Account Director - PR&I, Corporate/Tech

About the Role  

With 7+ years of related industry (social media/ PR agency / in-house client communications) experience, you have a solid foundation of managing clients and developing senior level client relationships. You’re driven by our mission to make our clients’ brands and businesses matter, and fundamentally believe that creativity and earning influence for our clients have the power to change fortunes. You are becoming a trusted advisor to clients, which means you have a track record of delivering consistently to a high standard while striking the right balance between protecting client and agency interests. Clients discuss business issues with you looking for your advice. You’re adept at leveraging your relationships with internal and external stakeholders to overcome any obstacles for your project. You are also an up-and-coming leader that believes in nurturing and empowering your junior team members to elevate their careers and a well-respected team member that your peers and juniors look up to.

What You’ll Do 

• Make our clients’ brands matter by being best in class in PR and Social Media Marketing, as well as bringing together the best mix of Ogilvy capabilities to solve business problems and build agency reputation.
• Become a trusted advisor to the clients to build client satisfaction and intimacy which maintains key relationships and opens up new growth opportunities for the agency.
• Independently lead integrated and PR accounts, manage team members working on the account to produce consistently good results, while building a highly-engaged team.
• Be able to successfully collaborate and lead medium-sized new business proposals or pitches, and work across departments, including Strategy and Creative Leads, on larger pitches / PR-led integrated pitches
• Responsible for revenue and margin growth/protection - including joint ownership with Directors of locally agreed practice targets.
• Increased exposure to business and finance management, meets account director billability targets and ensures the team does the same for their levels.
• Understands our contractual agreements and their impact on agency procedures.

Skills You Learn and Apply: 

• Understanding of what makes great work and drives what it takes to make it happen.
• You are starting to build a strong niche and desire to focus on a particular industry/ industries for related PR and social media marketing work and are demonstrating strong knowledge and expertise that are highly valued by our clients.
• Ability to bring the best practices, insights and trends in social media marketing to create best-in-class work that generates shareability, talkability, reputation and earned media
• Ability to stream briefs into the right workflow based on past experience and a strong understanding of integrated marketing communications principles.
• A solid appreciation and understanding of all Ogilvy Group capabilities (e.g. strategy, creative, CE&C, Brand Advertising and Content) to be able to be the best-in-breed integrated communications practitioners to facilitate the best work throughout the whole process and effectively builds PR & Social as the front door for our clients to experience and access the rest of Ogilvy and wider WPP network.
• A good understanding of social media marketing and modern marketing capabilities (e.g. data analytics, CX, martech etc.) and have experience in integrating it into every applicable project.
• Relationship-building with internal and external stakeholders to facilitate project outcomes.
• Ability to think ahead from both technical expertise (of project management and production) and relationships to smooth problem-solving.
• Building the foundation of a trusted client advisor, you are able to listen to client needs without agenda and give them the best advice that strikes the right balance of protecting client and agency interests.
• Start dealing with senior clients and lay the foundations for senior client relationships.
• Ensure smooth, timely delivery, as well as revenue and margin growth/protection on projects.
• Manage few direct reports to impart client service skills and groom them in their growth and promotion. You indirectly manage several supporting team members across the wider team due to cross-practice accounts you will lead on.
• Identifies strengths and weaknesses of direct reports and team members, providing day-to-day counseling on job performance and career development as appropriate.
• Manages timely performance appraisals for direct reports.
• Manages staff to maximize productivity and individual, team and financial performance.
• Keep up to speed with industry trends and Ogilvy IP (e.g. Ogilvy wider group innovations, latest PR&I product suite, and know how to tap into and use Ogilvy tools, e.g. Brandwatch etc.) by being curious and well-read.

What You’ll Need  

• Relentless curiosity
• Strong work ethic
• Good team player
• Articulate and persuasive
• Reliable and mature
• Strong client relationships and ability to grow your accounts (share of wallet, revenue size)
• Ability to build strong connections
• Developing a strong expertise in a particular niche or industry
• Starting to build a track record of leading business wins

How We’ll Support You 

Ogilvy celebrates its people. Fully. Enthusiastically. Unhesitatingly. We’ll empower you with the tools you’ll need to succeed. We’ll give you the autonomy to seek out new paths and better ways of doing things. We’ll support you with colleagues who are experts in their disciplines, drawn from across the Ogilvy network. And we’ll provide opportunities for you to do work of which you’ll be proud, with people you’ll be proud to call your teammates.