What Do You Actually Do? Episode 74: Client Account Management in Advertising with Izi Hutchinson

/ Hilary Neary

Listen to this and all the previous episodes.

Izi Hutchinson is Senior Account Director at VCCP, an international integrated communications agency. Listen as Kate gets to the bottom of what Izi’s job looks like. They cover the breadth of roles within advertising, the highs and lows of account management, the importance of mindset and attitude and what the future of advertising could look like.

Izi’s Bio

Izi’s most recent piece of work was relaunching Lotto (The National Lottery flagship game). She has also worked on client accounts for Maynards Bassetts, Nationwide, British Red Cross, McLaren, Saga, Royal London, Macmillan, Avis (EMEA) and MoreThan.

Izi is deputy lead of the VCCP entry level scheme – The Table. The scheme is designed to find future leaders in the industry.

Izi is a graduate of University of York where she studied History.

Useful Links

Transcript 

Kate

You’re listening to the What Do You Actually Do? podcast. Each week we want to bring you an inspiring interview, a useful tip or encouraging message to help you find your place in the professional world. 

Hello and welcome to this episode of What Do You Actually Do? My name is Kate Morris, and I’ll be your host today. In today’s episode, we’ll be talking about working in the advertising and communications industry and we’re joined by Izi Hutchinson, who works as a senior account director at VCCP, an integrated communications agency. So, Izi, what do you actually do? 

Izi 

Hi, thanks Kate. It’s really nice to be here and thank you so much for having me on. So yes, I am a senior account director at a creative advertising agency and everyone thinks as soon as I say I’m in a creative advertising agency, the first question that always comes up is it actually like Mad Men and I haven’t actually watched Mad Men so I’m not very good at answering that, but the advertising agency is really, really fast moving and there are so many different parts of advertising which people just aren’t aware about and I very much just am in one part of it, and there’s lots of different things, but I am what’s called a suit, so somebody that is in charge of the client servicing part of the job. So I’m the one that will receive a brief from a client and see it through from absolute start to finish. So what the business problem is, all the way through to literally signing off on the final delivery of an advert. I can be working on many different accounts, many different projects at once so I could be in very early strategic stages to creative development, to a shoot, to actually in post production at any day, at any time. So there’s not really a set answer to exactly what I do. It could be a plethora of different things.

Kate

So are you coming up with the ideas of what the ad should be, or are you kind of helping the client articulate what they want, and then you’re taking that to other colleagues who would come up with the actual design or concept? 

Izi

Absolutely. So I’m definitely on the latter side. So to give a little bit more information for those people that don’t know, the iceberg of advertising, what you see on TV on bus sides is the absolute tip of what is a ginormous amount of people and the engine that goes behind creating it. Advertising agencies kind of sit into four buckets. You’ve got the account management, the suits, which is myself and we are like the conductors in an orchestra. We are the ones that say, right? You go, you team go you’re next, you stop. We are the ones that are orchestrating the whole process and are the ones that have the communication with the client to make sure we get the idea sold in, address their feedback, etc. You’ve then got strategists, planners who are the ones that come up with what the key message should be, what the behaviour that we should be looking to change is. What is the actual perception of this audience? What do they think about this brand? They’re kind of the thinkers and really take what is probably quite a dry business problem and bring it into what we call a creative brief. So what is the core challenge of it? Then you’ve got the creative department. Creative is another part of the company and they always work in pairs. So traditionally you’ve had a copywriter and an art director, and they work together to come up with what the concept is. Whether what that visual is, what the branding is and what the message is. In order to become a creative, it is a different avenue. If you want to be an Account or a strategist, you usually have to get some more external education and training to become one. The fourth area is production so we have loads of producers within the creative advertising agency and they are the ones that bring the, what we call the scamp, the drawing on the page, the words on the page to life. So they’re the four key areas of advertising. So I am a terrible drawer and absolutely shocking at coming up with ideas, but that is not my job role within the scheme of creative advertising. But each of those four areas of account, planning, creative and production, all form an incredibly important part of creating an advert at the end. 

Kate

Thank you. That’s a really helpful overview of how it all works, because I think people don’t always understand those different elements and they think oh you work in advertising, you’re doing all aspects of it. It sounds like your role is like a project manager basically you’ve got ownership of the whole thing, but you’re getting the expertise of the relevant colleagues to do their bits of it and then you bring it all together and deal with it at the end with the client.

