Company description
We are the human experience company
We create experiences people love and actions brands need.
When we combine our deep understanding of people with our unmatched expertise in media - magic happens: experiences get invited in, not filtered out.
Data guides us to opportunity, uncovering what people want and how to reach them. Technology makes personalisation and relevance possible. Creativity makes it magic.
Our Philosophy on Strategy & Account Leadership
Strategy & Account Leadership sits at the center of what we do &ndash without it, we can&rsquot bring insight to data or direction that delivers business outcomes.
&bull Our clients relay on us to provide the data and direction that will deliver business outcomes - uncovering new market opportunities, growing their business and delivering real ROI.
&bull Our clients need to be kept in touch with what is happening in the world around them and we ensure that they are empowered with the trended insights that cover their industry, category and customer / client / consumer market.
&bull Our clients expect us to tap into the best minds and skills from around the world, to deliver cutting-edge and world-class product, tools, technology, skills and knowledge to the table.
&bull Our clients want to get their time in the sun and be made famous for the work they produce in partnership with their agency teams &ndash to do this, we need to regularly be entering at least two awards per year.
&bull Starcom needs to showcase the great work they we do. To do this we need at least two case studies produced, from the work that you and your team deliver each year and at least one internal and external award entry.
&bull Planners lean on our strategic and account leaders to provide direction, so they can implementand turn strategy into action.
&bull Our media APEX and Investment team rely on our strategists to provide the clout that will unlock buying efficiencies with media suppliers.
&bull Our Power of One teams and creative agency partners need us to provide a deep understanding of the customer / client / consumer and provide inspiration to produce meaningful communication.
&bull Our global and regional counterparts need us to provide information, updates and regular reports to deliver on and manage global KPI&rsquos, at an agrigate level.
&bull Because of this, we actively seek out strategic talent with the personality, &lsquosmarts&rsquo and attitude to manage multiple work streams, multiple clients and multiple agency stakeholders.
&bull Starcom wants you to grow and thrive in an environment that demands strategic excellence. strong account management and people leadership skills.
&bull In return, we provide a culture where everyone&rsquos opinions count, where your ideas and inputs are valued and where you are given the autonomy to push yourself as far as your ambition leads you.
Overview
The Business Unit Director on Absa is expected to be data driven, insights lead and a creative thinker, who strives to make meaningful impact on the business.
You will be required to collaborate with Absa&rsquos creative agency partners to ensure the smooth running of the media requirements on the account. As a BUD in charge of a portfolio on Absa, you will be responsible for ensuring that that the media team meet their deliverables, deadlines and KPI&rsquos collaboratively.
You will need to work seamlessly with the Publicis Media Ad Operations, Data Science, and Buying teams to ensure:
1. The smooth briefing and running of campaigns in accordance with the briefs.
2. That all billing happens on time and queries are quickly resolved
3. The necessary reporting, taxonomy and tagging is implemented and delivered
This role demands confidence, presence and the skills to make a meaningful impact. Never just taking and executing orders, Starcom BUDs are expected to direct, inspire and add value at every turn. As a BUD, you will need to be proactive, steer and direct the team, and together with the direct team and in-direct partner teams, solve client, operations and strategic briefs and challenges.
A high level of collaboration, a willingness to teach others and a real desire to push the boundaries is what will be expected. As the portfolio lead you will need to be an example of how to best collaborate with internal and external creative and PR agency partners. As you will be working in an integrated fashion, you will need to constructively highlight possible creative gaps on creative delivery for media execution.
In addition, this role requires a high level of accountability and responsibility over the digital media investments we are entrusted to manage. As a portfolio BUD you need to ensure the team is correctly pacing, tracking and delivering against targets and KPI&rsquos.
Some working outside the standard working hours may be necessary.
Responsibilities
&bull To lead the teams, the contractual delivery, operational adherence, financial management and output quality and turnaround within your portfolio. The BUD needs to ensure the effective delivery against the contracted Scope of Work, Service Level Agreement, Protection of Data and Financial Remuneration on the account.
&bull Together with the account management requirements, the BUD is required to direct and work with strategists to deliver quality outputs and remains responsible for the delivery of BusinessReviews, over-arching &ndash portfolio management, optimization and buying strategies.
