Your
Account Director
RETENTION & GROWTH
The guy who owns the relationship and answers for what it earns.
How I Make Agencies More Money...
At my last agency I noticed we were giving away the most valuable thing we had. Real business strategy, the thinking clients actually needed, went out the door free, as the unpaid cost of keeping the execution work.
So I packaged it. Named it, scoped it, priced it, and stood it up as its own tier. Strategy stopped being overhead and became a profit center with a revenue line of its own, and average retainers went up across the book.
That's how I read the job. An account lead isn't there to keep the client comfortable. They're there to make the relationship worth more to both sides, wider scope, longer tenure, better margin.
I've done it inside a global network with a thousand people behind me, and inside small independents where I owned the P&L and the team was mine to build. The math works the same at both.
How I Make My Clients More Money...
Most account people are measured on whether the campaign shipped on time. That's project management with a cool title.
Clients don't care that it launched. They care whether it moved the business. Those are different questions, & answering the second one means understanding how they actually make money, their margin, their sales cycle, their cost to acquire a customer, what their board is asking them in the meeting you're not in.
I've sat in that chair. I ran growth in-house before coming back agency-side, so I know exactly what it feels like to watch an agency present beautiful work with no answer for why the number didn't move.
What I do instead: take accounts that aren't paying and rebuild them until they do. Ad programs running at a loss brought to a sustained 5:1 return. 313% year-over-year growth in lead volume. 40% more inbound in year one.
Pretty pictures are the easy part. Making them pay is the job.
I'm Erik Cocks
25 years in advertising.
BBDO. Young & Rubicam. Tinsley.
A Clio & An MBA from Miami.
Your Remote Account Expert.
I've run accounts inside global network agencies and inside small independents where I owned the P&L, hired the team, and answered for the margin. I've also spent time client-side running growth in-house, which means I know what the person across the table is actually being judged on.
I'm a full-stack account lead, strategy, client relationship, team, budget, with enough hands-on ability in paid search, SEO, funnels, AI, and video that I can usually tell whether a plan will work before anyone spends money finding out.
Based in Miami Beach. Open to senior account leadership, Account Director, Senior Account Director, Account Supervisor, or client services leadership at a smaller shop.
Finding the Money
Most accounts are leaking profit somewhere nobody is looking, wasted spend, the wrong audience, a funnel that quits halfway down. I find it, and then i make it work.
Owning the P&L
Scope, staffing, margin. I've run the business side of an account book, not just the client side.
Growth that costs more than it earns isn't growth.
Building the Team
Hiring, developing, and running account and media people. Good client work comes from a team that isn't drowning, and that's the account lead's responsibility.
AI as Leverage
I use AI to compress production timelines, surface patterns in data, and kill busywork.
I don't use it to make the calls that need judgment, or to dress up a shallow idea as a strategy.
The Account Person Who Actually Reads the P&L
Every agency has people who can run a project and people who can make something beautiful.
What's rare is someone who can sit with a client's CFO, understand the real economics, and translate that into work a creative team can actually execute.
That's the seat I've held and the seat I want. I'm who you put in front of the client when the relationship matters, when the scope needs to grow, or when an account is at risk and somebody has to walk in and fix it.
I've done that at agencies with a global network's resources behind me, and at a small independent where the resources were me.
How I Run Accounts...
Three people's money is on this table:
the client's budget, the agency's margin, and somebody's job.
Most account people protect one. I protect all three.
1.
Learn the Business, Not Just the Brief
Before touching the work I learn how the client actually makes money, margin, sales cycle, acquisition cost, what leadership is being measured on.
Most agency mistakes trace back to skipping this step.
2.
Build the Plan Against Their Number
Strategy tied to an outcome the client's leadership already cares about.
If I can't draw a straight line from the work to their number, it isn't a plan. It's a wish.
3.
Run the Team & the Money
Scope, staffing, timeline, margin.
I keep the work moving and the account profitable , for the client and for the agency.
Both have to be true or the relationship doesn't last.
4.
Grow the Relationship
Retention first, then organic growth.
Scope expands because the client trusts the judgment, not because someone made a cold pitch.