Let’s be honest, account management in advertising has an identity problem.

Depending on who you ask, the account team “just passes things along’ or is considered to have it easier than everyone else doing the actual making. If that’s the reputation of account managers, then what about the account coordinators? Their role is even harder to pin down, usually somewhere between the vague category under support and being the messenger.

I used to accept that at face value, but now I’m not so sure I can.

Finding My Way to Account Management

Before working at Stoltz, I wasn’t aware that account management was even a thing, let alone an entire career path. I got my degree in graphic design from Boise State. My first job out of college was as a graphic designer at a convenience store distributor. We had a specialized marketing program tailored specifically for vendors (think Hershey’s, Mondelez) to advertise their products to independent gas station owners — anywhere from promotional books, trailer graphics, and targeted email campaigns. Since the marketing department was small, I had to wear multiple hats, often stepping outside of design: building relationships, coordinating with vendors on the products they wanted to advertise, ensuring buyers had what they needed to set up products in the system, and managing timelines to keep everything on schedule.

It was in this role that I realized I enjoyed the coordination and preparation behind the work more than doing the actual design itself. In my second gig, working as a marketing coordinator at an auto dealership, I collaborated with an account manager from a local advertising agency. It was there that I was first introduced to account management — an experience that ultimately sparked my interest in pursuing this line of work.

Defining My Approach: “Nancy Drewing”

Now working at Stoltz as a marketing coordinator for nearly two years, I have never felt more fulfilled doing agency work — especially in account management. Part of what I love about being at Stoltz is the opportunity to fully embrace my working style, which I’ve coined “Nancy Drewing.” If you ask my manager, Bond, to define it, he would most likely say something along the lines of how its ethos is tailored around due diligence, where it involves rounding up the right context and institutional knowledge needed to complete the task at hand.

However, if I were to be asked directly to define my approach, I would provide the following chaotic definition, in classic Selina fashion (co-workers can confirm and most likely are the only ones who understand my thought process, well to an extent.)

• Investigate, organize, problem-solve, and execute tasks with diligence and quiet ferocity.
• Connect the dots and fill in the gaps where needed — essentially confronting chaos, Kill-Bill style.
• Manage projects and/or collaborate with people with the diplomacy of a saint and the versatility of a white T-shirt. (i.e stay focused, adaptable, ready for anything)

Mapping the Work in Realtime