Sponsor (July-Dec 1955)

Record Details:

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Account supervisor's FUNCTIONS In marketing-conscious agencies today THE ADVERTISING TRANSITION iconfdl ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE AND PSYCHIATRIST • Participate in meetings of product group; market plans hoard, creative group, plans review board. • Assume basic responsibility for integrating client policy and viewpoint with agency plan. • Assume responsibility for long-range thinking about the client's business and reflect this thinking in his work with account executive and plans boards. • Consult with business manager in the development of the master work schedules for all his accounts. • Assume responsibility for client presentations and all major advertising plans. • Give special attention to research requirements of each account under his supervision and furnish necessary leadership in these activities. • Take lead in integrating publicity and public relations work with planning activities of the agency. • Assume responsibility for reviewing all foregoing activities with the account executive and giving him counsel and guidance. Account executive's FUNCTIONS In marketing-conscious agencies today • Supply business manager with presentation deadline necessary to the development of work schedule. • Prepare "start work" report for the product group. • Participate in meetings of the marketing plans, creative plans and plans review board. • Follow all activities on start work report with the production and traffic departments. • Prepare presentations to the plans review board. • After plans review board approval, organize all material to be presented to the client. • Prepare written report following client review of presentation material. • Maintain account book under over-all direction of service group head. choice of radio shows. We went out and solicited our own accounts and if we picked up one we'd make sure that we ourselves handled it. When we decided to leave, we'd be in a position to take our own accounts with us. And often also the people that worked with us on the account. "In those days we usually wrote our own advertising plan and presented the program personally to the client. We were a kind of law unto ourselves and agency management was something that took care of the bookkeeping and provided us with such services as art and research pools. Of course, we worked through a plans board, mainly for two reasons: policy determination and the sound practice of having a problem or project appraised by a group of varied specialists. "Those were the days of the individualists in even the liiggest of agencies. Those were the da\s when you could function as a rounded-out advertising man and when such creative giants as the 0. B. Winters, the Bill Days, the T. F. MacManuses and the Lou Wase\ s ruled the roost in the big shops. Those were the days when the function of the agency was to concentrate at creating consumer demand— an era when MacManus crowed, 'Give me a pin and 111 create a business' — meaning that he could write copy of such persuasion that he'd create the consumer demand which would get the product on the counter or shelf — and not as a result of any of your so-called "marketing" gimmicks. "And those were the days when you could count on close personal, and even family, relationships with the client. The president of the company was quite often one of the founders of his business and he took a direct interest in knowing as much about the man handling his account as the job he was doing." Analyst: "An interesting bit of nostalgia, but how does this differ from the way things are today in personal stature, agency procedure and human relations? I'd like to be able to understand this whole picture." Account executive: "In many, many ways. Basically, it's a complete reversal of the roles of top level management in the agency versus the account man. The philosophy that the majority of the agencies in the top 15 or so have apparently got around to is this, in a nutshell: In the marketing era you must have strong managerial direction with a corps of individual experts supplying the thinking, planning and general marketing strategy for the product. And, in addition to the traditional responsibility of preparing and placing advertising, the agency must now concern itself with how the product is displayed, promoted, merchandised and distributed. "Lets roll this up into smaller pellets and see how that marketing era approach works: "The account man — lets say in the very top agencies — ■ now gets the benefit and services of from 10 to 20 individual experts, whose departments are often headed — especially in merchandising or marketing — by the best people that money can buy. These specialists all contrihute to the planning of strateg\ . preparation and execution of the campaign, and they're referred to as a product group."" Analyst: "Yes. hut where does the account man fit in? Account executive: "I'm coming to that, hut I'll have to do it in stages. {Please turn to page 86 i SPONSOR