Suits Are the Champions Giving Great Creative a Fair Chance

Between the birth of a creative idea and its final execution, a lot can change. Getting an idea through the room intact – past clients and other various stakeholders – and into an impactful final product is the domain of the often unsung influence of account teams and client services.

The ‘suits’ in these roles, as they are often referred to, are at the forefront of it all, bridging the creative-client gap, selling and safekeeping the work while navigating both inter- and intra-company dynamics. Behind every great creative narrative and daring marketing activation is a hidden story of its own: a search for the green light and the ensuing stewardship of the work.

“That’s not ‘soft’ skills. That’s strategy,” says Josie McLachlan, client lead at British marketing agency Bright Blue Day. “We don’t just keep the work moving, we shape the work itself; the ambition, the delivery, and the impact it makes when it’s finally out in the world.”

“That means fighting for and protecting the right team around an idea, and knowing which remote client function in which far-flung market you need to be able to call,” says Laura Balfour, managing partner at AMV BBDO, sharing that a client once described her as ‘a spider at the centre of the web’. “I think it was meant as a compliment,” she jokes.

But it’s this ability to “connect the dots, from channels to strategy to results” that lies at the core of the job. “It’s about keeping creative ambition alive while showing how it ladders to business goals,” agrees Josie. “Partnership, for me, isn’t coffee and small talk. It’s trust. The kind of trust that lets you say, ‘I hear you, but let’s reframe this if you want the outcome you need’. Sometimes that’s the hardest job, but it’s the most important.”

What’s Up a Suit’s Sleeve?

For Josie, the role of client services is all too often pigeonholed as ‘calendar-keeping, chasing and comms’. Whereas she believes the real influence is in “the interrogation of a brief that unlocks a bold idea” – one rooted in business needs. Caitlin O’Connell, EVP, group director of business leadership at Momentum Worldwide, describes this as ‘working the sell’ – finessing an idea so that it not only fits the audience, but feels like an “inevitable” business solution, and can be presented effectively to the client.

Jamie DeFer, managing director at Ogilvy Chicago, says the foundations for this should be laid long before ‘the sell’ takes place. “Surprises are for birthdays and magicians – your client should never feel ambushed,” she says. “Make that quick call a day or two before a major creative presentation to begin discussing the ideas! Plant the seeds for what they can expect to see (and ultimately love)! Be transparent about any obstacles you're encountering before you’re in a meeting to discuss them!”

Creating a candid, communicative environment where the client trusts the creatives to take the lead, or even pivot or delay the work if need be, is “fundamental”, she adds. “Nothing else truly matters if you haven't established trust with your clients and your team.”

​James May, head of account management at London-based creative agency Fold7, takes this idea of earned trust a step further, positing that ‘the sell’ is much easier when it’s not ‘a sell’ at all. “If it feels like you are ‘selling’ an idea, something has gone awry. Great account management should feel like objective advice, underpinned by a belief and passion for the impact creativity can have on our clients’ businesses. If you exude objectivity in front of the work – whether internally or externally – people will trust that you are leading with their best interests at heart.”

Once the client is on board, James also advises account leads to ensure timely, clear communication to avoid ‘being bitten down the line’, and emphasises the importance of having a deep understanding of the client’s business.

“Great ideas don’t just sell themselves – they need champions,” explains Tara Zottola, VP and group brand director at Nashville agency, Buntin. “Account managers are often the bridge between bold creative and business realities. Selling an idea starts with deep understanding: of the brand, the audience, and the creative’s intent. Tactics like framing the idea in the client’s language, anticipating objections, and aligning it with business goals are key. But the real work begins after the sell.”

“The way you articulate and champion an idea is as crucial as the idea itself,” agrees Jamie. “Safekeeping means staying close through production, protecting the core idea while navigating timelines, budgets and feedback loops. It’s about being a translator, a negotiator, and sometimes a shield… You can possess the most brilliant idea, but if it's not presented with compelling emotion, driving passion, and a clear depiction of its significance or unique quality, it risks dying before it's ever given a fair chance.”

“The Bridge Between Bold Creative and Business Realities”

According to Tara, balancing creative ambition with business realism is a “constant dance”, but for her, it’s not about compromise; it’s about alignment. Both creatives and clients fear they won’t be heard, and so patience and empathy become vital for the suits caught in the crossfire.

