Associate Director,Planning

OMD; Toronto; On-site; CAD 75,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

Omnicom's strategic planning team seeks an Associate Director to drive audience insights, define target segments, and optimize media strategies for global clients. The role blends strategic planning with analytics to uncover actionable opportunities across media, content, and social marketing.

You will lead cross-functional teams, communicate with senior clients, manage deliverables, and ensure rigorous measurement and attribution practices.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree; MBA preferable or related degree.
• Experience in strategy/consulting in digital or database marketing or communication strategy welcomed.
• Project management experience with small projects or teams.
• Experience with large, complex data including audience data (DMP, Acxiom).
• Experience with global teams at Fortune 2000 companies.
• Familiarity with multiple media and digital channels (TV, web, mobile, CRM, social, search).
• Familiarity with multi-channel measurement and attribution solutions.

Responsibilities

• Think strategically and maintain media fluency aligned with business objectives.
• Communicate clearly with senior clients and keep teams aligned.
• Assess issues quickly, identify options, and propose forward paths.
• Own timelines, flag risks early, and drive progress.
• Ensure accuracy, quality, and client-ready outputs.

Skills

Analytical thinking

Data synthesis

Presentation skills

Communication

Client relationship management

Audience strategy

Media measurement

Education

Bachelor’s degree

MBA preferable

Tools

DMP

Acxiom

Martech platforms

Job description

Strategic Planning Associate Director

Agency

Omd

Job Function

Media

Job Subfunction

Media Planning and Buying

Job Description

The strategy team is responsible for unearthing consumer insights and behaviors to define and optimize the target audience and drive business goals for our clients. Both strategic planning and analytics are key dimensions to our work. We identify unique connection opportunities based on audience emotions and behaviors through the use of proprietary research and data and translate them into actionable insights for media, content and social marketing.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic thinking and media fluency — Understands the broader business and marketing objectives, connects media recommendations back to them, and has enough media depth to challenge specialists and identify gaps.
• Communication — Clear, concise and confident. Able to simplify complex media issues, communicate effectively with senior clients, and keep everyone aligned without overcomplicating things.
• Problem solving and judgment — Can quickly assess an issue, determine what matters, identify options and recommend a path forward rather than simply escalating problems back to the client.
• Proactive ownership and sense of urgency — Anticipates needs, flags risks early, moves quickly when required, closes loops and takes accountability for moving the business forward.
• Attention to detail and quality control — Ensures work is accurate, client-ready, and catches errors, inconsistencies or gaps before they reach the client.
• Measurement orientation — Comfortable discussing KPIs, attribution, incrementality, testing and optimization. Able to move the conversation beyond media delivery metrics into effectiveness and business outcomes.
• Relationship and team leadership — Builds trust with the client and can effectively orchestrate the broader agency team, including specialists and more junior account staff.

Desired Skills & Experience

• Strong analytical/logical thinking
• Ability to synthesize data/research into concise action-oriented strategies
• Great presentation and communication skills
• Quantitative and qualitative research skills
• Client relationship development and management
• Deep understanding not only of how to build audiences but also a more broad understanding of different audience solutions – from building custom solutions to the different types of off the shelf solutions available
• Deep understanding of data solutions (1st, 2nd and 3rd party) – how to access, use and activate
• Understanding of the Digital marketing technologies, including adtech and martech solutions

Experiences

• Bachelor’s degree and MBA preferable or related degree.
• Background in strategy and/or consulting in digital or database marketing or communication strategy are welcome.
• Demonstrated project management experience; either managing small project or small team within larger project or experience in managing deliverables/ project timeline
• Experience working with large, complex data, including audience data from DMP, Acxiom, etc.
• Experience working with global teams at large Fortune 2000 companies
• Familiarity with different media and digital channels (e.g., TV, web, mobile, CRM, social media, search)
• Familiarity with multi-channel measurement and attribution solutions
• Collaborating within an agency and with extended marketing council of agencies

$75,000-$85,000

To the extent permissible by local law, Omnicom’s policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in‑office days are directed by their agency or manager.

Omnicom is committed to hiring and developing exceptional talent. We agree that talent is uniquely distributed, and we’re focused on developing inclusive teams that can bring the best solutions to everything we do. We strongly believe that celebrating what makes us different makes us better together. Join us—we look forward to getting to know you. We will process your personal data in accordance with our Recruitment Privacy Notice.

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