Gerry Graf Talks Commercials, And The Team That Creates Great Ones

There’s no doubt that Gerry Graf, now head of Barton F. Graf 9000, has done, or overseen, a lot of great TV commercials in his career. Here’s just one:

On FastCoCreates, a project of Fast Company magazine, Graf shares the ingredients of a great commercial. Here’s the part that caught my eye, as Graf describes “The Ideal Team”:

Account people: no one who has a vested interest in making sure the client is happy. I don’t want anything to do with people who think they work for the client. Many account people get their bonuses based on how clients rate them. If your salary is based on keeping a client happy you don’t fight for work. Everyone on the agency side should have one goal–make the best work.

I get where he’s coming from, but I’ve never worked in an agency where that was the way things worked. Don’t we all have some sort of vested interest in making sure our clients are happy? That doesn’t mean saying “yes” to every whim, but I’ve never met an AE who didn’t, at the end of the day, want happy clients, or at least ones who were pleased with the work.

Have you worked in an agency with AEs the way Graf describes them? I have seen the opposite side of the spectrum: I did interview once at a rather large agency that still paid Account Directors partly on commission based on quantity of work sold, and have seen plenty other agencies where AEs had client revenue numbers they needed to meet to keep their jobs. But I don’t think I’ve seen such a seemingly adversarial setup as he describes. Or frankly, a place where everyone, creatives and AEs (and everyone in between), agreed on what “make the best work” actually meant.