From decorating to client experience
Labels are interesting. Throughout my career in brand agencies, I have never had “creative” in my title — which is slightly ironic, considering my route into the industry started with paintbrushes rather than PowerPoint.
With a degree in town and country planning, I graduated into a recession and found myself painting and decorating houses while I worked out what to do next. Then, after a chance meeting opened the door to agency life, one opportunity led to another and, eventually, I found myself heading client experience at FutureBrand.
The funny thing is, the skills have not changed as much as you would think.
I spend plenty of time in meeting rooms instead of living rooms these days, but good account management still feels remarkably similar to decorating. You’re part craftsperson, part problem-solver, part therapist and occasionally part magician; you’re trying to create something brilliant while managing expectations, budgets, personalities and the occasional minor crisis.
Those painting and decorating skills I learned back in my early 20s have been a constant thread running through my career. Beyond the paint splatters on my clothes, the battered brushes and creaking ladders taught me lessons in precision, patience, adaptability and taking pride in doing things properly. Here are a few of the skills that have stayed with me:
Prep your surfaces thoroughly
One of the first things decorating taught me is that the bit nobody wants to do is usually the bit that matters most. Everyone loves opening a fresh tin of paint. Nobody gets excited about filling cracks, sanding walls or trying to remove wallpaper that appears to have been installed sometime during the reign of Queen Victoria. But skip the prep and you will regret it later.
Agency projects are exactly the same. The most glamorous part of a brand project is not normally the stakeholder interviews, the alignment sessions or the briefing process. Yet that is where the foundations are built. If you have ever found yourself halfway through a project hearing someone say, “Oh… that’s not what I thought we were doing,” you have already experienced what happens when the prep gets rushed.
When I was decorating houses, I also learned that people can have surprisingly strong opinions about colour. You would be amazed how many passionate debates I have witnessed over shades of magnolia. Brands are not so different. Part of the job is helping people articulate what they really want, even when they cannot quite find the words themselves. Sometimes clients arrive with a clear vision; sometimes they arrive with a feeling. Both are valid. The trick is knowing how to turn either into something tangible.
The other lesson is knowing which skills you need around you. You would not hire someone who specialises in knocking down walls to paint a perfect line around an ornate ceiling rose. Agency life is no different. Great work is not about having the loudest expert in the room. It is about assembling the right mix of people and creating the conditions for them to do their best work.
Use masking tape in emergencies
If preparation is your first line of defence, masking tape is your second. For non-decorators, masking tape is a safety net. You hope you will not need it, but when things are not quite as straightforward as they first appeared, you are very glad it is there.
Agency life has its own version.
Early in my career, I was involved in a photoshoot for a major Japanese automotive brand. Somehow, I ended up ordering the wrong car. This was not a slightly wonky paint colour or a misplaced tin of emulsion – it was a big mistake. At the time, it felt catastrophic. I was already mentally rehearsing difficult phone calls and updating my CV.
Thankfully, my director backed me, the situation was looked at objectively, and in the end everyone agreed the car actually worked better. What stayed with me was not the mistake – it was the response.
One of the most underrated skills in client service is keeping your head when things do not go according to plan. And they will not. Markets change. Client leadership teams change. Entire business strategies shift direction overnight. A surprising amount of professional confidence comes from staying calm while quietly working out the next move.
Just as a decorator knows that walls are not always straight, agency teams know that there is usually a surprise lurking behind the wallpaper somewhere. The important thing is not avoiding every problem – it is being adaptable enough to navigate them.
The tool is not the talent
There is a moment in every decorator’s career when they realise the professionals do not actually use masking tape as much as you think. When I first started, I taped everything: every skirting board, every ceiling edge, every surface within a five-mile radius. Experienced decorators still use masking tape when they need to. The difference is that they know when to rely on the tool and when to rely on their own skill. The trick is knowing the difference between cutting corners and working smart.
Agency life is full of tools that make us faster and better. Today that includes AI. A few years ago it was collaboration platforms. Before that it was all the other technology we were convinced would either save the industry or destroy it.
What matters is not the tool itself – it is the craft behind it.
My team uses AI to help evaluate work against brand guidelines, explore language, interrogate ideas and speed up processes that used to take much longer. But I have yet to see a piece of technology replace good judgement, emotional intelligence or the ability to look a client in the eye and understand what they are really worried about.
The best decorators still know how to paint. The best account managers still know how to think. The tools just help us do it more effectively.
The best craft is sometimes invisible
When a decorator does a brilliant job, nobody walks into the room and says, “What wonderful wallpaper joins.” At least, I sincerely hope not. What people notice is how the room feels: warm, modern, calm, elegant, cosy. The craftsmanship disappears into the experience.
I have always thought of brand work in much the same way. Speak to friends and family and they often assume our world is all about logos, colours and visual identities. Those things matter, of course, but they are really the expression of something deeper.
The strongest brands feel effortless from the outside because an enormous amount of thought has gone into making them feel that way. It is a bit like walking into a beautifully decorated room. You do not admire the hours of filling, sanding and preparation that went into it. You do not think about the careful decisions behind every finish, fitting and colour choice. You simply know the room feels right.
Great brands work in exactly the same way. People experience them through every interaction they have with them: through the products they create, the services they provide and, ultimately, the way they behave.
Brand building is the same blend of art and science. Insight, credibility and strategy create the foundations. Creativity brings it to life. And when it is done well, people do not talk about the mechanics – they simply connect with the result.
That is often my favourite part of the job: watching a client see their brand through fresh eyes and suddenly recognise something about themselves they could not quite articulate before.
Do all the snagging before the finish
One thing decorating definitely teaches you is humility. You can spend countless hours transforming a room, stand back and admire your handiwork, only to spot a tiny imperfection in the corner that immediately becomes the only thing you can see. Once you have noticed it, that is it. It is all over. You will not sleep until it is fixed.
That attention to detail has followed me into agency life. Before anything leaves the building, there is always a final review, a final sense check and usually a final round of somebody spotting a typo that 15 other people somehow missed. It is easy to think this is about perfectionism. In reality, it is about pride. It is about caring enough to do the last 5 per cent as well as the first 5 per cent.
But I think there is another form of snagging that is just as important. When a decorating job is finished, you clean up, pack away your tools and admire the result. Maybe you even take a moment to appreciate what you have achieved before heading off to the next job. Agency life is not always very good at that.
We are often so focused on what is coming next that we forget to celebrate what we have just accomplished. Some of my happiest moments in this industry have not been winning new business or launching projects. They have been seeing talented people grow in confidence, watching teams pull together under pressure and celebrating work that everyone involved genuinely cares about.
Over time, I have realised those moments matter – really matter. Because, at its heart, this has always been a people business.
Still a craft trade
I would argue all of these are account management skills every bit as much as they are creative skills. Just as a great decorating team needs different types of expertise, our industry depends on different perspectives, personalities and strengths. Creativity does not belong to one department. It certainly does not belong to one job title.
In many ways, account management is a craft trade. You are building trust, solving problems, managing expectations, balancing competing priorities and occasionally rescuing situations that looked considerably better on paper.
And, much like decorating, the best work often goes unnoticed because everything simply works as it should. Which, now I think about it, is probably why I felt so at home in this industry in the first place.
Cerys James is Head of Client Experience at FutureBrand.