Strategic Account Director

Position: Strategic Account Director

Department: Account Service
Reports to: Client Partner - Account Services

Office: Singapore

We are creative problem solvers.Cowan is an integrated consumer brand agency helping clients reimagine brands to face dynamic business challenges. Across strategy, innovation and design, we help brands realise their potential. For 35 years, since our humble beginnings in Melbourne, we have been an Asia-Pacific branding pioneer. Not only have we witnessed dramatic and transformational change, we have also made it happen across our 5 offices including Singapore, Vietnam, Sydney, Melbourne and London. Today we proudly serve as long term, trusted advisors to some of the most impactful local and global consumer brands.

Strategic Account Director - Directing the client(s) relationship, strategic thinking and delivery as well as workstreams with clear business and brand understanding

Responsible for driving growth on annual revenue target for each client.

**CLIENT RELATIONSHIP**
- Builds strong strategic relationships with the clients and cross-functional client teams to deliver positive outcomes on project and workstreams for the client and brand.
- Demonstrates excellent strategic knowledge of a client's business and brand and understanding of client stakeholder management and politics, actively seeks to deepen knowledge and increase agency understanding to improve the work.
- Demonstrates strong strategic understanding of clients' goals and objectives in a business and brand context.
- Leading with strategy, able to increase client remit of work by driving client awareness of our areas of expertise and looks to broaden the scope of work beyond the original brief to drive brand impact.

**TEAM WORKING**
- Ensures clear strategic direction and focus for the team, guiding them to remain on course with strategy as the compass.
- Inspires member of the team who leads strategically to create a positive and collaborative working environment, championing the work, and mentoring individuals within the team, ensuring quality work with strategic integrity that seeks to exceed client expectations.
- Helps the team to strategically navigate any concerns on the brief as well as workload, finding solutions for any constraints, escalating as needed.

**COMMERCIAL AWARENESS & RESPONSIBILITY**
- Is accountable for delivering work for client(s) in a cost-effective manner across multiple projects and workstreams to hit the profitability targets on the allocated areas of the business.
- Owns the accuracy and utilisation of the Accountability system, ensuring it is always up to date on a day-to-day basis. Continuously tracks the financial status of clients and ensures revenue recognition, pipeline and invoicing are all current and up to date.
- Shows a good understanding of budgets and client expectations, able to negotiate complete workstream budgets demonstrating value for money to clients.
- Identifies opportunities for increasing scope, further workstreams or extension into new capability areas and is able to capitalise on these and convert to additional work.
- Sets and delivers an annual revenue growth target, including growing existing clients and actively hunts new client business.

**BRAND EXPERTISE**
- Applies a strategic frame to understanding of the business, consumers, market, category and brand and uses analogies from other brands or categories to inform and inspire the projects.
- Has a strong grasp of the strategic framework for the brand and uses this understanding to strategically guide the agency's approach to brand and creative strategy.
- Champions superior briefs to ensure the starting point of creative work is strong and provides fertile ground for strategic expression and creative exploration.

**BRIEFS & PROPOSALS**
- Takes ownership of the strategic approach and briefs that go into the studio, guiding and steering incisive and inspirational briefs for strategic projects and workstreams that lead to the highest quality of work.
- Ensures that every proposal is well written and brings forward a strategic point of view, is appropriate for the requirement, that the approach is well thought through and prepared in consultation with the creative lead(s), bringing forward proposals that highlight our strategic approach and methodology.

**CORE SKILLS (COMMUNICATION, PRESENTATION, NEGOTIATION)**
- Proactive communicator, actively anticipates and communicates before issues arise. Excellent writing skills, writes convincingly and inspirationally to explain and build conviction on strategic concepts and approaches.
- Confident and able to present engagingly and inspirationally to clients across strategic, creative and production related topics.
- Able to negotiate proposals of increasing complexity and explain the value and benefit to client behind quotations and proposals and to justify scope and fees.

**PROJECT MANAGEMENT**
- Oversees and ensures all projects and workstreams are run