Responsibilities - Strategic Vision & Leadership: Set the overarching social vision across your client portfolio, ensuring all work ladders up to client business objectives and represents the best of what social can offer. Guide hypotheses and decision-making even in situations where information is incomplete. - Client Counsel: Serve as a senior trusted advisor to client stakeholders, continuously counselling on opportunities, risks, and effectiveness in social, with a deep understanding of the specific challenges and opportunities within the industry. Build and maintain high-trust relationships at senior client level. - Team Leadership & Development: Lead, mentor, and develop a team of social specialists across disciplines. Provide consistent coaching that builds a high-performance team culture. Effectively match talent and skill sets to the needs of client business. - Business Growth: Identify opportunities for growth on current business and develop plans to win. Lead assigned areas of pitch preparation and play a client-facing role in new business presentations. Understand agency financial and operations structure to make sound staffing and resourcing decisions. - Capability Building: Identify opportunities to improve and evolve VML's social offerings. Contribute to the creation of new capabilities and ensure the team stays at the forefront of social innovation. - Cross-Agency Collaboration: Foster strong relationships with senior leaders across VML including strategy & planning, creative, data, and client engagement, to ensure social is fully integrated into the broader agency offering. - Agency Stewardship: Represent VML's expertise and core values to clients, vendors, partner agencies, and industry groups/publications. Champion the social practice internally and externally. Requirements - Extensive experience in a senior social leadership role within an advertising/marketing agency or major brand. - Proven track record of leading social strategy and delivery for large, complex client accounts. - Demonstrated experience building, managing, and developing high-performing teams. - Strong commercial acumen with experience contributing to business growth and pitch activity. - Expert-level understanding of social platforms, emerging technologies, and the evolving social landscape, with specific knowledge of how these apply to high-value product launches, brand building, and community engagement. - Excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills at senior/board level. - Experience working with cross-functional teams across multiple disciplines. - A degree of some sort will help us understand your background and point of view. Benefits - Aside from a generous annual leave allowance and pension allowances, you will have access to a whole host of other benefits and activities such as - Life Assurance - Permanent Health Insurance - BUPA - Flexible hybrid-working schedule - Enhanced family friendly policies - Well-being Programme - Employee Assistance Support - Cycle to Work Scheme - Eye Care and Glasses Vouchers - Season Ticket Loans - WPP Discounts - You will also have a clear long-term career development plan and access to our learning and development activities and online learning platforms.