Planning Account Manager

Job Title

Planning Account Manager

REPORTING TO

Business Director

Job Summary

Responsible for contributing to the media planning process for a group of clients at Walk-In Media, overseeing the client relationship and working closely with all other teams across the agency. Working directly into the Business Director, you will be the key day-to-day contact for your client group.

About the role

We are looking for a candidate to join the planning team, working across our growing list of clients. The planning team focuses on setting out and leading on the strategic direction and growth of our clients, developing media campaigns and strategies that are finely curated to deliver on our client’s needs and objectives.

As a planning team we are responsible for overseeing the relationship with the client. The role involves working closely with all the other specialist teams in the agency. This role will be working on a varied set of clients.

The Planning Account Manager will be expected to demonstrate the following core competencies across 3 key operational areas:

Clients

You will be managing and leading client accounts, acting as the frontline port-of-call across all channels, supported by media specialists (offline and online) and the wider planning and strategy team. We regularly keep in touch with clients through weekly status calls and more infrequent strategy sessions and reviews. You will be an excellent communicator and highly organised, able to confidently present and lead calls and presentations, coordinate multiple projects and deadlines across the team, as well as building strong relationships with your clients. You will be expected to keep on top of clients' businesses, the category, trends and day to day performance, with oversight of weekly and monthly reports collated by the team, requiring an analytical mindset to interpret strategic insights from the data.

Business and Budgets

You will be responsible for making sure that plans and campaigns deliver on client's objectives and KPIs. As part of this, you will regularly liaise with the media teams to coordinate plans using relevant data and insights. You will ensure that all responses and plans are delivered with clear and detailed rationale, so that our clients trust in our recommendations. The role also involves oversight of clients' budgets, ensuring that financial processes are managed well and adhered to by the wider team, e.g. timely reconciliation of plans, accuracy in billing etc.

Team

As a Manager, you will have an Account Executive reporting into you and may also be required to work fluidly with other Business Directors in the wider planning team. It will be your responsibility to manage workflow, guiding and leading your direct report to work towards collective goals and overseeing their personal development. The wider team will support you in this process, with regular 1:1s and development conversations to discuss progress against your objectives.

About you

You will have a few years of experience within a media agency and are looking for an opportunity to play a pivotal role in helping clients succeed and deliver on their marketing and business objectives. You will have a good foundational knowledge of planning and the role of various media channels across offline and online, with a strong understanding of how to use planning tools such as Nielsen and YouGov, as well as an understanding of media owners across the landscape. With the role involving coordination across multiple teams and clients, you will have excellent communication and project management skills, able to prioritise well, and will thrive in fast paced environments where you are given plenty of opportunity to lead and contribute to a collaborative team. Finally, you should have an analytical mindset and be able to apply insights to your planning capabilities, whilst also having a good grasp of your client's performance.

About your experience

• Prior planning knowledge working across both offline and online channels.
• Some knowledge and application of planning tools such as Nielsen, YouGov, TGI etc.
• Personable, with ability to build strong relationships internally and externally.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to multitask and excel in a fast-paced environment.

We’d also love if you...

• Previous line management experience.
• A go-getter attitude, with proactive approach and strong desire to work with growing challenger brands and clients.
• A specific interest in working in an agency that is fast-growing, ever-changing and independent in nature.

Interview process

For this role, there are at least two rounds to the interview process:

1. An initial fact-finding interview reviewing core competencies and exploring why you have applied for this role and what you can bring to the table. To be held over Teams with the Business Director.

2. A second stage presentation of your interpretation for a response to brief, where you will be given a task to respond to in advance. To be held in person at our Covent Garden office, with the Business Director and Client Partner. If we require you to meet anyone else in the team, we will let you know during the process.

About us

Walk-In Media's mission is to deliver long-term, sustainable growth for brands by bringing together all marketing activity into one connected ecosystem. We work closely with our clients for an integrated approach to their commercial success. We're a full-service media agency offering brands the service, transparency, agility and breakthrough thinking of an independent agency, yet with the full specialist capabilities and global scale of a network agency (we're part of MSQ Group).

At Walk-In Media, we plan for outcomes…

We’re a full service media agency, offering the agile fast response of an independent but with backing from the MSQ network which means we have access to a wide range of specialist services from Creative to PR to Data. The fact we operate as an independent means that not only do we deliver fast, responsive service, we also design the strategy & plans for the required business outcome, choosing the channels and partners exclusively on what’s best for the client outcome, and not our bottom line.

Helping small-medium sized businesses scale quickly is what gets us out of bed each day. We enjoy the fast pace, the challenge of things never done before and using our expertise to help our clients businesses grow.

We believe brand and performance go hand in hand, so whilst we might look for outcomes in the short term, we’ll always be planning for long term growth too.

Alongside paid, we understand that the whole comms ecosystem has to work together as a well-oiled machine to get the best results. We will happily advise clients when they need us, and also when they don’t, guiding them as to where else in the ecosystem they should focus their attention.

We have 4 core behaviours that enable us to deliver our best work and we encourage everyone to live by:

Hate Something, Change Something: Don’t like it? Change it! We have a very egalitarian ethos where everyone is empowered to have a voice and make a difference. We encourage this behaviour internally at Walk-In, where agency life is a group affair, as well as regarding client work. If you think something can be done better, we’d love to know about it and will support you in championing it whether an internal idea or a client solution.

Always Ask Why: Asking ‘why?’ is fundamental to us getting it right, we need to understand the problem to get to the best solution. We must ask questions of the data, of the plans and of the responses to ensure we create the best work. Once you’ve asked why, we want you to think ‘why not…?’ and innovate the solution.

Give Before You Get: Lean in and give generously. We have a flat structure without egos, we all dig in, collaborate and get things done without expectation of reward or return.

Think First, Act Fast: Our roots as a start up stay with us, we know how important it is to be agile and a benefit of being an independent is we can act quickly without bureaucratic delays. Think First, means that however quickly we’re asked to go, we’ll stop and ask ‘why’ before we do, ensuring that we’re moving in the right direction and not blindly following the crowd in order to be fast.

What does our best work look like? We plan for outcomes.

Planning for an outcome is at the heart of what we do, starting with the objective and devising the best solution to reach that goal, whatever capacity you come to us in, small brief or large we’ll always approach the brief in the same way, asking questions, using data to devise the solution, measuring as we go and trading through our ‘zero base’ trading approach – which puts each individual client at the heart of each deal.

Each plan is designed to get a specific business outcome, and we use our measurement framework to track how we’re doing and keep us all honest & on track.

We love what we do, and our people are what makes us who we are. We want to ensure that everyone in the company feels supported and knows where to access the help they may need. Wellbeing is central to this and through our Wellbeing Committee we provide resources and guidance so that each employee can build out their own mental wellbeing support strategy, which may include accessing our extensive EAP or Able Futures support programme.

Our Group Diversity & Inclusion Council is dedicated to learning, education and sharing ideas that will break down barriers whilst strengthening our existing inclusive initiatives. We're striving for equal opportunities for all demographics, and for a workplace environment in which every team member is comfortable, informed and open to change.

BENEFITS

• 25 days holiday per year
• Ongoing career progression initiatives
• Company pension
• Life assurance
• Private health insurance via Vitality
• 1 paid day per year to work with the charity of your choosing
• Cycle to work scheme
• Season ticket loan
• Social Events
• Attending conferences and training sessions
• Study leave for professional qualifications

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