Creative account managers and strategic creatives???

Over at And Digital we bring a fresh new perspective to digital marketing (that's what we call web design and the bigger picture of marketing your new website and company profile in the digital arena).

Let me explain how it normally happens at a run of the mill integrated marketing agency who claim to 'specialise' in and 'embrace' digital media.

You'll get contacted in first instance by the young dynamic sales person. He'll bamboozle you with repeated rounds of buzzword bingo, tell you he 'loves' your current site but can help you improve it and then offer to sell you the moon on a stick as he is being judged on converted phone calls and the subsequent sales meetings rather than the actual delivery of the behemoth he's just promised you.

Then you'll meet your account management team. This will normally consist of a senior account manager and a junior trainee. The account manager (if a dyed-in-the-wool digital head) will undoubtedly be a failed and therefore opinionated creative, and the junior will be lost in a sea of technology they claimed they understood at their job interview. They will share a few in jokes in front of you to establish their youth, creativeness and general urbane coolness before listening to your job brief. Except they won't be listening. They will be listening to what they want to hear through the ears of the senior account manager. As a failed creative deep down they will feel that they have never had the chance to truly shine and show off their creative chops...until now. The brief they'll be taking back to the creative team may as well be written in Swahili for all the sense it will actually make. Neither person has a real eye for creative solutions or really understands how to apply a creative solution to a staid and unrealised brief.

Then come the creative team. Exceptionally talented and brimming with creative ideas - the only problem is that their solutions are always the same. 'Let's make it cool and contemporary...like the Nike or Diesel site.' This is fine if you are Nike or Diesel. If you happen to manufacture the little widgets that sit in the bottom of cans of lager then a cool site that reaches out to the disenchanted youth of today is probably not the solution you are looking for. They don't care though...strategy is just one of the big words that 'suits' use and they don't give a fig for how practical and applicable their creative baby is.

So the creative team took their ill-informed brief from the account management team and turned it into a completely ineffectual creative solution to an entirely different problem. The account management team in turn took their brief from the client without really listening to what they were looking for and the sales team booked the whole job by downsizing the costs to the client whilst upsizing them to their boss in a effort to earn some extra commission.

At And Digital we are made up differently.

We have creative account managers who can help clients visualise their goals from a creative point of view and can open up client penned briefs to really harness the power of modern digital marketing mediums.

We also have strategic creatives who can understand the business needs behind a creative brief and can tailor an exciting and visually appealing solution to the needs and goals of a digital campaign.

As I said earlier, creative account managers and strategic creatives.