“Client reviews can get hot; we’re the thermostat on the wall,” says Cam Thomas, business director at TBWA\Chiat\Day NY. “Once they trust you’ve heard and understood their concerns, they’ll be more open to the other side's perspective – and finding a balance.” To do this, Ogilvy’s Jamie DeFer encourages a development of “shared ownership” – something achieved by: working quickly to avoid idea fatigue, celebrating the wins together to ‘create a virtuous cycle of excellence’, and socialising early and often with everyone involved.

“I once worked with a creative director who was a master at this,” she shares. “He would pull aside every person, regardless of their title, to show them the work. He'd genuinely ask for their feedback and, in doing so, get them excited. His infectious enthusiasm for the work permeated everyone he engaged. Everything he touched felt like a shared endeavour, a collective ‘baby’. When everyone feels ownership of an idea, everyone becomes committed to making it the absolute best it can be.”

Momentum’s Caitlin O’Connell agrees that clients, creatives and production teams need to be aligned on what they’re trying to achieve. “If all parties are aligned on that, then you can keep coming back to it when you need to wrestle clients for why the investment is worthy, or creatives for prioritising strategically sound concepts, or production for helping to shape execution in a way that aligns with both.” However, she no longer sees the balance as an antagonistic relationship: “Maybe a hot take… But I think creative ambition is business realism in 2025.”

AMV BBDO’s Laura Balfour has recognised this change too. “Increasingly, it isn’t a balance – they’re on the same side,” she says. “Great creative delivers great business results and if you can measure and prove that, then you prove your worth and why it’s worth paying for. And if we don’t passionately believe that, then we’re all out of a job.”

Accounting for Change

The experts’ consensus is that the client-agency relationship has become more collaborative in recent years. And so playing the role of a connector between the different parties, and as a vanguard of the creative, has evolved to follow suit.

Since starting over 20 years ago, Buntin’s Tara Zottola notes that the increased collaboration has also correlated with an increase in risk aversion from brands. “The stakes feel higher, which makes bravery harder, but also more necessary.” Meanwhile TBWA\Chiat\Day NY’s Cam Thomas points out how social media has become “an asset in competitive envy”, presenting brand marketers with a steady, and often overwhelming, flow of examples they can bring to meetings. By constantly reckoning with whether ‘this is the type of work we should be doing’, clients can add complexity to the creation of a suitable creative brief, and potentially mire the development of creative trust.

That being said, Caitlin believes that suits’ core, longstanding skills remain as relevant as ever. “Keen listening, relationship building, and being tuned in on how to build things versus break them have always been true in good account people,” she says. “What has changed is the barrage of tools, trends, platforms, new frontiers and daily distractions surrounding us as we try to do those things.

“Often, the account team are experts at nothing but pretty darn dangerous at everything,” she continues, “so the expanse of that ‘everything’ in 2025 versus in 2006, when I started my career, can be daunting. Staying tuned in to the basics of understanding your clients, as people and as business leaders, is more important than ever - both for sanity and for selling brave work.

What the Best Suits Do

As the experts make clear, account management and client services are perhaps ill-served by the rather clerical-sounding names. At its best, suits are just as involved in the creative conversation as anyone else, contributing to the creative long before the idea is brought to a client, and throughout the production process afterwards too.

Whether it’s ‘interrogating the brief’, helping bridge the creative-business gap, ensuring everyone has the right resources, and building trust in the agency and its ideas – it’s all in a day’s work for a suit. And those strategic skills – empathetic communication, creative finesse, and a passion to understand your client as deeply as your own team – are arguably only getting more important.

The tightening relationships between client and agency evidently puts the role at the centre of a critical point in marketing history where, perhaps more than ever, the two sides must find ways to align and approach business problems as a joint force.

“There’s a misconception that client services is just that, a service. Relaying messages and managing diaries. But the best client services people are embedded in the creative process,” says Rosie Robertson, head of client services at British production company Untold Fable. “They help shape the work, not just manage it. They need to see their role as part-psychology, part-improv… tune into their clients’ rhythms, anticipate their reactions, and quietly coach their teams to do the same. They’re smart, steady and deeply invested in making sure the work not only happens, but happens the right way.”

“The best suits are as obsessive as any creative”, says AMV BBDO’s Laura Balfour. “You have to constantly be on the hunt for how you can help those [ideas] come to life, be it as minor as making sure the clients aren’t hungry in a crucial presentation, to digging into research papers to find the perfect stats to open an idea with, doorstepping media agencies for some free billboards, or double gloving and picking up chunks of literal human shit under Putney Bridge.” A story for another time?

“We are the jack of all trades,” she adds, “the glue that brings all the pieces of agency and client side together, the diplomats, problem solvers, therapists and whatever we need to be. And I still believe it’s the best job in the world.”