A is for Account Executive.

Account executives. God bless ‘em. In the hierarchy of the advertising world they are the classic case of Give the Least Important the Biggest Title. Account execs tend to be graduates in an MSC programme. MSC stands of course for Major Shit Catchers.

Account Exec is entry level for those deluded souls who ‘want’ to be in Client Service. Client Service is like an Escort Service, only seedier. Bright-faced junior account execs come into the business with hopes of moving swiftly up the ladder until they are managing the Honda account for Europe. What they tend not to realise is that for every Honda account there are 2,300 little shitbox clients with head offices in the rust triangle between the Long Mile Road, Clondalkin and Ballyfermot. These clients are frustrated because they don’t get to shop in the Stephen’s Green Centre every lunchtime like the people who run their accounts from the lush D2/D4 offices of Smirk Ignoble & Cystlike. They spend more time in traffic and less time in the shower than they want. The only thing they have to look forward to is staring at a different number plate on the way home as they slowly contemplate pulling out their own teeth, right now goddamit before they have to listen to ANOTHER FUCKING MINUTE OF MATT FUCKING COOPER’S SQUEAKY FUCKING VOICE!!
So if you happen to be that bunny-eyed Account Executive with the tidy in-tray and the snazzy mouse mat from Phantom FM and the hilarious pics of the social on Facebook then you can be sure that Mr Client from west of hopeless is going to Make. Your. Life. A. Living. Hell. There will be changes to that radio script until your bleeding finger stumps can no longer feel the keyboard as you write the hundreth contact report. The meeting will shift until it’s already happened and nobody was there. The package with the posters for the hotel for the Client’s annual presentation to the American investors will never arrive/arrive too soon/arrive too late/arrive covered in camel’s piss. And if you think Creative will offer a consoling ‘Never mind, we’ll work through this together’ then you really are so wrong that you might actually be right. Except you’re not. They will scream. They will run to the Creative Director. The Creative Director will roll his eyes to heaven and make you feel like a fly on a wedding cake. Your helpful Account Manager will bitch about you to your Account Director, who in turn will eye you coldly, an invisible neon sign over her head saying ‘Maybe I made a mistake with this one.’

You will work late every single evening. Nobody will actually see the fruits of these labours, because this is the shit you were supposed to be doing between nine and five thirty anyway. And you could possibly have got it done too, if you hadn’t been chasing couriers, trying to engage in mutually understandable discourse with the art director about why VAG Rounded wasn’t such a terrible idea was it, trying to calm down the screaming copywriter whose headline you had to ‘adapt’ at short notice, waiting on the taxi to get you out of SlurryVest Ltd, Dublin 10. And why doesn’t Nyna ever have to work late and she’s always hanging around Creative and they’re all laughing like idiots and who cares if she was a model in Prittsticki or wherever she’s from.
But hey! You’re on the ladder, right? You can’t resist telling your friend who’s graduating from Aungier Street next year that the 98FM barbecue was, like, amaazing last night and the Star party is on tonight and it’s gonna be amaazing and life is just amaazing like you knew it would be. You’re giving this place two years max, right? And then you’re moving for the money, because they’re paying you shit and they have NO idea how to run a real agency and your friend Eymyr right got this job in a PR company right, Fizz Communications or Bryte Communications or Snaz Communications or something right and they like gave her a Mini Cooper? And the Account Director just hates you cos the MD talked to you at the Christmas Party (yes she did check out the pics on Facebook) and probably cos you didn’t, like, buy your boobs and secretly right you think she’s a dyke cos she’s like got the hots for Nyna ohmygod can you imagine the two of them snogging? All teeth and jaw bones and knobbly kneecaps banging off each other? It’d be like Sinew City eww!

Two more years. Just two years and you are out of there.