Izi 

Yeah, that’s exactly it and each role has got such different skills that you need. So we always say when we talk to people that are interested in advertising that there is definitely a job or a role for any skill set within our industry. You could be absolutely amazing at maths or you could be terrible at maths there is a role for you. You could be a great drawer, a terrible drawer, fantastic with words or terrible with words. There are so many different job roles within advertising to suit a huge range of different skill sets. 

Kate

So where did your interest in advertising come from then? Because you did your degree in history. 

Izi

Yeah so in my first year at York, I actually did History and History of Art and then I continued just with history in my second and third year. I’d always been really interested in culture and particularly using art as a way to identify and see what people’s cultures are looking like in the past and I knew I wanted to do something that was more artistic and creative. I’d always loved that but when I did a little bit of work experience in art galleries and stuff like that, I didn’t really fully enjoy it and I realised I didn’t enjoy it because it didn’t have that more structured business side of things. So I knew quite early that I wanted to find an industry that was both creative and business and then I I stumbled really upon advertising and really got to the core of understanding what that industry is all about, which is about solving business problems with creativity. It was just the perfect combination for me and that’s why I knew I wanted to go into advertising and wasn’t quite sure; I had no idea about all the different subsections of advertising, the difference between creative or planning or anything like that. It was through conversations and work experience that I knew that the skill sets that I had would really, really work well in account management. 

Kate 

So it sounds like work experience was really impactful then, firstly to show you what you didn’t want to do which I think is such a valuable thing. Often people worry if you do work experience, that’s you, you’re set on that career path. It’s like, no, you’re allowed to not like it and it can clarify what you do want. You mentioned you did a bit of experience within advertising, I think you did an internship with the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, the IPA. Was it that, that was the other thing that gave you the opportunity to have those conversations, to understand more about it or did it impact on you in a different way having that experience? 

Izi

Yeah. So I think it’s a challenge with work experience because I do sometimes find that in advertising, getting work experience is challenging and it is hard and it sometimes does come down to who you know. At VCCP, we’re really, really trying to break that as much as possible, but back however long ago it was, there was the IPA, which is yeah, as you said, Kate, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising did do a summer internship where I was placed in three different agencies across a two-month period and it was absolutely fantastic for me to see what the different cultures were like within an agency. Each agency is so different and it really is a little bit like Goldilocks, like we’re trying to find which one suits you, but I was very fortunate enough to be able to have exposure to different agencies and it was just two weeks in each but you got a really sort of good understanding over what the, you know, responsibilities were and what the cultures were like in each company. That really helped cement what I wanted to do. So yeah, it is really, really helpful having that experience within a creative advertising agency because as I said, people do have a perception over what it’s going to be like but it is a lot different to what people think. 

Kate

So are different agencies quite different then? Is it a really different working environment and vibe generally?

Izi 

So I did do quite a lot of work experience at different companies and I was sort of you know, able to see how people react with each other and what the working life was like but I’ve been at VCCP for eight years so as soon as I graduated from York Uni, I was fortunate enough to get onto the graduate scheme at VCCP and have been there ever since. From what I’ve heard from colleagues who have worked at other agencies, there are different cultures and different ways of working and different senior leadership and that in turn does mean that there are different vibes and I think it’s important to know with advertising agencies you have got massive organisations, medium sized ones and small ones. Each will have a really different culture by the nature that there are just more people and less people. So if you applied to a smaller agency, you are a Jack of all trades. You’re all getting stuck in with absolutely every single part of the process, whilst a larger agency you might have a little bit more linear processes and communications with people but you do in turn work on the biggest global brands. So it’s all about finding out what type of company you’re looking for. Are you looking for something that you want to get stuck in and really, really get involved, thrown in the deep end? Or is it that you want to have something where you are working on the most famous, most iconic creative work and brand? But yeah, there is definitely, to answer your question, there is a big difference between different creative agencies, but I think that’s what makes it really dynamic. and it keeps, you know, people on their toes. Also, you know, different brands want, different marketing companies, different points of view on work and where they see their brand moving forward to and that’s why it’s really important to have that variety and agency cultures as well. 

Kate 

I guess as you said at the start your skills are valuable in different ways, so it’s about, people kind of researching what’s out there and thinking, you know, really being clear on what they want from a job and what they want from the role itself. As you mentioned, you’ve been with VCCP for quite a while now and you’ve worked your way up to a senior role. So what’s what’s your secret to success? What do you say you need to have in terms of strengths and skills to be successful, but also to be happy, because I think there’s a difference between being competent at something and actually enjoying something. So what does it help to have if you want to get into this area? 

