If he or she is able to do this - to handle all aspects of the marketing director's role from brand strategy and sales to liaison with suppliers and distributors as well as all internal and external stakeholders - then said account director can truly claim to understand the client's business and will most certainly be able to considerable add value to the client-agency relationship.
Today's account directors need to be literate in all aspects of the client's business, not only because of the challenging times in which brands live but because of the dramatic developments that have changed the face of marketing over the past decade.
If the account director is not able to evaluate how this impacts on his or her client's business - then he or she has no place in today's marketing world.
And the challenge for those who do and can, is to break down the resistance to recognising and respecting the role and effect of each discipline, and to establish the environment for creatively distinctive, multi disciplined, totally coherent and synchronised campaigns to flourish.
The fact that effective marketing implementations are most often driven by integrated strategies is not new. With declining or stagnant marketing budgets, squeezed margins, the commission system under scrutiny and pressure on agencies to show growth, attention was inevitably redirected to other sources of income beyond agencies' traditional type of expertise. And agencies began to say they 'do' integration. But few agencies manage to get it right, all of the time.
FCB South Africa led the integrated agency charge locally and has achieved considerable success for many clients and brands over the years. High profile examples include the launches of Vodacom's youth brand, 4U and First National Bank's One Account as well as Distell's re-positioning of brandy stalwart, Klipdrift.
FCB SA was recently restructured into client-centric clusters to bolster its intellectual input on all levels, in addition to advertising and marketing.
Headed by a business unit director with the authority of a managing director and staffed by a dedicated team of client service, media and brand strategy, and operations and traffic specialists but sharing creative resources, these clusters will operate as agencies within the agency.
The intention is that the 'mini agency' structure allows clients to reap the rewards of dedicated resources but also benefit from the diversity of thought and energy generated when creative teams are allowed freedom of association with clients, tasks and campaigns.
FCB Johannesburg Chairman, Klasie Wessels, heads the Toyota SA cluster; newcomers to the group Pierre Suter and Michelle Strydom are in charge of the Vodacom and the First National Bank/Industrial Development Corporation/Bonitas/Uthingo Management Services clusters respectively; and FCB Johannesburg Managing Director, John Dixon, is the line manager for the FMCG clients/new business incubation cluster.
In terms of the creative resource, the creative staff previously employed by FCB's specialist units - such as web designers, one-to-one communications experts, etc - have been absorbed into one large creative department comprising above- and below-the-line specialists. FCB Johannesburg Executive Creative Director, Brett Morris, will oversee traditional advertising work while Martinus Duckitt becomes his counterpart for below-the-line campaigns. Heidi Nelson has been given overall managerial control with respect to the implementation of below-the-line projects.
To ensure communication strategies deliver across the clusters and marketing disciplines as well as meet the desires of the ever-changing consumer, Joanne Scholtz has been appointed Channel Planning Director. This will compliment the roles of the media and communication strategists dedicated to the respective clusters.
"Increasingly, our clients want more than just ads from their agencies. They want new business or product ideas and programmes that will drive their revenue and profits. Our new cluster approach is our response to their requests."
Maserame Mouyeme is FCB South Africa Group Managing Director and chairperson of the ACA.
