong. 

It’s like being a chameleon on a CMYK-rainbow. 

Of course, there are some exceptions to my eloquently formulated rule, but for an inexperienced AE, life can be tough. Unless you work at an amazing agency, for that matter -which I obviously did, because I still miss all of them.

First of all, you have to deal with the Clients. These are the ones that send you =URGENT!!!!!!!!!?!!!!!:-)!!!= emails at 8 am. They throw you the balls in the morning, when you are most unlikely to catch ‘m. They are not always nice people, too. A bit rigid. And they are usually too busy to say “Hello Marleen” at the start of that email. They just start with blaming their own career fears and flaws on you – first thing after your windy 30-minute bike ride in a skirt. Luckily for them, nowadays you have signature-options at the end of every email, so I must admit; they did always wish me a nice day. Which is awesome.

Another thing that drives you crazy as an Account; Clients work with strict ‘budgets’ and ‘targets’. Most of the time these budgets and targets are incongruent. And targets can lead to tunnel vision. And tunnel vision means crying in the bathroom during lunchtime. But, sometimes they do see the bigger picture. And that is like going to Disneyland with enough money to buy all the snacks on the carts. But that’s a rarity.

Enough about them. Have a nice day, dear Client.

Then you have the Creatives. I almost always agreed with them on projects and views and strategies, but they do not generate my income or job. The Clients do. So. There you go.

I said almost always. See, some Creatives are borderline lazy egocentric asses. They sometimes do not want to be bothered by something they cannot win lamps, spiders or other weird-shaped prices with. And thus they will just say: “Can’t you do it yourself?” Well. I wish, dear hunky-funky Creative Person. I wish… But I have an 8-hour meeting I have to attend to make notes on what was said during those 8 hours.

Next in line, you have the Traffic Department. I am not going to say anything about the Traffic Department. I want to keep them on my side for the rest of my dear life. Producers and Designers rule almost always. They have candy-jars.

And then – to end this shitty piece of unsolicited complaining about the quandary of Account – you have the Financial Department. To them I just want to say: keeping track of the agency’s work-hours in a software-program that takes a freakin’ work-hour to load all the projects SUCKS MONKEY BALLS. I just want to go home at the end of the day and watch Mad-Men.

So what I’ve learned from being ‘that girl from Account’ is the following: Advertising certainly has its players. I am all for the exciting game playing between them, but please take the struggling hard working Account into account while you’re at it.