Media Planning lead

About the role

The Media Planning team at essenceMediacom is focused on moving the discipline forward into a new era of media driven solutions. More specifically, we’re re-engineering essenceMediacom’s unrivalled expertise in data driven full funnel solutions - becoming the agents of growth and differentiation for new era marketers.

We are looking for an exceptional Media Planning Lead to drive and transform our planning practice across the planning team and the client portfolio. In this leadership position, you will guide and inspire a team of great media planners, encouraging a culture of innovation, continuous improvement, and collaboration.

This person is responsible for the quality and effectiveness of the team production, their ability to proactively identify growth opportunities and rally a multidisciplinary team to activate them.

The Media Planning Lead is eager to help grow our client businesses and be a driving force in shaping the future direction of the agency's media practice, in particular around comms planning. This will be crucial in the candidate success in this role.

The Media Planning lead will report to the Chief Strategy & Planning Officer and will be part of the Strategy & Planning community.

Some things we’d like you to do

• Structure the essenceMediacom media planning team to be best positioned for future growth and success.
• Leads practice, ensuring overarching processes, standards and tools from the global network are being consistently observed.
• Integration with cross-agency departments, like with Strategy or Creative, to evolve and improve ways of working and foster innovation.
• Elevate collaboration with experts, to foster synergy, consistency and innovative thinking.
• Organize and manage training program - ensure the right trainings are scheduled, trainers are identified, and attendance is prioritized.
• Oversee each team’s staffing, look at team as whole to identify gaps/skills to look for the right opportunities for people as clients shift, monitoring overall department health.
• Setup a clear roadmap for continuous improvement (practices, tools, vendors capabilities…)
• Manage new hires for department, work with account leads to craft the needs & interview
• Present the agency’s media services and capabilities in new business pitches to prospective clients
• Manages new biz requests/needs from department – assigning those with the right skills and time to lead or aide, working on new biz as well
• Manage Directors/team leads to assure they are mentored, leading their own teams and carrying on department vision/standards for success.
• Supervise and foster Directors/team leads growth and development
• Identify key themes and trends that could impact business on larger scale/across accounts, empower team to work on continued education, POVs and research. Provide departmental internal and external thought leadership.
• Onboard new accounts – pulling in the right people as needed, develop/assist in developing SOW
• Jumps in on clients that need extra help or attention
• Oversees and reviews high-profiled or larger/more complicated work streams and client deliverables

Requirements

• At least ten years of media experience within an agency environment
• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Advertising, or relevant field preferred
• Demonstrated knowledge of all paid media levers and tactics, including broadcast, print, digital & retail
• Fluency with all digital media tactics, including programmatic, OLV, native, influencer marketing, PPC, native, social and more.
• Experience using media research, planning and buying tools
• Familiarity with media platforms, networks and tools (leading, rising)
• Professional experience and personal passion for consumer & data driven omnichannel communications and experiences (paid, owned, earned)
• Excellent story-telling and communication skills

Competencies

• Team leadership
• Vision
• Collaboration
• Analytical thinking
• Composure
• Continuous learning
• Organization
• Adaptability
• Self-motivation

What you can expect from essenceMediacom

EssenceMediacom’s mission is to make advertising more valuable to the world and support brands in their transformation journey. We do this by employing the world’s very best talent to solve some of the toughest challenges of today’s marketing & communication landscape. It’s important that we hire people whose values reflect those of our own: genuine, results-focused, collaborative, daring and insightful. As an essenceMediacom employee, we promise you a workplace that invests in your career, cares for you and is fun and engaging.  We believe these factors create a workplace where you can be yourself and do amazing work.