Overview
Agency: Havas Play
Job Description:
Job Title: Account Director
Reports To: Senior Account Director / Business Director
Role Summary
The Account Director (AD) role sits within the Client Services/Activation Team at Havas Play. This AD role is an integrated role spanning creative content-led campaign planning and delivery, alongside management of partnerships and activations. Experience in managing cross-functional teams is important, with the ability to lead work through Strategy, Creative and Studio/Production into delivery, while managing multiple creative workstreams. An understanding of the digital content and media landscape is important, and the role will be an integral part of an inter-agency team (IAT) comprising a Creative agency, a Media agency, and a Production agency.
Purpose of Role
The AD is one of the most senior day-to-day account leaders and is responsible for managing the work that comes in and leading all work going out, ensuring high-quality responses to briefs and timely delivery of campaigns. The AD should have strong interpersonal skills, understand the demands of clients, partners, and inter-agency teams, connect different teams to deliver on briefs and campaigns, and be accountable for financial procedures and processes across their accounts. They should possess in-depth industry knowledge, be an exceptional client handler, and be adept at managing multiple client stakeholders while leading and developing the team. The AD should have a commercial mindset, managing large-scale scopes of work and budgets, and identifying growth opportunities. They will lead the output of a D2D account team (SAM and SAE) and manage upwards (SAD/BD, Managing Partner). They are responsible for resourcing projects within the team, managing team capacity, and working with Strategy, Creative, Studio, Production, Measurement, Talent & Influencer, etc., to ensure appropriate resources are committed to workstreams.
Key Responsibilities
The AD should be confident in all areas outlined below:
Account Management:
* Working across multiple clients and projects simultaneously, maintaining a high-quality standard without delays.
* Working within an inter-agency team, alongside Creative Agency (Havas London), Media Agency (Arena Media, part of Havas Media), Production Agency (Prose on Pixels). The AD is a crucial part of ensuring best-in-class cross-functional delivery and driving high standards and best-practice processes with counterparts within the Havas agency teams.
* Mobilising large cross-functional teams, juggling multiple plates with different stakeholder groups, and proactively driving projects forward by involving wider agency expertise and personnel, ensuring steps and stakeholders are factored into timelines.
* Creating effective project plans and timelines and managing them through a project lifecycle to mitigate delays.
* Ensuring the right team is in place, with the right capacity and skillset; managing account team capacity and keeping work to scope, with control over over- or under-delivery.
* Maintaining a calm, positive, solution-focused attitude under pressure.
Strategic skills and responding to client briefs and RFPs:
* Strong point of view on interrogating briefs creatively and on positioning and articulating ideas to the client.
* Confidence in the brief process from interrogation to insight, strategy and creative briefing, delegating to the team and leveraging other business leads where necessary.
* Demonstrated clear strategic thinking in day-to-day work across accounts, framing campaigns against client business objectives.
* Understanding of how to structure brief responses, creative presentations, and post-campaign analysis reports.
Campaign Planning & Execution:
* Oversee all campaign planning and activation delivery, including content creation, activation and live experience, influencer engagement, owned IP-led projects, and social media-focused workstreams.
* Understand time to execute projects and write scopes and negotiate them with the client where necessary (with support from SAD/BD/MP).
* Ensure the team is aligned on client objectives and agency goals.
* Maintain team motivation and prevent overwhelm or delays.
* Oversee administrative processes for SAM/SAE on accounts (status reports, campaign reporting, budget trackers) and ensure timely delivery to clients.
Content Management:
* Lead development of content and asset production from ideation and concepting.
* Create briefs for Creative & Studio teams and manage ongoing development of work.
* Manage a high volume of content and assets, leading development with Creative & Studio teams, and tracking via content/asset trackers for timely delivery.
* Drive the client feedback process from client to internal teams.
Writing and Presentation Skills:
* Strong creative and corporate writing skills for client proposals, reports, toolkits, and case studies.
* Adapt communications to client and team needs.
* Clear verbal and written communication with clients, briefings to suppliers, and internal teams; high attention to detail.
* Ability to present ideas confidently, including walking clients through processes taken to answer briefs.
* Show understanding of the client’s brand/business when presenting ideas and maintaining high standards of communication.
Approach, Initiative & Problem Solving:
* Positive, proactive, solutions-driven mindset; always think one step ahead.
* Fully accountable for day-to-day operations while empowering the team to be in control and accountable themselves.
* Stay close to day-to-day work, anticipate issues, and escalate when necessary.
* Think ahead to allow time for planning, scope, and budgets before work begins.
Relationships:
* Build a strong working relationship with the client and be a trusted point of counsel. Be an active listener to understand the client’s world.
* Challenge the agency view with a solutions-based mindset; be approachable and accessible to all team members.
* Collaborate with strategy, insights, and creative teams and follow their processes.
* Manage line reports with development, ambitions, and objectives; set the standard for the team to learn and develop.
Client Services & Industry Knowledge:
* Show genuine interest in the client’s business and sector.
* Flag relevant opportunities such as competitor activity, brand ambassadors, and media insights to clients.
* Stay abreast of industry innovations to contribute effectively in brainstorms and bring new ideas to the team.
Growth – Organic & New Business:
* Identify opportunities to grow client accounts organically, aiming for 10% YOY organic growth where possible.
* Contribute to agency RFPs and pitches outside of D2D client accounts, understanding briefs and galvanising teams to deliver on time.
* Maintain industry contacts to nurture relationships and bring in new opportunities for the business.
People Management
* Manage day-to-day team operations, keep members up-to-date with account work, and schedule regular status meetings or check-ins.
* Continual assessment of teams and distribution of work.
Time Management
* Strong logical planning, communication, and expectation management both internally and externally.
* Efficient time management to ensure on-time delivery and mindful deadlines; anticipate pinch points affecting capacity and workloads.
Process Management
* Lead internal agency processes, using Monday.com to track and manage scopes, workflow and revenue.
* Create, load, update scopes in Monday.com; track and report utilization based on scoped hours.
* Track and report time, creating reconciliation reports for Management and Clients.
* Understand and enforce agency Creative & Studio resourcing processes.
Finance
* Competent with finance processes; ensure the team sets up new job numbers, processes POs and invoices efficiently.
* Understand driving client account profitability, scoping and negotiating fees, and assessing feasibility.
Contract Type: Permanent
Equality Statement: Here at Havas across the group we pride ourselves on offering equal opportunities to all potential employees and have zero tolerance for discrimination. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applicants irrespective of age, sex, race, ethnicity, disability and other factors that have no bearing on an individual’s ability to perform their job.
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