&bull The BUD is required to deliver on all reports and deliverables required for client&rsquos senior management.
&bull Resolve account challenges with a solution driven mindset, whilst maintaining strong relationships with colleagues, agency partners, media owners and clients.
&bull Drive Starcom&rsquos data led approach, ensuring that local and global tools are used to provide data to guide strategic decisioning.
&bull Deliver and maintain a strong relationship with client and agency partners, working collaboratively to ensure that we remain aligned to the client&rsquos strategic direction.
&bull To demonstrate real passion, care and vision for the people and brands in your portfolio.
What you can expect in an average week:
You will be involved with numerous brand managers, so it&rsquos important to develop a good understanding and identify specific business needs for each one.
Your average week may include:
&bull Attend key strategic briefings, status meetings, integration meetings with agency partners.
&bull Produce and present media strategies.
&bull Prepare and deliver insights decks on consumer and media trends, landscapes, and QBRs - in partnership with the planners, Research & Insights team and the digital implementation team.
&bull Share pertinent and relevant insights reports with client.
&bull Be present and on time, to all required meetings.
&bull Work collaboratively with our clients, colleagues, and creative agency partners.
&bull Review and direct all offline and online media outputs.
&bull Collaboratively work with and direct the digital media planners, campaign managers, DV360 and search specialists.
&bull Work collaboratively within the Digital Advertising Operations, Client Success, Media Buying, and Creative Teams.
&bull Write and present internal briefs across all disciplines, monitor progress, direct optimization changes, avoid under / over-spends and add provide insight to post campaign reports.
&bull Sign off all media billing packs relevant to your portfolio, to ensure alignment and avoid under and overspends.
&bull Update monthly forecasting reports.
&bull Ensure that your time sheets are maintained and timeously updated.
Qualifications
Qualifications:
&bull A marketing / media / communications degree, diploma or certificate
Experience:
&bull At least 10 years of media experience in agency.
Hard Skills:
&bull Able to effectively project manage
&bull Strong presenation skills
&bull Numerically strong and analytically able
&bull Strong communicator with effective interpersonal relationships across team and clients
&bull Advanced IT skills including Microsoft Word, best-in-class Power Point, Excel, Outlook and web-based applications.
&bull The ability to synthesize and reduce different inputs to create a well-considered and accurate representative view.
&bull English fluency and language skills for effective business writing
&bull Solid data interpretation and analytics skills
&bull Be able to exercise strategic principles and structured thinking to tackle business development projects assigned by client
&bull Be able to select appropriate frameworks, tools and approaches to use in solving client problems
&bull Develop strategies that interpret cultural and social trends as well as data relevant to client business
Soft Skills
&bull Works well in a high-performance environment
&bull Is open to constructive feedback and challenges accordingly.
&bull Is effective at building relationships and working as a team
&bull Shows leadership and decision-making ability
&bull Manages change well &ndash adapts and remains flexible to business priorities
&bull Ability to collaborate without ego as well as work effectively independently
&bull Is willing to transfer skills and share knowledge openly
&bull Ability to self-start and self-manage
Additional information
Together with the teams on the account (Insights, Planning, Buying & AdOps), you will be required to build, monitor and maintain the following across your portfolio of accounts:
Finance and other Reports
Reports to shared and socialized with the marketing managers, media managers and senior marketing executives, as required.
1. Monthly / Weekly (client dependent) consolidated media flow plans &ndash detaining timing of activity and media spend per month &ndash actuals and projections for the client and Starcom&rsquos financial year.
2. Monthly Discount Tracking report
3. Monthly Partner Commitment Tracking report
4. Competitive spend / investment reports &ndash local and globally reported. Reports to shared and socialized with the marketing managers, media managers and senior marketing executives, as required.
Acurately and timeously deliver the following internal reports required internally
&bull Monthly media investment and revenue forecast reports, including programmatic.
&bull Monthly team/talent updates
&bull Monthly Write-off report
Operations
&bull At a minimum, hold a weekly project meeting and maintain an updated project status
&bull Lead internal team status meeting and unlock administrative and operational roadblocks
&bull Work closely with Operations and Ad Operations to ensure the smooth running, operations and output of the account are maintained in the most frictionless manner possible.
