Role Overview
The Account Director will serve as a senior member of the client service team and lead across retained accounts.
The ideal candidate for this role has deep experience across the media landscape and is comfortable and confident providing end-to-end solutions and expertise – from partnership strategy development all the way through to negotiation and execution oversight. The candidate will have a strong experience developing, negotiating, and overseeing complex, cross-channel programs to drive brand-love and business success. They are a strategic thinker with the maturity to navigate and communicate complex relationships, programs, and environments.
Duties & Responsibilities
- Build & maintain senior level internal and external relationships.
- Oversee selected clients, as it pertains to new partnership opportunities, which will allow for increased revenue and profitability of existing client accounts.
- Directly lead retained accounts while overseeing other project and consultative programs.
- Manage and inspire direct and indirect reports, providing mentoring and coaching to foster personal development.
- Achieve revenue and profitability targets as defined and agreed to with executive management.
- Develop rapport with clients and other agency partners by providing day-to-day client contact, managing the relationships, expectations, and troubleshoot conflicts with senior clients and team members as they arise.
- Guide the team to identifying opportunities, strategic thinking, and subsequent development of integrated marketing programs across.
- On-strategy project planning and execution according to Agency standards within established budgets and timeframes.
- Manage of project financials in accordance with agency policy and procedure.
- Building, managing and reconciling budgets.
- Work in partnership with leadership to develop staffing plans that support the business.
- Deliver compelling client and new business presentations.
- Drive integrated thinking and solutions for clients in partnership with other disciplines.
- Maintain and build industry relationships and contacts.
Your People Skills
- High energy, disciplined, ability and desire to mentor with magnetic and passionate personality.
- Strong influencing skills and the ability to interface effectively with multiple levels of management and clients ranging from senior corporate executives to other strategic partner companies.
- An inspirational client leader with high energy and hunger to succeed; disciplined with a need to mentor, possessing a passionate personality.
- Ability to lead a team environment that promotes collaboration, effectively managing up and down while keeping a calm perspective and able to quickly pivot and provide leadership, as needed.
- Displays patience and is able to quickly boost team morale and foster strong team culture as a trusted mentor and leader through engagement and receptiveness to team needs.
- Able to establish and maintain effective relationships inter-departmentally as well as those outside the team, highly collaborative.
- Leads by example while motivating and coaching the team proactively managing stress, team development, and providing career development opportunities for team members.
- Coaches team members to interpret data and business results properly, elevating insights and takeaways to determine a tangible impact on optimizations and improved planning approaches.
- Collaborate in DEI initiatives by fostering a culture that celebrates diverse backgrounds and builds a community that is inclusive to drive belonging
- Conducts regular check-ins with team, as well as 360 Review process for EOY feedback, to create development and growth plans to reinforce a clear sense of career trajectories among team members.
- Has a thorough understanding of the staffing needs and status of the team; participates in the recruitment process, as needed, to maintain the integrity and structure of the team to manage day-to-day work and client expectations.
Your Knowledge & Abilities
- Owns, creates, and runs the process and has a strong understanding of the media landscape, as well as internal and external key steps in management of projects.
- Exceptional written, verbal, and presentation skills with the ability to guide and coach team members to actively contribute in external and internal meetings to exhibit knowledge and value.
- Demonstrates advanced critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, comes prepared with solutions.
- Must be able to think outside the box with analytical and creative approaches in interpretation of business results to ultimately improve strategic and tactical executions – is able to bring the new and bold to the table.
- Advanced aptitude in analytical and quantitative skills, including math proficiency, and interpretation of data to pinpoint a clear narrative and actionable insights.
- Clear understanding of Business KPI, client goals/objectives, and measurement tools needed to help determine effectiveness of media strategies and activations
- Excellent attention to detail, ensuring consistency from beginning to end and within ongoing deliverables
- Ability to effectively utilize media research and reporting resources and demonstrates technical proficiency, particularly with media systems (Nielsen Media Impact, comScore, etc.) and Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
- Solid understanding of the principles of marketing and advertising, as well as an understanding of media concepts and terms, creative and budget requirements.
Qualifications
- BA/BS Degree or related field
- 8+ years media agency experience with an emphasis on partnership strategy, development and negotiation.
- Strong understanding of Media and Content channels.
- Demonstrated ability to deliver outstanding client work, that achieves client goals, wins a place on the agency's show reel and garners industry-wide recognition.
- Experience using most of the following media planning tools as well as syndicated research tools.
- Extensive account management background at a senior level, understanding how to develop organic & new business growth.
- Deep negotiation experience across multitude of property-types, inclusive of driving final long form agreement.
- Excellent written and verbal communication & presentation skills.
- Bachelor's degree in related field or equivalent experience.
- Spanish competency (spoken and/or written) a nice to have, but not a must have.
