Interactive Account Management 2.0

Managing Designers & Developers: Do Designers and Developers perform black box magic?

As an account-side agency man I often get push-back by my creative and developer teams on timelines, scope, feasibility, possibility, etc. This is good as it most often leads to an optimal solution given available resources.

However, it only works assuming that all parties are focused on client satisfaction (i.e. in theory). Given human nature, chances are that personal agendas (e.g. comfort zones pushed, personal preferences, laziness, professional vanity, etc.) might fuel part of the push-back. That’s a problem for the agency and the client.

Most people, consciously or not, tries to push boundaries to see what one can get away with. Why go the extra mile if nobody cares or it doesn’t make a difference at the end of the day? However, I’ve seen many creatives and developers working hard at presenting their work in ways that people outside their ‘guild’ can’t assess, measure or argue against it. It’s like going to the doctor and having Latin thrown at you because they assume you can't handle the truth or that you might actually understand that they don't know what they're doing!However, deciphering the creative and development “latin” can be done, and must be done, especially for anyone involved on the planning and production side of an interactive agency. It requires certain skills, and if you don’t have them, get them!

Like they say that copywriters are frustrated authors (not necessarily true) – good interactive mangers should be frustrated developers and designers. Then you know just enough to be ‘dangerous’ and to counter any bogus objection while being able to step into solution-mode both internally and with clients.

That's Account Management 2.0. Fresh out of Beta.

 

Speaking of 2.0, here's a an insight from a creative who gets what it means to be Designer 2.0.