At a recent Second Wind Jam Session, we asked agency owners and account leaders to weigh in on a timely question: What does great account leadership mean now? The conversation ...

Account service is where most agency financial results are actually decided. Not in the pitch. Not in the creative reveal. But in the everyday moments when scope is clarified, priorities ...

Everything in an agency tends to change at once. Clients shift priorities. Creative takes longer than expected. Budgets move. Timelines slip. What starts as a small adjustment in one place ...

During a recent JAM session, agency leaders and senior team members compared notes on what is working, what’s not, and where agencies need to rethink how the work gets ...

The traditional notion of an account executive was that of someone ordered around by the client and disdained by the agency creative. Or, they were the ones living large on ...

We’re living in a world where marketing moves at the speed of AI, clients are scattered across the country, and agencies are under more pressure than ever to deliver ...

Over thirty years ago, our founder Tony Mikes started Second Wind with the goal of helping small ad agency owners gain valuable skills to help them succeed and grow their ...

Many smaller agencies want to become more involved in developing marketing plans for their clients, but may not be quite up to speed with planning terminology. Here is a simple ...

There are some important issues that good account executives consider when doing their daily jobs. Following are some thoughts from a very savvy Second Wind member who teaches his AEs ...

As you work with your clients to set up annual advertising and marketing planning, there’s one thought that should remain lodged in your frontal cortex: “It’s not my ...

A survey by Hightail, a creative collaboration company, asked creative professionals about the effectiveness of the creative process. Just 23 percent said the process was effective. Twenty-eight percent called it ...

Sometimes, agency owners or managers feel like the proverbial dog chasing its own tail. You keep going in circles and never seem to get ahead. Considering that problem from the ...

Second Wind has conducted account service training for ad agencies since we launched Second Wind Training in 1989. We have worked with many ad agencies directly, consulting to help them ...

Why Clients “Go Quiet” and How to Reactivate Them

New clients are hard to find.  It is crucial to keep your current clients engaged and active. Here’s the scenario ...

For a small to midsize agency, one of this business' most dangerous situations is having a large account. We define a large account—a “gorilla”—as one that controls more ...

We’ve been thinking lately about how agencies can regain their former strategic partner status with clients. The glory days of agency of record, retainers and marketing partnerships seem to ...

We work in a tough business environment. Accountability, multiplying media, evolving technology and an increasingly global economy all drive client demand for more responsive, more efficient agencies. This tends to ...

One day on the way to a meeting, I was in a funk. Although I can’t remember the specifics, I had encountered some incredibly bad hurdles that morning. These ...