About EssenceMediacom
Essence, part of GroupM, is a global data and measurement-driven media agency whose mission is to make advertising more valuable to the world. the agency is more than 2,000 people strong, manages $4B in annualized media spend and deploys campaigns in 121 markets via 21 offices in APAC, EMEA and North America. Visit essenceglobal.com for more information and follow us on Twitter at @essenceglobal.
The Role Objective
The Planning Manager is primarily responsible for consistent excellent plan recommendations for the brands in their categories and delivering high quality, fully integrated plan executions & operational excellence.
This is a leadership role, supporting the client lead in managing the account in a fast-changing, highly complex target audience environment.
Responsibilities
Strategic Skills
- Support the Client Lead by providing expertise on media planning
- Provide insight and analysis to the Client Lead to support the development of data driven strategic recommendations for the client
- Strong digital foundation, with hands on familiarity on digital media execution, is a plus
Client Account Management
- Develop strong relationships with clients, be their go to person for Planning expertise
- Work with wider teams (including performance marketing, biddable and programmatic) to ensure regular reporting that serves the client’s needs.
- Lead on relevant part of client meetings, QBRs, etc.
Operating and Technical Requirements
- Coordinate & complete annual plans for all brands for the assigned categories.
- Turn business objectives into comms objectives and define clear KPIs for each brief
- Data oriented, able to navigate various platforms to query and generate necessary reports on competitive spends, consumer behavior, relevant category data and campaign performance
- Review consumer insight and competitive reports interpretation and key learnings (aggregate and integrate research data in the plans)
- Develop consistent excellent plan recommendations for brands
- Use Essence Mediacom’s planning tool - The System and encourages uptake within wider EssencemediaCom
- Drives innovation that is founded in clear audience insight
- Collaborates closely with buying/implementation teams within the company as to maintain a campaigns delivery throughout the year within agreed KPI’s (e.g. reach objectives)
People Management
- Work collaboratively with team members. Mentor and provide direction to junior members
- Provide regular feedback (both positive and constructive) to the team on a regular basis.
Other Areas
- Participate in workshops, training sessions and team building events.
- Deliver best practice day to day project management.
- Financial control of client’s business in conjunction with Account Manager (payments, invoices, reconciliations, PO tracking etc.)
- Demonstrate an understanding of the media and technology developments that influence performance planning and clients’ business.
- Be an advocate of continuous improvement, enthusiastic and positive with a “Can Do” attitude
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Flags up any serious performance issues immediately and seek help to manage them accordingly
Key Performance Indicators
- Product: outstanding plan execution & operational excellence. KPI TBC
- Client: satisfaction, retention, and growth, contributing to a high score for strategy and activation planning in agency evaluation. KPI TRR score
- Commercial: client profitability. KPI Client Profitability target
- Personal development: positive My360 feedback from manager, peers, and clients.
Education, skills and behaviors
- 5 + years of senior experience on a similar role
- Ideally Degree educated in a business, numerical or analytical degree e.g. economics, mathematics, statistics or engineering
- Numerate and analytical
- Bilingual preferred; Japanese and English; with fluency in one language and basic / business communication skills in the other.
- PC literate (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)
- Demonstrable strong strategic planning skills and experience
- Experience in implementation planning
- Proven track record in the relevant sector with category management experience
- Strong analytical skills to identify consumer journey planning