&bull Ensure client contact reports are completed and socialized
&bull Connect with the head of operation and buying at least once per month
&bull Connect with the head of Ad Operations and Reporting once per month
&bull Follow and guide the team through all operational processes
&bull Management expectations around delivery time, SLAs, receipt of creative from partner agencies.
Financial Management
&bull Ensure budgets are properly managed and financial losses mitigated due to under / over-spends.
&bull Ensure PO Trackers are kept up to date
&bull Using the Age Reports, ensure clients are kept up to date with payments and any outstanding amounts are timeously managed
&bull Deal with all account payable queries timeously
&bull Mitigate risks where possible and keep a record of all over-spends
&bull Work with the MD to update and renew client contracts
&bull Ensure time sheets are managed and approved
&bull Ensure leave is responsibly managed, forward planned and approved
&bull Follow and guide the team through all financial processes
Service
&bull Ensure that regular and effective meetings with clients &ndash marketing managers and senior managers, including CMO&rsquos
&bull Ensure quick and responsive action to all client queries
&bull Work with the client and maintain a commonly agreed Way of Working &ndash drawing from the contract SLAs and client and internal processes.
&bull Regularly report back on the health of the client relationship in monthly meetings with the MD
&bull When client satisfaction survey is deployed on the account, to:
&bull ensure that the completion rate is sufficient
&bull that corrections for improvements are provided and implemented
&bull that meetings are attended
Team
&bull Motivate and support your team
&bull Ensure that the teams time is effectively and responsibly managed, prioritized and billed for
&bull Report back and make recommendations on top performers and under achievers
&bull Provide regular feedback on the health, wellness and motivation of the team monthly.
&bull Follow and guide the team through all people and talent related processes
&bull Work with the Head of Digital at Publicis Media, to develop and arrange digital media training.
&bull Work with the leadership teams to develop and arrange all media training and hold the team accountable for attendance and completion of the courses.
Meet client KPIs
&bull The KPI&rsquos for each client are governed by the commercial agreements. All client required KPI&rsquos need to be properly tracked and met and exceeded.
&bull The SLA&rsquos for each client are governed by the commercial agreement or Ways of Working agreements. All client SLA&rsquos need to be managed and met.
&bull Objections to ether of the above need to be responsibly raised and together the MD effectively managed with client.
Optimisation
&bull The BUD is required to drive and deliver ongoing incremental media optimizations and guide the team to make strategic recommendations for further optimization, with the platform specialists and strategists on each portfolio.
&bull Ensure that optimization recommendations are fed back to the client and the creative teams.
&bull Adopt the use of Publicis tools to ensure optimum results are obtained.
Data-Lead
&bull To deeply understand the market, audiences and segments that will unlock market growth and opportunity on your portfolio. Work with the research, analytics and strategic teams.
&bull To unearth and deliver the best media owner relationships and partnerships that deliver business outcomes and creative media opportunities. You will be required to have trading discussions with the Head of Trading at Publicis Media, including accurate budget forecasting and spend projections with media owners to meet Publicis Media&rsquos commitments.
Awards & Case Studies
&bull To produce award-winning entries and case studies that demonstrate real impact and results for our clients &ndash for internal and external pitches and awards.
&bull Together with the team, successfully meet the client&rsquos contracted KPI&rsquos and the commercial targets.
Digital Reporting & Data Science
&bull Interface and work collaboratively with the Data Science and AdOps Reporting teams.
&bull Manage the portfolio&rsquos digital planning team and the timeous and accurate delivery of media schedule, creative matrices, tracking tags and reports are delivered on time.
&bull Maintain highest taxonomy standards.
You will have the following people report to you:
&bull Media Strategists x 3+
&bull Media planner x 3+
&bull Reporting analysts x 2+
&bull Note: All campaign managers and traffic controllers will report to the Ad Operations lead.
&bull You will be required to manage leave and timesheets.
&bull You will manage their performance reviews, and career conversations
&bull Help the teams prioritise workloads and manage client expectations
&bull You will be required cohesively manage the team, and drive the Starcom culture
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