Over the last week, I’ve spent a great deal of time and brain power thinking and considering whether it’s best to continue with the agency topic (money), or if the topic is most important for a future in account planning (love). After much consideration, I finally decided to focus on a topic that would influence the rest of my career. From the previous post, I chose love.
Believing that my client contact would return to the office (from paternity leave) on Tuesday, I sent a probe to see when he would be available for a short chat. Sadly (for me, not him), he had decided to take another week off and will return to the office next Monday. So, today, I decided to bite the bullet and put in a call to the MD (Don’t worry, it was authorized. She’s my secondary contact).
Of course, there’s a business justification for the change in topic as the themes around customer relationship management and partnership are well established. Ultimately, the partnership topic would deliver less value for them and for me as there are 2 basic reasons (from secondary research and experience) that agencies lose clients: erosion of the account relationship and lack of confidence in creative strategy. And in order to promote partnership, you have to increase the client’s PERSONAL investment in the relationship (ie upon account set-up require lengthy meetings with the corporate marketing staff and high-level employees, go through a research phase to gather data, but also to deepen their involvement and confidence, etc.)
So. I had prepared my case and made the call. As a result, the MD’s quite keen on a broader version of the new topic I proposed and I’m set to meet with she and the agency’s creative and interactive directors to discuss further next week. Of course, I would be thrilled to work with the firm AND move in a direction that would prepare me for employment after the program. Perhaps you can have both love and money? How nice it would be to contribute to the G&K European travel fund after nearly a year of being out of the ranks as a full-time student. Fingers and toes crossed, breath held…and prayers wouldn’t hurt 🙂
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