Lewis Chan
This series of articles looks at the world of the account manager.
This time we talk to BMF Australia senior account manager Lewis Chan.
How did you end up in account management? Was it by design or a cosmic accident?
I’ve had an affinity with creativity since high school but never knew exactly where it would take me. At one point I thought I would end up in photography. At another point I wanted to be a strategist. At one of my more naive points I thought I’d become a professional athlete. But I was fortunate to be taken in for a short work experience program at Leo Burnett during high school, which gave me a teaser of what agency life could be like.
At uni, while studying Advertising & PR, I worked at one of Paddington’s best venues as a venue manager (which I’ll touch on shortly), but when I graduated I couldn’t seem to get my foot in the door in the ad industry so I stayed in hospitality for a few more years.
COVID lockdown came down on us in 2021 and hospitality was largely on hiatus. In the same week I was stood down, my connection from Leo Burnett reached out with an open Account Coordinator role. I didn’t really know much about account management at all but I faked it ‘til I made it. And looking back, a job in hospitality that was centred around service, multitasking, managing teams, compromise, budgeting, creativity, and personability (albeit slightly introverted) was arguably the best possible training.
So, you could say my journey into account management was almost a cosmic accident… by design.
Balancing clients’ objectives and creative vision can be challenging. How do you deal with that?
I find this can be one of the more challenging parts of the job. But when done right, you get to see the byproduct of synergy across the different departments. And it is so rewarding.
At the end of the day, we are all working towards the same goal - creating world-class, effective work. Fulfilling client objectives may not always have a clear-cut process but we work with so many intelligent and driven humans who articulate how creativity can solve clients’ business problems. If you can lean on your strategic and creative experts while knowing the brand, and be an advocate for the work, you have a pretty good chance of getting it over the line.
What strategies do you employ to clearly convey ideas to clients and address client feedback?
Before getting into my strategy, let’s briefly consider the difference between “listening” and “hearing”. You may be paying attention and taking in information
when you listen, but “hearing” implies going the extra mile - knowing and understanding the problem, the business, and the opportunity like it’s your own. With that being said, my strategy is to ensure your client feels heard.
Account management are the conduit between the client and the rest of the agency. If you don’t fully understand your client or their task, you can’t expect your team to either. This goes both ways: if you don’t fully understand the work your team is presenting, you can’t expect your client to.
How to build strong relationships with clients?
Building relationships with clients hasn’t been the most straightforward process since joining ad-land. I entered the industry in a period of full-time WFH arrangements, had no in-person contact with clients, and about half of my clients since have been based interstate. That being said, that’s no reason why I couldn’t build strong relationships with clients.
At the most fundamental level, demonstrating that you can do your job (well) - through transparent communication, knowing how your client and their business operates, or how you can best help wrangle your team to solve business problems - will start to build a professional relationship and establish yourself as a competent client/agency partner.
Sprinkle in some genuine interest in your client and quality in-person time outside the office and you’ll start to understand them on a personal level which may further help understand how they like to work.
Do you have any go-to tips for navigating challenging conversations with clients?
There will be no shortage of conversations you want to palm off to someone more senior in any career – whether that is budget, usage, timings, resource – you name it. One of the best things I have learnt along the way when presented with a challenge is, if you can, always come to the table with some possible solutions.
Do your due diligence and leave no stone unturned. Don’t wait for someone else to take the reins, and always know you can pre-vet your ideas with your team. By then, you might feel confident enough to lead and likely have a more productive conversation.
The more you do it the easier it becomes.
Are there any emerging trends or challenges in the industry that account management teams should be prepared for?
I’m looking forward to seeing how AI evolves as a tool to benefit ad-land. In fact, I wrote this whole piece using Chat GPT.
I’m kidding...
While there’s some red tape still being navigated, you can already imagine the stretch AI may have across strategy and production specifically, so I’m curious how we might use it day-to-day. I don’t think AI will replace our jobs in account management because of the level of human relationship management that’s required - the subjectivity of understanding a brief or feedback and tailoring it to how your team works best; or knowing the client, their organisation and their various stakeholders. From a job security perspective I think (and I hope) we’re in the clear.
What advice would you give your younger self when you first started out in account service?
There are two key pieces of advice, not necessarily account management-specific, but advice nonetheless I wish more emphasis was put on.
The first is simple: have receipts! Seriously… put every meeting, every phone call, every side text message (internal or external) in writing. It’s incredibly helpful with remembering what was said and agreed, and even more important for if a conflicting decision is made further down the track.
The second piece of advice is a bit more profound, so bear with me: your personal sense of self is not a reflection of your job performance. 2024 has been a difficult year personally and I found it was affecting how I thought I was performing. I had lost most of my confidence, for example, I couldn’t write a debrief without second guessing everything I wrote. Was it right? Would my manager want me to structure it like this? How will the creative team react? Am I missing pieces of information?
Low and behold I was performing much better than I thought, reflected by really positive feedback come review time, and a promotion.
Your friends at work may be some of your best supporters - at least this is the case for me - so this is not to suggest isolating your personal life from your work life. Rather, and I appreciate how much easier this is said than done, try to avoid letting your personal circumstances get the better of you at work (and vice versa)
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