Mykarma.in

A one off article that I read.. Liked it the way the job of the servicing guy has been illustrated..

“If you’ve ever been to a circus, you’d have seen a scary item in the programme where a man goes up to a fierce lion, which roars and shows its teeth. The next thing you know, the man has put his head right into the lion’s mouth! And yet he manages to come out alive. What’s more, he does it again the next day, and the next… till he dies, not as lion feed, but of old age, many years later.

Another species of humans that does such a brave act for a living is the client servicing person in an agency.

Sometimes the mouth is that of his client, a wild, fierce animal. Sometimes the mouth is that of the creative director, another wild, snarling beast. But despite these people constantly trying to chew off his head, he lives on, mostly because of a healthy diet of many, many management bestsellers on survival, bought and consumed at airport bookstalls.

Indu Balachandran

Client servicing people are also called “account executives”, and their parents often wish that their child had indeed joined a circus as a lion tamer, as they’d have a more definite idea about what he does for a living.
Admittedly, no parent is really happy about saying, “Our son, who studied words like incendiary, anodyne and preponderant from the MBA word list in preparation for the CAT exam, is now, after equipping himself with an expensive MBA degree from a leading management school, in the servicing department of an ad agency.”

Somehow, “servicing” gives the impression that their beloved, learned son is now overhauling cars in a garage down the road.

So, account executive is the more respectable label. But of course, even after explaining it 2,783 times to one’s parents, they can never understand that “accounts” stand for client’s brands, and not a pile of ledgers that must be balanced before nightfall.

Well, the main reason why agencies employ servicing people is to help grow business, the dress code for which is a suit. What they do grow, at a faster rate than they grow business, is ulcers. But then, they also keep an entire parallel industry thriving – pills, potions, medications, mantras… and other stress busting activities that this ulcer-ridden profession has helped grow.

However, the real purpose for which God created servicing people is that they too can leave their mark in advertising history by writing something called “the brief”.

This is the starting point of every great piece of advertising in the agency. After collecting tonnes of research reports and market figures, and chewing over sales targets, competitive findings, target audience demographics and psychographics (all of which can be swallowed only with three pints of beer), the servicing person has the important task of putting all this enormous information into a pithy, tight, smartly worded, one page brief for the creative team.

This sensational, Reader’s Digest style condensed, one pager makes such inspiring reading, clearly laying out a sparkling, incisive, single minded, dead right strategy (that often in itself deserves an award, for the award-winning ad that matches it), that agencies, in order to get it bang on right, usually write the brief after the campaign has been created.

Which is completely justified, when you think of it, for looking at a servicing person’s day, where is the time to write a brief??

A life in the day of a servicing person

A client servicing person’s day often begins with a wake-up call from – you guessed it – the client himself, who, even before the poor servicing chap has inserted toothbrush into mouth, calls to ask about a missed insertion in that morning’s paper.

“WHERE is my ad for LifeSaver Rejuvenator?? You SAID it would appear in this morning’s paper!!” will holler the client.

The groggy servicing person will open his own copy of the newspaper, holding the phone between ear and shoulder, and say, “But it IS here. Page 4. Right below three obituaries…”

Mad Client: “WHAT!! You put my launch ad for LifeSaver on this page?! What happened to front page solus??”

Quick-thinking servicing person: “But don’t you see? We’ve done some innovative positioning for your ad here. Your LifeSaver ad has more impact now in the context of the obituaries…”

Client: “Hmmmm, er, I guess so. Hey thanks! You just saved my life…”

And the relieved servicing person gets past another blunder created entirely by somebody else, and happily begins brushing his teeth.

After charging off to the printer’s to re-check last night’s redone colour corrections for a poster (since the art director never wakes up till 10 am), and stopping by at his aunt’s to pick up six cookery books when she’s not looking (the copywriter has to compile a cheese recipe promotional booklet, but has no idea where one can find recipe books, poor thing), and charging to the bazaar to buy 12 multicoloured kites (the creative director has a shoot today and he needs a kite as a prop, but has no idea where to get the things), and running to a store to buy a dozen red roses (the client mentioned that his wife had finally got her driving licence and hinted that it would be cool to be congratulated by the agency), and zooming into a store to buy a set of bath towels (his Mom arrives tonight to visit his bachelor digs and would faint if she discovered that he uses bed sheets to wipe himself), our dashing servicing man dashes into the conference room for the Monday morning meeting – a ritual for all servicing people – with the manager.

And then you will understand why he slogged to get his MBA degree from that top management school before landing this job, because this is how the meeting will go:

Manager: “There’s a billing shortfall of Rs 2.37 crore on your brand. What do you propose to do about it?”

An ordinary client servicing person might have replied: “Donate my legs to medical science, swallow two packets of Tik-20 cockroach killer, and never regain consciousness…”

But an MBA would reply: “No problem. We’ve proactively generated below the line market activity that will interdict the descendancy, parallelly prorogating competitive denigration with stonewalling tactics that I’ve already apprised our client of and we’ll be presenting creative work for all this, this afternoon…”

And then off he goes to wrestle for time on the Mac in the digital studio to personally complete the leaf motif on the label design for a cough remedy (to ask the art director to do so would take three more days, and what did he learn time management for, if not for this?), and while the file is opening up on the computer, writing an ad for a free tongue-cleaner with every deodorant (to ask the copywiter to do the headline would mean she’d stop that other job for the recipe booklet, and what did he learn work management for, if not for this?).

In between, he will rush up three floors twice to cajole/threaten the media guys for a make-good free release of his client’s ad, which appeared yesterday, but without any telephone number (the ad said Free Ice Creams To All Those Who Call This Number Today!), and after stopping by to fix an appointment with the dentist who has to whiten the teeth of the pretty model for tomorrow’s toothpaste shoot, our young hero will be off to the exhibition grounds in the outskirts of town where his client has a stall, and be right on time to catch the awning that collapses under last night’s rain.

And it’s still 11.30 am of the first day of the week.

(Indu Balachandran is a travel writer and also runs creative workshops in advertising and creative writing. She secretly adores all client servicing people and has a few names she’d like to recommend for the next Param Vir Chakra awards.) “

Via

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