How can marketing, advertising and creative agencies cover absence?

Absence in an agency does not stop work. It stops the one thread that only one person was holding. The scheduled posts go out under a wrong caption. The press release embargo lifts with no one watching the wire. The colour grade slot at the post house is booked, the editor is ill and the rough cut sits on her laptop.

Cover is built around client work, not around job titles. Each account gets a primary and a secondary owner, a one-page account sheet and a rule for who may approve what. When a person is out, the secondary opens the sheet and runs the next seven days. Anything beyond that goes to the head of the account.

• Content calendars live in a personal spreadsheet, and the approval link is in someone's WhatsApp.
• Ad accounts in Meta Ads Manager or Google Ads are logged in from one person's browser, with no admin back-up.
• The client's voice and the brand do-not-say list sit in the head of the copywriter who is out.
• A shoot day or a podcast recording cannot be rescheduled because the producer is the only one who holds the vendor contacts.
• Reporting decks are due on the first, and the data connector is tied to one login.

CLIENT       brand, retainer scope, monthly deliverables, billing date
OWNERS       primary and secondary, with the head of account above both
CALENDAR     link to the content or campaign calendar and the next three go-live dates
APPROVALS    who at the client signs, who inside signs, turnaround each side expects
ACCOUNTS     ad accounts, analytics, CMS and social handles, with admin access held by two people
VOICE        tone notes, words to avoid, three sample posts
ASSETS       logo pack, fonts, templates, shot lists, vendor contacts
RISKS        what breaks first if the primary is out for a week

The primary keeps it current. The secondary reads it monthly. The head of account checks all sheets at the weekly meeting.

A digital marketing agency needs shared access to ad accounts, budgets and pacing alerts. A pause rule helps: if spend is off pace and the owner is out, the secondary may pause or cap the campaign, but not change creative.

An advertising agency runs on pitches, media plans and client presentations. Keep the pitch deck, the media plan and the reach estimates in one folder with named reviewers, and brief the account director to take the client call if the lead is away.

A PR agency lives by the media list, the embargo and the call log. Keep the list, the pitch notes and the call history in one tracker, so a colleague can follow up with a journalist without starting cold.

An SEO agency depends on the crawl, the rank tracker and the audit backlog. The secondary should know which fixes are in progress with the client's developer and which are waiting for approval.

A video or design studio carries file-heavy work. Name the project folder, the render queue and the version in the file name. Keep editors' proxies and project files on the shared drive, not on a laptop.

A secondary who has never opened the client's Google Analytics property, the WordPress dashboard or the Canva brand kit will lose an hour finding the door. Give a short walkthrough each quarter. Ten minutes in screen share is enough: where the content calendar lives, how an approval link works, which folder holds the final artwork and where the invoice sits. Note the client's WhatsApp group etiquette too, since many agencies lose a day to a message sent from the wrong number.

1. 1

   Planned leave

   The primary hands over in a fifteen-minute call two days before, walks through the calendar and tells the client who will answer.

2. 2

   A sick call

   The head of account texts the secondary by nine, asks the client for a short extension if needed and reassigns the day's tasks.

3. 3

   Longer absence

   The head of account redistributes retainers, with a fresh secondary for each. No one holds more than a set number of live accounts.

4. 4

   A resignation

   Think of it as leave without a return date. Before the last day, collect access, files and notes, and introduce the new owner to the client in person.

Agency calendars have rush weeks around launches, festival campaigns and annual reviews. Set a rule that two people on the same account are not away in the same fortnight. Offer comp-off after a late launch night, written down. Keep a weekly view of load by person, so the same people are not always asked to cover. The attendance, shift and leave page gives a base.

Pick the three busiest retainers. Write their sheets this week and name a secondary for each. Then run a one-day drill with the primary off chat and email. By evening the holes will be plain. The marketing and creative hub has more on workload and retention.