10 Signs You’re an Advertising Agency Account Executive with OCD Tendencies

​Let’s face it… to be a successful account executive at a leading marketing and advertising agency, you need to be a little obsessive compulsive to get the job done. Here are 10 signs you’re an ad agency account executive with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) tendencies:

 
1. You have 75+ Outlook folders that you use religiously to organize your incoming mail (with folders inside of folders, inside of folders, inside of folders…).
 
2. You double check a proof before it goes into production at least three times to make sure everything is correct. Then go back at it a fourth time to make sure you didn’t miss anything the first three times.
 
3. You very carefully think through every one of your email subject lines because you know you’ll need to find and reference that very email two, three, five years down the road.
 
4. It drives you crazy when someone responds to your email on a new thread… breaking a link in the chain of your carefully organized inbox.
 
5. Saving files on the shared company drive is meticulously thought through. There is a reason for each folder, sub-folder, sub-folder of the sub-folder, etc.
 
6. On your way to work in the morning you check your email at each stoplight to see what new developments have surfaced so you can start prioritizing your day. You also often check your inbox during your lunch break so you don’t walk back in the office to any surprises.
 
7. The titles of your Word/Excel/PowerPoint/etc. files follow a strict format (client name – project title – date). And you wish it wasn’t weird to ask everyone else to do the same.
 
8. On extremely busy days or busy weeks, you think about your clients’ projects and your next day’s to-do list before you go to bed and the projects often make their way into your dreams.
 
9. Grammar. Enough said.
 
10. Though you may have piles of paperwork on your desk… the piles follow a very specific and organized methodology in which each subject matter is sorted into groups, stacked perpendicular to one another, one inch apart from separately themed piles.

If you smiled and nodded your head in agreement with these ten signs of an advertising agency account executive with OCD tendencies, then it is my pleasure to welcome you to the exclusive club of ad agency account executives with CDO… which is just like OCD, but all of the letters are in alphabetical order – as they should be.