Izi

Yeah, it’s a really good question. So I have gone a little bit full circle. So I started on the undergraduate scheme and I’m now deputy lead of our graduate scheme and we get asked quite a lot what makes a successful VCCPer. I’ve also had discussions with our founders, Charles and Adrian on this as well. It is all about having a really good attitude when you are given any task, so whatever task you are given, you are gonna put 120% into that task and with a smile on your face and to get the job done. It’s that as well as being a team player and being collaborative. You know you can’t do absolutely everything yourself. You have to work as a team and it’s that combination of knowing what the end goal is. If somebody’s gonna trust you to book a meeting room and all of this stuff as an entry level person, you might think ohh I don’t want to do this, but you’ve gotta be able to recognise the long goal; if they know that I’m really reliable on the tasks that I’m given, then I am going to be trusted with the bigger things and I think that’s probably and that’s been a message, you know York Uni, but also my family have really sort of ingrained in me, that it doesn’t matter what task I’ve been given, I absolutely have to do the best I can do at it, and I think that’s what’s been at the centre of of my success at VCCP. I just threw myself into absolutely everything, was a yes, yes, yes, person from absolutely day one and I’ve been able to be trusted by the company through that drive and having a positive can do attitude. 

Kate

And I guess that probably is pretty important for the nature of your role, because I’m imagining that on paper you have a plan with a client of this is the brief, this is what we want, I’ll send it out to these people and this is the date we are done by But I imagine the goal posts shift quite a lot and people change their mind or they give feedback on something or something else changes the different business needs, so I’m guessing you have to be quite sort of flexible and adaptable and then negotiate really effectively with all your colleagues that you need to, to change things but to keep that positive attitude. Is that fair to say? 

Izi

Absolutely, 100%. I was going to say. I always think about, you know what, my day-to-day is like. Predominantly it is about negotiation. Creative is such a subjective area. People have so many different opinions on how big the headline should be or what the main message is, is this colour working for us or is it not? Is this image saying one thing? Is it saying another?  Everyone has a right to their own opinion, and that’s absolutely totally justifiable. It’s our job as account people to navigate those conversations and it is hard. It really is hard and it is all down to negotiation. I would say with account management in particular, you have to be a people person and being able to read a room is one of the really key skills. Is the client and the creatives going loggerheads at this? How are we going to find a way through it, do we need to bring in other people, you know? Consumers point of view into this because the thing is sometimes you forget who the final audience of this piece of work is, and it’s really important to get that other view of it. But yeah, negotiation skills and being agile and being honest are really, really key skills to being a successful account person in the industry. 

Kate

I guess you must also be someone who sees the bigger picture as well, because if you’ve got people kind of really obsessing over font style and colours like you gotta be able to zoom out of that and see, right, what do we actually want to achieve here and be able to see that overview of things. 

Izi

Yeah, definitely and I think that that becomes even more important when you become more senior. It’s really important that you’re looking at that overall brand image and what the direction of travel of the brand is and I think especially at that mid, mid senior level, you’re both in the day-to-day, right, what have I got to do today, sending this e-mail, this timing plan…you know these costs, but then really thinking when you’re reviewing the work, right, is this going to answer the overall brief we’ve been given? Is this setting us on the right course of travel? I worked on EasyJet for five years and I still have big love for the brand and that one was a really interesting. account to work on because when I was working on it, it was always kind of known as sleazy jet and was kind of quite down and dirty advertising and we really tried to within the time I was working on it, push it into a more premium space. So when we were reviewing ads, it was really important to keep that in mind over what our ultimate aim was and what the goal was that we wanted to do. So yeah, again in account management, it’s super important to balance the long term ambition, but also right what have I got to get done today, this week I’ve gotta get this worked out by this deadline. Do I have time to get all those people to look at it in order to make sure we’re presenting the right work, which is doing the right thing for the brands? And yeah, it is really important to ask those bigger, wider questions. 

Kate

So it sounds like a really varied role and pretty full on. What’s the thing that you really love about it? What’s kept you in the sector for so long?

