Senior Account Director

Company description
Toyota Business Unit, a division of MMS Communications SA (Pty) Ltd.

Overview
The Account Director will be responsible for driving client partnership with strategic influence and intent, whilst being the focal point for day-to-day client interaction, digital campaign planning and service delivery. Managing digital and social campaigns across a portfolio of brands on a day-to-day basis. Through the line experience is highly advantageous.

Responsibilities

1. Act as agency lead across a portfolio of brands, partnering with the client and their media agency.
2. Management of client expectations and service delivery by being a focal point for day-to-day interaction.
3. Managing the expectations of multiple stakeholders seamlessly to deliver according to brief, strategy and to the highest standard.
4. Be consistently responsive and accessible to your client and team at all times.
5. Have tough and honest conversations with your client to enable your team to deliver excellence and to create trust.
6. Have an excellent relationship with clients where they can rely on you, you proactively update them, and you assist them in delivering their requirements on time by reminding them as required.
7. Can manage all kinds of personalities and always strive to get the best out of each individual.
8. Have an excellent knowledge understanding of the client, the agency, the strategy and the process in order to deliver efficiently and to the highest quality.
9. Ensure status is consistently up-to-date and correct.
10. Ensure that all meetings have thorough agendas, driving a productive outcome.
11. Ensure that contact reports are delivered timeously with key deliverables and then drive out those deliverables to the agreed timings.
12. Create timing plans for all jobs and campaigns to drive delivery.
13. Always know the status of each job in the system.
14. Work together with your full team across Traffic, Strategy, Content Marketing, Creative, Production, Development, etc. to deliver high quality work.
15. Manage tight deadlines while adhering to processes.
16. Seamlessly manage multiple stakeholders across multiple clients.
17. Take full ownership of every job that comes through you – ensure that every job is measured against client requirements, agreed strategy and on-brand.
18. Write excellent briefs with full clarity on all requirements and inspire strategy, creative, production, development to do great work.
19. Consider the impact of any given change briefed by client on other elements in a campaign or other jobs in the system.
20. Maintain the integrity of the creative strategy and work throughout the campaign.
21. Communicate with excellence, maturity and intent when writing or speaking.
22. Have excellent self-management, with thorough to-do lists and personal organization which supports your ability to be efficient and effective in your job.
23. Have an opinion and be solution-orientated.
24. Understand what jobs are in scope and out-of-scope to ensure that costs are raised accurately and upfront as required.
25. Ensure that your billings are completed by billing cut off each month.
26. Ensure that client CEs are approved before any supplier POs are raised.
27. Ensure that the right people have approved all work before it is sent to client.
28. Ensure that the right people have been included in client meetings to support the outcome of the meeting and that everyone is prepared and aligned.
29. Keep abreast of what is happening in the market to add additional value to your client's business.
30. Manage up – ensure your seniors are abreast of all activity on the account and empower them to support you through open lines of communication.
31. Be prepared to work long hours as and when is necessary in order to deliver according to the deadline and to support the broader team.
32. Join in the agency culture to build strong relationships across the business.
33. Interpret the client's business needs into clear creative / digital briefs.
34. Deliver high quality digital and social media campaigns end-to-end, in line with agreed brand plans and objectives.
35. Implement and manage digital and social campaigns, with specific emphasis on managing tight timings and deadlines.
36. Develop digital project plans, with effective and timeous delivery from concept to execution.
37. Work alongside creative, strategy, media, digital development, and data teams; managing multiple campaigns at the same time.
38. Interpret campaign performance to optimize creative work and improve current practices.
39. Interpret digital trends, unlocking new and relevant opportunities across digital and social platforms.
40. Execute integrated campaigns ensuring that our campaigns work across ATL, Digital and BTL.
41. Be able to run projects and brands on your own if needed.
42. Have clear strategic insights into clients' briefs.
43. Be able to manage client's budgets within projects, campaigns and overall client budget.
44. Clear understanding of media across Digital and ATL.
45. Be able to manage productions independently if needed.
46. Understand all elements within the client business from BTL, ALT, Social and digital.
47. Weekly management, updating and tracking of finances (CE's, PO's, Billings) and reporting to ensure cash flow management.

Qualifications

The candidate must have a minimum of 5 years Account Management experience, and a minimum of 2 years' experience at Senior Account Director level. The following attributes are also essential: Tertiary Marketing and/or Advertising qualification, with digital certification essential. Digital agency experience is essential.

Experience on large scale multinational brands and/or in Automotive experience would be advantageous. Proven experience in leading a team, including external agency partners.

Business Skills

1. Ability to lead a team, including external agencies, in both work-from-home or work-from-office environments.
2. Strong digital skills with a strong understanding of social and digital platforms and technical/production requirements.
3. Ability to think commercially and understand real return on investment.
4. Strong focus on strategy & execution.
5. Strong project management skills.
6. Understanding of digital channel requirements, ad units and digital best practice.
7. Broad understanding of all communication disciplines.
8. Ability to solve problems quickly and thoroughly.
9. Understanding of new technology and the application of it to the creative process.
10. Experience working with detailed digital chase lists is essential.
11. Understand and create budgets per project based on client's brief.

Additional information

Publicis Group is proud to be an Equal opportunity employer and prohibits any forms of Discrimination or Harassment. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all our employees in line with our Employment Equity plan.

All appointments will be based on Qualifications, experience and best fit but preference will be given to all affirmation action candidates or designated groups.