MANAGEMENT ISSUE: CONGRATULATIONS, YOU’VE BEEN SELECTED
You have been at DC&H for six years, and your promotion to Account Director is now official. You will soon be moving into the Clean&Clear® account group and expectations are high on all fronts. This is a major career step for you as Clean&Clear® is Johnson & Johnson’s second largest skincare brand, and the brand is slated for rapid “global expansion” over the next three years.
In your first meeting with the J&J Group Business Director you are told that one of your responsibilities will be to take on the leadership of the Clean&Clear ® Integrated Agency IntegrationTeam (IAT). About six months ago the Johnson & Johnson CPD, following a trend in consumer product marketing services and with a bit of help from Beekman & Associates, “reorganized” their agency relationships in a more integrated and streamlined manner for purposes of both cost and process efficiency. And Beekman recommended that J&J designate one agency for each of the company’s CPD brands to serve as the “lead” agency for the brand’s Integrated Agency Team (IAT).
In addition to delivering on their respective scope of work for the brand, IAT “lead” agency will function and work in a coordination role to ensure the brand’s agencies (creative, media, social, PR, etc.) are all “working and playing well with others” to achieve the brand’s business plan objectives; consistently deliver against the brand’s core equities across all communication channels; manage and monitor the consolidated scope of work for the brand; and to ensure all key deliverables, KPIs, due dates, etc. across all agencies aligned with the brand are met. And as the DC&H account team is held in very high regard by the client, the agency has been assigned the “lead” role for the IAT process on Clean&Clear ® and you will be taking on the “SPOC” (Single Point of Contact) role for the brand’s IAT as part of your new position as the Account Director on the brand. You are expected to be in your new role and “up and running” within four weeks.
The IAT role is new. And while there have been the several “one-off” occasions where DC&H has collaborated with “partner” agencies in the past on a Clean&Clear® initiative, there has not been a concerted effort to focus all six of the brand’s agencies (creative, digital, media, shopper marketing, public relations and social listening) against a consolidated scope of work. The client is looking for both maximum effectiveness and efficiency, and DC&H is turning you to deliver this. Oh, and the one thing they didn’t tell, no one on the brand at any of the other five agencies has been told by either the Brand Manager or J&J Marketing Procurement that DC&H is being designated as the “lead” for the IAT function. performed this function heretofore.
However, there is another wrinkle: your current day job. You will be moving to join the Johnson & Johnson account team from the agency’s Mars® account group. You’ve work on Skittles® as an Account Supervisor for two years. The Group Business Director on Mars®, while very pleased with your promotion, fully expects you to manage a seamless and flawless transition on Skittles® with your replacement (an Account Supervisor joining DC&H from another agency) within the four week “window”.
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- What will you do in the time you have to prepare for your role as the IAT “lead” on the brand?
- Who should be on you “list” of people to talk to about the brand, the scope, the process, etc.?
- What does “success” look like for you in the IAT role?
And remember, you only have four weeks before you are expected to hit the ground running on Clean&Clear®. and you need to ensure there is a smooth handover on Skittles® as well.