Izi

I think I just get such a buzz with working with creatives and creating work. The great thing about advertising is the work is so tangible. Seeing your work that you’ve worked on for 18 months, two months, you know a year. Seeing it out in the world is such a wonderful feeling. There’s nothing better than when you send it to your family or your friends, your loved ones saying this is what I’ve done and everyone’s like. Yeah, I saw it loads, loved it! That feels like such a buzz. It’s got a very tangible output on the work and the energy you put out and I’m really driven by that and I’m really lucky at VCCP that I’ve worked on some absolutely iconic brands and that also keeps me, you know, really motivated working on household brands such as Nationwide, McLaren, Jelly Babies and Wine Gums for Maynards Bassets, British Red Cross and now currently working on the National Lottery, a huge range of so many different companies and I absolutely love that. I could be talking about the Ukraine conflict one day and then I could be literally talking about Jelly Babies the next and that variety just keeps my brain really challenged and keeps me thinking. I also get such a kick out of problem solving. I sound like such a loser but I just love being able to solve a problem, whether that’s you know.. Right we’ve got to bring this presentation forward, what are we going to do, amend that or right, this is the most amazing creative solution for this business problem that the clients have. I get a real sort of satisfaction of that bit, but also working with my team on that as a group of people. I think it does come down to the people as to why I’ve stayed as well. VCCP is an amazing company with really talented people and I really feel that I’ve made, you know, not only friends there, but they’re just so supportive across everything and if something comes in, we will get together, work through it, you never feel like you’re isolated at all. Advertising is a massive team industry and that is super important. So yeah, I guess the reason why I’ve stayed is the work; I’ve got so much variety, but also it’s the people that are just so amazing. 

Kate

So what’s the thing that you put up with then? What’s the worst bit? 

Izi

I mean, I’ve sort of touched upon it. That rock and the hard place between client and creative is difficult but there is always a way to navigate it, a way around it. If that means that we need to slightly re-look at the creative or the tone or the visual we’re doing or whether the client needs to re-look at their brief or their audience or stakeholders opinions. That is by far the most difficult thing. When those two things are at loggerheads, that is when it gets really, really difficult, but there are always ways around it. It’s all about communication. It’s all about getting on a call, getting in a meeting and working through it and there is always a solution but that is one of the challenging, hardest things I would say. The other thing that’s difficult about the industry is getting perspective. We have this saying – we’re in PR not ER and I think it’s really important to keep that. Things can be really stressful. Pressure can be really high to get it right but it is really important to know that nobody has died and it is just advertising and you do really have to remember that and that can be hard because everyone really, really cares. I really care about the work and I really care about getting it through and answering the brief and making sure we’re putting our best foot forward but there can be a lot of pressure that can come down on it and the fast pace and the fast turnarounds because you are in client servicing. But it is important to get perspective, but that can be slightly challenging to have all the time. 

Kate 

Yeah, I can imagine it can be tricky to get that balance sometimes, but that’s good that people are aware of that and trying to support each other to take stock. Looking ahead then what do you think will be the sort of key challenges for the account management side of things, not just at VCCP, but that type of role and the wider advertising communications sector over the next few years? What’s on your horizon to be thinking about, that students or recent grads who are wanting to break into the sector could be researching and anticipating? What are the key things? 

Izi

So I think the absolute main one and the big buzz at the moment is AI. There’s lots of, you know, discussions and thought pieces over what the future of advertising will be with AI. At VCCP, we have a very clear perspective on this and we’ve set up a sort of subsection of the agency called Faith, which is fully focusing on this, but AI is there to help enhance creative, to make it as best as possible. It’s not something we want to fight. It’s something that we want to embrace and I think that navigation of the role of AI within the brand work and the creative sector is going to be really important. So lots of the sort of entry level talent that we’re currently looking at at the moment, because applications have shut for our entry level scheme just now, but a lot of the answers over what the future of advertising is, is what is AI and what is that going to look like in advertising? So my advice would be for anybody that’s looking to join advertising is, we are also looking to the new younger generation to help us define what that is going to look like. Having a perspective over what you think that would be is really important and I think that’s really exciting. I mean, if we look back when social media came in, we were having the same conversations in advertising. Oh my God, what is this going to look like? Is there never gonna be any TV ads ever again? Is it just gonna all be on social? And there was, you know big groups of people within advertising, all joining forces, new departments springing up over this new technology, and again, advertising agencies completely embraced it and we found really creative ways to bring the brand concepts and creative ideas to life on social. It is the same with AI but it is absolutely the next new chapter. So I would say that is the big thing for advertising in the foreseeable future. 

