The resourceful Account Manager

As an agency Account Manager, our reason for being is to keep people (agency team, clients and suppliers) happy. We are the ones who will help turn a client's brief into reality, and sometimes that transformation requires a little bit of magic.

Offering high-value service is one of the best ways you can set yourself, and your agency, apart from the rest. By challenging conventional thinking, using your business and marketing nous, thinking of great ideas and being resourceful (pulling a rabbit out of a hat) you can demonstrate your value and impress your clients.

Situations where your resourcefulness may be tested include:

• tight or conflicting deadlines
• squeezed budgets
• under-staffed team
• doing something you have never done before
• sourcing a hard-to-find product
• the need to create something brand new

My strangest client request was from a company that sold milk products and regularly took part in agricultural trade shows and field days events.

They wanted to create an interactive display that would teach children how to milk a cow. The brief: create a life-size, milkable, transportable, friendly, gorgeous cow. OK [cough], no problem.

Working alongside a design engineer we explored various options. We considered constructing a 2-dimensional, cartoon-looking facade with milking apparatus in behind. Though cute (and functional), it was literally a bit "flat".

The final solution was lurking in a local warehouse full of stage and screen props. We found a delightful fibreglass, life-size cow. Hollow inside to comfortably house the milking apparatus (which we figured out how cobble together) we had struck client-nirvana! Transporting the cow to the tradeshows....now that was another challenge entirely!

What's the most unusual or logistically/creatively-difficult project that you have ever had to facilitate? When have you had to demonstrate how resourceful you can be?

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