Account handlers: The suits of creative armour
2025 reminded the industry of one hard truth: great advertising lives or dies on the strength of the idea.
But ideas are fragile. They may start sharp, simple, powerful. Then, far too often, they meet rounds of feedback and “just one more thing” additions. By the time they hit the world, many are shadows of the thing that once electrified the room.
For decades, account handlers were called “suits.” Sometimes affectionately, sometimes dismissively. The implication was clear: we were the polished ones, the tidy ones, the ones who smoothed edges and kept the wheels turning while the creatives made the magic.
But the real magic - the idea - needs more than polish. It needs protection.
Which is why the “suit’s” role must evolve. And it starts with rejecting the outdated notion of “client service.” The industry doesn’t need more facilitators, administrators, or meeting-bookers. It needs partners. Partners that understand the client’s business. Partners that can articulate why an idea will move an audience. Partners that know the brand’s pressure points and the client team’s fears. Partners that don’t simply pass feedback between two parties like a courier service. They shape it, interrogate it, contextualise it, and - when needed - push back on it.
Sat between the client and the creative team, it gives partners a unique vantage point from which to champion the idea, not one side or the other. Being in the middle isn’t a burden; it’s leverage, an opportunity, a hinge, to create the environment and space so the creative team can nurture and craft them.
So, what if we saw partners as the protectors of the ideas, the “suits” of creative armour, if you will?
What if a partner believed in an idea, almost like the third creative. Not in authorship, but in stewardship. With a deep understanding of the idea’s structure, how it works, and which parts are immovable. With the ability to recognise when a four-word headline is lightning - and when adding five more words, a paragraph of copy, and two logos will kill the charge entirely.
Because when partners believe the idea is as much theirs as anyone’s, that belief is contagious. Clients feel it. Creatives trust it. And the idea benefits from it. You’re no longer someone who “manages” the process - you’re someone who shapes what the world eventually sees.
In the last year, we had a client who hired a new CMO with a creative ambition way beyond what the business was used to, with a team that you could say were even institutionalised into a certain way of advertising. As a partner, we shared that creative ambition and became the CMO’s eyes and ears on the ground. We nudged, educated and in the right moments, escalated in the service of the idea.
That campaign and its results have since become the shining light for the brand across a portfolio that has struggled against some tough market conditions.
So what does that mean, exactly? Well, sticking to your creative principles and presenting ideas to senior stakeholders that you believe in, even when your client team feels uncomfortable. It means making an urgent call to the CMO at a service station halfway up the country before you pass the point of no return on decisions that could be fatal for the idea.
This isn’t romanticism; it’s responsibility. Look at D&AD’s new manifesto; it’s a call to arms to keep creativity alive and champion it. That for me, is and has never been only the responsibility of creatives but lies with all of us that call a creative agency home. Maybe a partner should be credited on work in D&AD too? And be seen as creative champions, because that’s what the best of them are.
These aren’t tales of account management heroism. They’re simply the job, done properly.
And that’s exactly why 2026 will belong to agencies that redefine account handling as idea guardianship. Not project shepherding. Not deck-making. Guardianship.
Because selling the idea is only the start. Nobody sees the version you originally sold. The final output is what the world judges, and the job of the “partner” is to ensure that version is as good - or better - than the one that first lit up the room.
In the end, ideas build brands, they build the careers of our clients. They give businesses an unfair advantage and agencies their reputations. Our job is to protect them - not out of duty, but out of passion. If you truly love ideas, you don’t manage them; you are the armour around them.
2026 will belong to the agencies that understand this. The agencies that empower their “suits” not as facilitators, but as “partners” with creative armour. The ones who recognise that great ideas aren’t merely created - they’re defended into existence.
And if you think like that, you don’t just do account handling.
You become the partner every great creative wants standing next to them.