It has always been true that for an agency to do good work and make a fair profit at doing it, the client has to be a “good” client. The ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Learn from the experience of a slow learner - me. Early in my career as a creative professional with a fragile ego, I didn’t want the rank-and-file people of a ...

Do all industries include at least some “clients from hell”? Apparently so. The Twitter feed Clients From Hell (@clientsfh) asked followers if any specific industries had a higher percentage of ...

Winning a really big account can either float a smaller ad agency’s boat, feeding new growth for the agency and employees… or sink it under the weight of client ...

Plenty! Pro bono, the Latin phrase that literally translates as “for the good,” has come to mean any service done without compensation for the public good. In the advertising and ...

Funny how things go in the agency business... You work hard, build great relationships, create great work, and before you know it the client moves on to bigger and, they ...

“Nothing kills a bad product faster than a great advertising campaign,”
said Bill Bernbach. A great aphorism.

And here is one of our own:

Nothing kills a new client relationship ...

You’ve created a concept for a client project that you and your team are really excited about. You build your pitch, with details on the research and supporting data ...

We write elsewhere about having a balanced mix of client accounts—a few big clients, some middle-sized accounts, and several smaller bread-and-butter accounts that provide steady work if not huge ...

One of the best things about the smaller ad agency business is the closeness of agency-client relationships. By that, we mean the level of intimacy, even friendship that often develops ...

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 ...