Online learning from an accredited institution
Account Leadership Course
Are you a current or aspiring agency or team manager, looking to drive innovation and create maximum business performance? It starts at Red & Yellow with our 100% online Account Leadership short course, in partnership with Gillian Rightford, Adtherapy Founder & Managing Director.
Account Leadership for Agency Client Service Professionals is built to equip you with a range of highly practical skills. In just 13 weeks you’ll dial your leadership up by mastering internal workflows, stakeholder relationships, budgets, targets, and other key agency financial metrics. You’ll be able to deliver and sell incredible work, grow revenue and build strong, long-standing relationships with clients.
“Absolutely loved my Red & Yellow online course! I did it all the way from the Netherlands while working full time so it’s definitely possible to do it in between your normal tasks. The team is super supportive and understanding if you need more time to complete specific assignments. Would definitely recommend!”
Noluyanda Nolu Roxwana
Campaign Manager at Studyportals
Drive product positioning, manage talent, and deliver world-class creative output
Being a creative leader starts with studying at Red & Yellow, and Account Leadership is a strong step to take if you’re looking to build your career.
This course will teach you how to secure better and bigger briefs, build greater strategies with creative input, and do better work for clients. It’s a step beyond account management, with a strong focus on bringing creative solutions to the table, capitalizing on new ideas and new technologies to generate success.
What you’ll learn
- Apply the principles of account leadership (not simply management) within an agency environment
- Navigate internal workflow, process, and stakeholder relationship issues
- Master budgeting, targets, profitability, and other key agency financial goals and metrics
- Take greater strategic ownership of client accounts (as opposed to simply taking orders and managing projects)
- Deliver and sell great work, win business, grow revenue, and build strong, long-standing relationships with clients
This course is perfect for:
- Account executives, account managers, and other client service professionals who want to take ownership of, and drive real success across, their client portfolios
- Client-facing specialists and advertising practitioners who want to secure better and bigger briefs, have greater strategic and creative input, and do better work for their clients; and
- Freelancers, independent contractors, and owners of small creative businesses looking to grow their existing accounts and win more business
Our Knowledge Partner
Adtherapy is a management, skills development, and communication consultancy, aimed at both marketers and agencies.
“We focus on improving the relationships between clients and their agencies, through the enhancement of skills and understanding on both sides, with the objective being better skills, better relationships, and better results.”
Red & Yellow courses are made to future-proof your career
Our courses are designed to accelerate opportunities and give a boost to your CV. Top businesses across industries recognise Red & Yellow graduates as having the practical skills and the theoretical background to hit the ground running with confidence and creative flair.
Course curriculum:
Strategic Account Leadership (2 weeks)
- What is the role of Account Management? Why is it a Leadership role?
- Client challenges and how agency can help
- Knowledge – what you need to know
- Passport factors (contact reports, status reports etc.)
- Relationship building (internal and external)
- Prioritization & time management
Creative Account Leadership (2 weeks)
- Taking briefs – asking the right questions
- Writing creative briefs to inspire
- Understanding proposition writing
- How to evaluate creative
- How to give constructive feedback
- Building a strong creative-account management partnership
- Fostering a creative work environment
Sales Account Leadership (2 weeks)
- The art of Creative Presentations
- How to plan, lead, and close the creative presentation
- The sales side of Account Management
- How Clients feel in creative presentations
- Separating Ideas and Executions
- Roles and behaviour in meetings including Body Language
- Stimulus materials, what to leave behind
- How to follow up and close the sale
Business Account Leadership (2 weeks)
- Understanding remuneration, time & resource management
- Managing the double profit imperative – theirs and yours
- The importance of budgeting
- Why collecting the cash is so vital
- Growing the business – organic growth vs other types
- Innovation and adding value to clients
- How creative people are motivated – mastery, autonomy, and purpose
- Why relationships help build businesses
Responsible Account Leadership (2 weeks)
- Understanding the importance of ethical and socially responsible marketing
- Unpacking the Advertising Code of Practice and sectoral codes
- The role of the Advertising Regulatory Board and how it works
- The importance of diversity in advertising and communications
- B-BBEE and the MAC Sector Charter
- ESG as a strategic imperative for business
Meet your team:
This course was created by, and benefits from, our full-time lecturers’ years of experience in the field – both in lecturing and in industry. They know how to nurture talent and bring out the best in students, resulting in many award-wins over the years.
About Red & Yellow
Creative thinking is the most important skill. Artificial Intelligence and robots are going to replace some of the jobs we know today.
Red & Yellow is the business school where talented people go to develop the career skills they need to thrive in this digital world.
R&Y unlocks creative thinking to build brilliant careers and organisations using Commercial Logic and Creative Magic.
We are vision-led and values-driven and we are developing the next generation of changemakers, creators and innovators.
We believe creative thinking is the most important skill of the future and it must be supported by uniquely human abilities such as leadership, adaptability and social intelligence.
We are a Creative School of Business that provides you with the commercial logic to grow successful organisations and more importantly the creative magic to set them apart.
We are teaching the great creators, inventors, leaders and entrepreneurs for the 21st Century.
We will be the most creative business school in the world.
Get inspired to study Account Leadership
Get a full course infopack & a digital copy of our world renowned eMarketing Textbook for free
Uncover every aspect of digital marketing – from data analysis, SEO, and performance to content marketing, social media, and customer engagement – with our 7th Edition eMarketing Textbook.
Up-to-date statistics and eye-opening digital marketing case studies
- Deep dives into content mastery, advertising wonders, and the future of advertising
- Exclusive insights from marketing industry titans
• A powerful focus on elevating customer experiences and crafting meaningful engagements
Hit the button below to start exploring our latest eMarketing Textbook, and get inspired to kickstart your digital marketing journey.
Although marketing is a business function, it is primarily an exercise in applied human psychology. The role of marketing is to address customer needs and provide value. In either case, success requires a nuanced understanding of how people think, process, and choose within their environment.
Customers are autonomous beings, who make decisions every day – what to wear, what to eat, how to travel to work, what to use on their bodies, faces, and hair, what to feed their children and pets, the list goes on and on. In a maelstrom of information, you need to make your product and service stand out. This requires knowing your customer intimately, and you can only learn about your customers by taking the time to get to know them. With this knowledge, you can recommend a product to fit their needs or desires; or you can craft a product or service to fit into their lifestyles; or, even more ambitiously, you can tell them and show them what they never knew they wanted. Always put your customer front and centre. Do not get so bogged down by your own concepts and preconceived ideas that you forget that they are the people you are targeting and creating content and products for.
Explore related courses
Explore our latest blog posts
How to leverage the Creator Economy, with L’Oréal SA’s Chief Digital Marketing Officer Marketa Havlik-Liebenberg
How valuable is the content creator economy and what steps ...
How – and why – to make data-driven decisions
A data-first mindset places data at the heart of ...
Navigating a career in tech: 5 business lessons from Rhyn Potgieter
This month the Red & Yellow Creative School of ...
