A big fat sparkly diamond ring to mark your engagement? You can thank marketers for that. Unwrapping a pair of argyle socks or pungent cologne for Father’s Day? You can thank marketers for that too. The online shopping mayhem of Black Friday? Yup, you guessed it – marketers at work!

Yes, I have been there. Four years client-side after a long career in creative agencies really opened my eyes to a world that I thought I knew. Turns out I really didn’t know much of anything at all. Becoming a client was an eye-opener, I can tell you, and not always in the ways I’d expected.

If anyone can say they’ve been there, done that and got the T-shirt, it’s Simon Derungs. Our new Client Services Director has explored every corner of the industry: agencies, consultancies and client-side. He’s worked on iconic ad campaigns, masterminded Olympic sponsorship and been sought out by industry titans for his expert advice. As you’d imagine, Simon is privy to a view of planet advertising that few others have ever seen.

When things go well, it’s thanks to the creative (and Creatives). Poorly, and it’s down to account management (AM). It’s often said that agencies win accounts on the strength of the creative and lose them on the weakness of client service. As the great Don Draper once said, “The day you sign a client is the day you start losing one.”

The account management (aka client service) role has always been a strange one, misunderstood and maligned by some, appreciated by a few, but always bang in the centre of the action. In short, account management is absolutely vital in bringing together client wishes and agency creativity to generate commercial benefits for all.