The upcoming second season of the national concert reminds me of this exact time 12 years ago when I entered the advertising industry.
Back then, I was a third-year student majoring in corporate finance (yes, and I graduated with honors), with absolutely no idea what marketing, media, or advertising actually involved. My only experience was from spontaneously promoting events during my time in an international student organization, and I just kind of liked it.
That's how I met my boss, as she was a mentor for the organization. I applied for an internship interview at her agency. After filling out the application form, I thought advertising interviews must heavily assess creativity, so I mentally prepared examples of things I thought were creative.
During the interview, I was given an on-the-spot assignment, and the only tool allowed was a calculator (for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, not a laptop).
The task was a table full of numbers—which I later learned was a media report for a campaign, including channels, cost, reach, clicks, etc.—and I was asked to identify the most effective channel for the campaign.
Writing it out now, you might think the problem is easy, but honestly, at the time, I couldn't even understand the question, let alone know how to solve it. So, I took a guess and divided the cost by the clicks, assuming the smaller number was the 'better' channel (of course, I didn't know the term CPC then, haha).
Despite that, I passed the interview with a compliment from my boss: "good logic," and was accepted as an ACCOUNT INTERN.
In those days, the company didn't have a Planner, so the Account had to do the plan. Even as an intern, my boss let me help with planning, and I found myself really enjoying it. I still remember one of my first clients, Ms. Nhung, who managed a product to treat RLCD (google it yourself!). She probably doesn't remember, but she once complimented me on having "the makings of an Account Executive."
After 6 months as an Intern, I was promoted to Account Executive. My biggest joy was the salary, which was 5 times the intern allowance of 1.5 million VND. My job was purely client relationship & project management, as the company now had a Planner.
The daily life of an Account Executive was truly as 'glamorous' as a Manager's, as I "got to" manage three groups: the client, the partners/vendors/freelancers, and the internal team.
When the client made a difficult request for revisions, I would reassure them and promise to find a solution.
After calming the client, I'd turn around and plead with the creative/planner team to do extra work. Sometimes they agreed, sometimes they didn't, so I'd sit down and draw up a plan myself, write the copy, or even edit the video.
When I realized I couldn't do it myself, my boss told me to find a freelancer. Once I found one, I had to remember to negotiate the price.
If the negotiation failed, I'd find another freelancer who accepted my price, but out of the three options—fast, cheap, good—you could only choose two. I almost always chose fast and cheap.
The client received the work, wasn't happy, complained, and demanded more revisions.
Every time this happened, it felt like a cycle of reincarnation from which I couldn't escape. Of course, the situation wasn't always that bad, or my boss would have promoted me to Senior Intern or Intern Director by then.
The projects I handled as an Account Executive weren't terrible (mostly), but they could never be truly outstanding because I was starting to feel drained from doing Account work.
One day, hearing the current Planner was about to resign, I gathered all my courage and asked my boss for a chance to become the Planner. If not, I would quit. My boss still thought I was better at project management than planning, but she gave me the opportunity. I couldn't have been more excited and immediately handed over my accounts to another Account Executive.
Little did I know, that began the most challenging period of my career.
As I shared in previous posts, my boss revised 80–90% of every plan I created. My boss is brilliant, extremely demanding, and straightforward, so she didn't hesitate to give me blunt feedback, like a 'tiger mom' teaching her child. After those feedback sessions, the 22-year-old planner was left hurt with negative thoughts—feeling useless, unheard, and that my opinions didn't matter.
I thought about quitting once every few days.
Because I was so negative, I didn't look at where I was wrong but focused on my bristling ego. Then, one day, just when I was about to quit, I don't know if fate intervened, but I suddenly woke up. I realized that if I quit, I might never find a boss who would give me a chance and give me such harsh but honest feedback.
So, I continued.
Aside from making beautiful slides, I barely thought like a planner; I thought like a (bad) Account Executive.
I couldn't distinguish between an idea/concept and execution, which led to me giving nonsense feedback to the creative team and getting yelled at.
I always jumped straight to execution when receiving a brief without any analysis, thinking strategy = execution.
My writing was awful. Long-winded, like an apology email to a client. I didn't know how to select words. I used too many keywords, obscuring the main point, and confusing the reader. The creative team also complained about my creative briefs.
For communication plans, I only proposed what was easy and feasible, refusing to think about new possibilities.
I followed whichever way the wind blew, unable to defend my perspective to the internal team or the client.
I persisted for almost 2 years, improving little by little, and finally, my boss felt more confident in me, starting to let me handle some client plans independently. That year, I won the company's "Young Riser" award, which is probably the happiest award of my working life so far.
When I decided to teach, I brought all these experiences into the course content, hoping my students would find some empathy on their career path in this industry.
So, yes, even as an Account Executive, you can switch to Planner, though it's harder.
When I told my boss (now my business partner, friend, sister, and my daughter's godmother) that I was teaching and thanked her for helping me get here, she said:
"You deserve all of this."
