Director, Planning and Buying

London, UK (Hybrid)

Salary Not AvailableDirector/ExecutiveFull time

Posted 2 months ago

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Job Summary

Own the end-to-end media planning and campaign management workflow, translating strategy into executable plans, shaping purchase-journey thinking, and building client and agency relationships to deliver high-quality executions and insight-driven optimizations.

  • Lead planning inputs and presentations, coordinating cross-team inputs to meet deadlines.
  • Elevate campaign quality through advanced channel understanding, data-driven problem solving, and proactive optimization across the purchase journey.
  • Develop and maintain stakeholder relationships, capturing client business needs and translating them into compelling media strategies.

Job Description

Responsibilities

  • Develop an advanced understanding of media channels, channel ecosystems and planning best practices.
  • Start to translate strategic approach into planning practices for specific client briefs and pitches.
  • Have an advanced understanding of Purchase Journey thinking and planning philosophy across all client work. Including being an expert in a broad set of internal tools, as well as external tools to build a deep understanding of the consumer, the client’s business and its specific opportunities.
  • Have an expert overview of the media market landscape, trends and start to build media owner relationships.
  • Oversee campaign management, ensuring quality control and output is of the highest standard.
  • Develop a skilled understand of commercial practises and of the wider agency.
  • Build and maintain client and agency relationships at a mid-senior level, to ensure a comprehensive understanding of stakeholders and client business.
  • Own planning presentations including defining the inputs needed and working with the wider teams to compile work and meet deadlines.
  • Lead brainstorm and idea creation for campaigns
  • Start to independently problem solve, including integrating and questioning data and insights and find solutions based on knowledge and experience.

Requirements

  • Practice Area Knowledge -Skilled- Develops breadth and depth of industry understanding. Becomes confident using tools, technology, techniques and systems and is able to train others.
  • Comfortable presenting both direct from platform (OS, Architect etc) and developing a story from data but delivered outside of platform (Telmar etc).
  • Can confidently answer client questions and liaise with internal teams on best solutions to use.
  • Problem Solving – Skilled - Uses critical questioning and maintains a broad perspective when analyzing information to gain a deeper understanding of the problem and wider impact. Quickly generates appropriate solutions informed by previous experience. Understands how to resolve escalated issues and supports others to problem solve. Supports or leads troubleshooting communication for issues.
  • Stakeholder Relationships – Skilled - Has an expert knowledge of client and agency structures. Can identify key decision makers and understands their perspectives which is used to build relationships. Has strong knowledge of the client sector/industry which is shared to build strategies and plans. Identifies strategic issues and raises questions to help stakeholders explore and understand their wider business challenges. Can easily suggest business solutions to match client/stakeholder needs and achieve objectives.
  • Effective Communication -Advanced- Leads the delivery of relevant and accurate information to drive maximum impact. Consistently delivers communications to influence and educate all levels of seniority, appropriately judging the demands of the situation. Creatively develops presentations and comms to help with the understanding/education of complex information. Guides others on the best practices and approaches for creating clear, concise and organized communication materials to convey plans in a user-friendly way.
  • Campaign Management – Advanced - Reviews the work of others to ensure accuracy and thoroughness objectives have been met; provides coaching on ways to improve work outputs. Applies best practice to campaign management and acts as the escalation point for issues. Provide actionable insights during mid and post campaign reports to improve in-flight optimizations and future campaign brief recommendations. Oversees team members to discuss current projects, workload and activities prioritises resources accordingly. Improves workload management by supporting other in setting priorities and by postponing less relevant work.
  • Compelling Storytelling – Skilled - Applies big picture thinking in work and proactively leverages an understanding of the organization and key industry trends. Understand the different elements of responses. Designs differentiated communications (content focus, style, presentation etc) for various internal and external audiences.
  • Ideas Creation – Advanced - Lead new projects/activities that can create ideas to deliver effective solutions to clients business objectives. Ability to proactively generate ideas to provoke and deliver against broader business strategies. Coaches other to gain new insights and view opportunities from different perspectives. Championing an environment that fosters innovation by encouraging others to openly share and build on other’s new ideas, products and solutions
  • Comms Planning – Skilled - Applies knowledge of client, audience, channel, market and category to effectively deliver compelling multi-media plans. Translates learnings and trends to create marketing communication strategies that are effective with clear measurement. Application of purchase journey thinking and visualization of how the media plan works channels. Translation of strategic direction/platform/provocation into directional role for media, channel role and behaviour in channel. Identifies and recommends budget shifts as campaign is in-flight where appropriate.

Benefits

  • Our passion for shaping the next era of media includes investing in our employees to help them do their best work, and we’re just as committed to employee growth as we are to responsible media investment.
  • WPP Media employees can tap into the global WPP Media & WPP networks to pursue their passions, grow their networks, and learn at the cutting edge of marketing and advertising.
  • We have a variety of employee resource groups and host frequent in-office events showcasing team wins, sharing thought leadership, and celebrating holidays and milestone events.
  • Our benefits include competitive medical, group retirement plans, vision, and dental insurance, significant paid time off, preferential partner discounts, and employee mental health awareness days.
  • WPP Media is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.
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WPP Media

Media is changing. So are we. We are WPP's global media collective, built for the AI era.We bring the best platform, people, and partners together to create innovative solutions that deliver unparalleled growth for brands - in every market, every day.

30K employees (6,827 in marketing)

Traffic Signals

Monthly Visitors
159.3K
Monthly Google Ads Budget
$9.9K
Traffic Source Mix
Search
34.3%
Direct
46.3%
Referral
10.7%
Social
5.7%
Paid
2.7%

Headcount Trend

Current headcount: ~30.1K

Marketing Team

Marketing Team Size
6,288 (21% of company)
Median Career Experience
10 years
Median Tenure
4.2 years
Marketing Roles Posted (Last 30 Days)
21