Associate Director

**Overview**

You’re an established client lead and have their confidence to guide them to solutions that meets their business needs. You are experienced at orchestrating multiple capabilities and problem-solving to pull the solutions off flawlessly.

With 10+yrs related industry (PR agency / social 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.

**Your focus as an Associate Director/Director**:

- Make our clients’ brands matter by being best in class in PR and Innfluence, 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 social 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 new business proposals or pitches, and work across departments, including Strategy and Creative Leads, on larger / PR-led integrated pitches.
- Responsible for revenue and margin growth and protection - including joint ownership with Directors of locally agreed practice targets.
- Business and finance management, meets billability targets and ensures the team does the same for their levels.
- Understands our contractual agreements and their impact on agency procedures.

**The skills you learn and apply**:

- Understanding of what makes great work and drives what it takes to make it happen.
- You are building strong niche and desire to focus on a particular industries for related PR 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 PR capabilities (e.g. media relations, content creation, influencer engagement) 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.
- 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.
- 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 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-today 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.

**The qualities that will