Account Director

Agency :

Havas Play

Job Description :

Job Title

Account Director

Reports To

Senior Account Director / Business Director

Role Summary

The Account Director (AD) role that sits within the Client Services/Activation Team at Havas Play.

This AD role is an integrated role spanning creative content-led campaign planning and delivery, alongside management of partnerships and activations.

Experience in managing cross-functional teams is important to this role, with the ability to lead on driving work through Strategy teams, into Creative teams and out of Studio/Production into delivery, with the ability to manage multiple creative workstreams simultaneously. An understanding of digital content and media landscape is important, and the role will be integral part of a inter-agency team (IAT) - compromising of a Creative agency, Media agency, and Production agency.

Purpose of Role

The AD is one of the most senior day to day account leaders and it is their

responsibility to manage the work that comes in and lead all work going out, ensuring high quality response to briefs and timely delivery of campaigns.

The AD requires strong interpersonal skills, understanding demands of both clients, partners, and inter-agency teams - connecting the different teams in the business to deliver on briefs and campaigns; as well as being accountable for all of the financial procedures and processed across their account(s).

The AD should have in-depth industry knowledge, be an exceptional client handler who is adept at managing multiple client stakeholders, whilst also leading and developing the team and working within a diverse mix of team structures. They should possess a commercial mindset, being able to manage large-scale scopes of work & budgets and identify and deliver on potential growth opportunities for the business.

The AD will lead the output of a D2D account team, compromising of an SAM and SAE, whilst managing upwards (SAD/BD, Managing Partner). They are responsible for resourcing projects within the team, managing team capacity and working with specialist department teams (Strategy, Creative, Studio, Production, Measurement, Talent & Influencer etc.) to ensure the appropriate resources have been committed to workstreams.

Key Responsibilities

The AD, should be confident in all of the areas laid out below:

Account Management:

• Working across multiple clients and projects simultaneously, whilst maintaining a high quality standard without projects falling behind.
• Working within a inter-agency team, alongside Creative Agency (Havas London), Media Agency (Arena Media, part of Havas Media), Production Agency (Prose on Pixels), the AD is a crucial part of ensuring best-in-class cross-functional delivery, driving high standards and best-practice processes with their counterparts within aforementioned Havas agency teams.
• Be a natural at mobilsing large cross-functional teams, being able to spin multiple plates at once with different stakeholder groups, with the ability to proactively drive projects forward by bringing in wider agency expertise & personnel into the process; ensuring all steps & stakeholders are factored into project timelines.
• Create project plans and timelines that are effective; manage these throughout a project lifecycle mitigating any delays to delivery.

• Ensure the right team is in place, with the right capacity and skillset. The AD should manage the capacity of the account team, keeping work to scope and having a handle on any over or under delivery.

• Possess the ability to stay calm and display a positive, solutions-focused attitude whilst under pressure.

Strategic skills and responding to client briefs and RFPs:

• The AD should have a strong point of view on how to interrogate and answer a brief creatively, and how to position and articulate ideas to the client.
• They should be confident in the brief process from interrogating the brief, to insight, strategy and creative briefing, delegating to the team and drawing on other business team leads where necessary.
• They should demonstrate clear strategic thinking in their day-to-day work across their accounts and how this is framing the client's campaign against their business objectives.
• The AD should have a good understanding of how to structure a brief response, creative presentations, and post-campaign analysis reports.

Campaign Planning & Execution:

• The AD will oversee all campaign planning and activation delivery, including content creation and delivery, activation and live experience, influencer engagement across partnership-led projects, owned IP-led projects, alongside social media focused workstreams.
• Understand time to execute projects. Write scopes and negotiate these with client, where necessary (with support of SAD/BD/MP).
• Make sure the team is aligned on the objectives for the client and as an agency team.
• Maintain motivation of the team - ensuring no one is overwhelmed with workload or falling behind on deliverables.
• Oversee the SAM/SAE's administrative processes on your accounts (status reports, campaign reporting, budget trackers) and ensure they are being updated and delivered to the client on time.

Content Management:

• Lead the development of content and asset production from the initial stages of creative ideation and concepting.
• Create briefs for the Creative & Studio team and manage ongoing development of work.
• Be proficient in managing a high volume of content & assets, autonomously leading the development these (alongside Creative & Studio teams), and tracking via content/asset trackers to manage timely and efficient delivery.
• Drive forward the creative feedback process from client to internal Creative / Studio teams internally.

Writing and Presentation Skills:

• Have strong creative and corporate writing skills, to be used across external documents such as client proposals and reports, as well as internal documents such as toolkits and case studies.
• Ability to adapt your communications based on the needs of your clients & your team.
• Effectively communicate both verbally and in writing to be clear & concise in clientfacing comms as well as when briefing suppliers and the internal team.
• Have great attention to detail and ensure all written work is delivered to a high standard of quality.
• Demonstrate confidence in competently talking clients though a document or pitching an idea, outlining the process you've taken to answer the brief.
• Instill confidence by showcasing your understanding of the client's brand/business when "selling" the idea to them.
• Reviewing and reinforcing a high standard of comms and presentation amongst the teams going out to clients and businesses.

Approach, Initiative & Problem Solving:

• Be positive, proactive and solutions-driven - always think one step ahead.
• Aspire to be fully accountable for day-to-day operations at the same time as empowering the team to feel in control and accountable themselves.
• Stay close enough to the day to day work coming and out of the accounts, anticipating potential problems and issues ahead of them arising, and escalating when necessary.
• Always think ahead - leaving enough time for planning, scope and budgets to be created ahead of work beginning .

Relationships:

• Have a strong working relationship with your client and be seen as the trusted point of counsel. Be an active listener to really understand your clients world.

• Feel comfortable and confident challenging & pressing the agency view, always with a solution-based mindest.
• Be approachable and accessible to every member of your team.
• Work fluidly with different departments such as strategy, insights and creative, and following the processes of these teams.
• Manage line reports staying cloise to their development, ambitions and objectives.
• Sets the standard for your team to learn & develop from.

Client Services & Industry Knowledge:

• Show genuine interest in your client's business & sector.
• Flag anything that may be of interest to your clients - competitor activity, news relating to brand ambassadors, media insights etc.
• Stay abreast of new innovations within the industry to be able to contribute effectively in brainstorms and take new opportunities/ideas to your team.

Growth - Organic & New Business:

• The AD should look to identify ways to grow their clients organically - capitalising on these moments and taking initiative, with the aim to drive 10% YOY organic growth on client account(s).

• They should be instrumental in helping deliver agency RFPs and pitches outside of their D2D client account, understanding briefs, galvanising teams and delivering on time.
• The AD should have contacts within the industry, making sure they nurture and grow these relationships in order to bring in new opportunites to the business.

People Management

• Management of day-to-day running of the team including keeping all members of the team up-to-date with account work and ensure that regular internal status meetings and/or check-ins are arranged.
• Continuous assessment of teams and distribution of work.

Time Management

• The AD encompasses good logical planning . click apply for full job details