Account Executives

The moment I saw this artwork online – I couldn’t help but laugh. Allow me to dissect each photo and explain my take on it.

First shot – people think it’s all glamorous. It’s not. I can enumerate a lot of times where I would run in heels from the sound booth to the backstage and then back to the client. Packing items in the middle of the event, setting up and printing press releases 20 mins before media arrives. But hey, after we pulled through an event or any implementation – we like getting that pat on the back. We feel like a star.

Second Photo. The reason why I voluntarily took a Communication Course in college because I wanted to deal with less numbers as much as possible. I was thinking the whole time – I won’t need to deal with them in the future anyway. WRONG. When I started out in this company, I never really bothered changing the costing before sending to client. Now, I’ve come to realize if you put in value to what you do and especially the man-hours of your co-workers – I can call the shots on the cost – with the help of my supervisors and directors of course.

Shot number three: Like a boss. WHUT? No. Not exactly a boss, more of the gatekeepers. We are not simply order takers. I still have to give inputs in whatever deck we present and we still gather all info from the support teams – filter or add stuff. We’re supposedly the leaders for our respective projects.

If client thinks we go overtime like crazy. Go ahead. It’s true. We go overtime because we want to give them their money’s worth and shower them awesome presentations/ideas. Enough said.

As for the last shot - It’s true we’re always doing PowerPoint presentations for a client – for our industry since we’re in PR, another 50% of our time we’re in front of Microsoft excel. It got me thinking – is that how people around us really see us? I think it’s only because it’s the program always open in our laptops anyway.
I asked one of the directors – how did you last doing client servicing? There must be a secret to it. And his reply? You just need to have the passion of meeting people.

On March 7, it will be my 5th year in this industry. I think we all know why already.

Good days, bad days… in the end – it’s all worth it. I love my job. :)