Kate

That sounds a really exciting opportunity then for people wanting to break in, that they could actually kind of carve a niche out for themselves. 

Izi

Yeah, 100%. 

Kate

They can really contribute something because it’s a totally evolving issue. 

Izi

Yeah, that’s definitely it. We always want people to join the advertising industry to make their mark on it and I would say AI is one of the big spaces where we’re looking for people to really make a mark and we want to hear what people think. VCCP is the Challenger Agency, challenger brand and we want to be challenged. We want those people who really want to change the advertising industry, those that are really gonna change how brands should be looking at the world and looking at audiences and what we should be saying and that’s really important. 

Kate

So it sounds like kind of coming at it with ideas and opinions is important, but have you got any other sort of tips or advice for students thinking about working in advertising generally, like the best way to get work experience or stuff that would help you know, their applications stand out? Any any other sort of bits of advice there? 

Izi

Yeah. So I guess a few things beginning with work experience. So at VCCP we offer a really great scheme called Ad School, which is a two week work experience internship in London every summer and I think there’s one in Easter now as well where it’s a complete crash course into advertising. So you get loads of talks from account management from planning from production, from creative and you get given a live brief and you’re working in teams together to answer that brief. There’s not a job at the end of it, but the role of our school is absolutely to see whether advertising’s for you before you commit to then future apply for jobs. So I highly recommend checking that out, that’s called Ad School. In terms of recommendations for applications and when you apply, you’ve got to remember that this is a creative industry. My advice is just think outside of the box as much as possible. This is not a consultant application. We don’t ask for CVs, we want to know who you and how you deal with the question creatively? The more creative that you can be, the more likely we are going to remember it and I think it’s really important to put yourself in the shoes of those people that are reviewing applications. There are hundreds that come through and you need to think like how am I gonna stand out here? That’s not saying go totally weird. Always try and bring it back to the point of trying to land, but try and do that in a creative, different way so that’s always my advice when applying to an advertising company, is even if you’re not somebody that can draw or not somebody that can edit a film. There are still ways in your words or how you say something that you can do things in a creative and different way. 

Kate

Yeah, they can be quite different applications, can’t they? I’ve seen application forms for advertising before where it’s like It’s not, you know, why do you wanna work here or what skills have you got? It’s things like tell me about something that made you. laugh today

Izi

Yeah, exactly and one of my favourite questions we’ve got on the table application. So for context why we call it the table is it’s not a graduate scheme, it’s an entry level scheme. So nobody needs any work experience to join. You only need a C in English and maths at I think it’s called at level 4, it was GCSEs back in my day. And then, yeah, the questions we’ve got is, you know, why do you want a seat at the table? Why do you wanna join us? And that’s why It’s called the table scheme, and I mean we’ve got questions like pick a number between zero to 100 and tell us why it’s your favourite or convince Cruella Deville not to make a coat out of Dalmatians and simply explain something complex. Tell us something you made recently and it could literally be a cake, but we just really want to see how people answer these questions in a different way and try and convince us, but all of the questions do have a relevance to advertising. So like the Cruella Deville one, what we want to know is what your persuasion skills are with a question like that. So no, we absolutely do have a very different application form, which I actually love doing. Like I  really think they were really thought provoking and they really give a good sense over what the culture is like at the company. We’re absolutely not a corporate organisation. People wear jeans, trainers  in the office. It is fun, it is definitely more modern and contemporary. It’s all people coming together to create fantastic work, and that’s what the aim and the ambition is. So yeah,  I do think our application really does align with what our values are as well. 

Kate

Probably more interesting for the candidates as well than the generic stuff. Well, for more info about the careers we’ve mentioned today and the VCCP schemes that we talked about, I’ll add some relevant links to the episode description and a link to the full transcript of today’s show. But Izi, thank you so much for taking time to do this. It’s been really, really interesting to hear more about what you do and I’m sure this is gonna be really helpful for lots of students. So thank you. 

Izi

Pleasure. No, thank you for having me. 

Kate

Thanks for joining us this week on What Do You Actually Do? This episode was hosted by myself, Kate Morris, and edited and produced by the Careers and Placements team. If you love this podcast, spread the word and subscribe. Are you eager to get more tips? Follow University of York Careers and Placements on YouTube, X and Instagram. All useful links are in this episode description. This has been produced at the University of York careers and placements. For more information, visit york.ac.uk/careers.