Planning Director in Westminster

At Croud, Planning Directors are responsible for growing our clients' businesses by matching incisive strategy with the plan to deliver it. That requires strategic smarts, a detailed knowledge of media and media planning and the ability to build transformative partnerships with clients. They form part of the leadership structure of our Client Teams, tasked with delivery against commercial objectives and leading strategic thinking and innovation for their clients.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with senior client stakeholders to identify and solve key marketing challenges, as well as internal collaboration with other teams at Croud to produce strategy with broad buy-in and media plans.
• Steer Croud's relationships with key clients and build a deep understanding of the commercial drivers of their business.
• Be responsible for every stage of the campaign planning process: interpreting a client's objectives, creating measurement frameworks, writing incisive strategy, building testing methodologies and diagnosing performance.
• Lead on annual planning for key clients: set strategic direction for the year ahead, socialise it amongst Croud teams and client stakeholders and build the plan for putting it into action.
• Lead on all cross-channel media planning, ensuring that investment decisions made on behalf of clients are rigorously informed by all the available data.
• Collaborate - and provide direction to - the activation teams, ensuring all plans are complete, accurate and innovative.
• Responsible for audience, market and competitor intelligence projects, ensuring that work is insightful and actionable.
• Deliver complex marketing problem solving; turning solutions into strategies to present back to clients.
• Contribute to your Team's understanding of a client's category, brand and audience.
• Create repeatable and distinctive ways to share that information with the wider Croud team and ensure that the way we present is always as client-centric as possible.

Commercial & KPIs

• Drive revenue for Croud through existing account growth and contribution to business development.
• Act as an important contributor for pitches: work with Planning Partners on setting the pitch strategy, determining the narrative and creating a framework for other contributors to use.
• The potential to act as part of a Team Triumvirate, delivering against the outlined KPIs.
• Ensure all Strategy & Planning work is delivered according to budget.
• Build strategic relationships with senior stakeholders, acting as counsel for key decisions about marketing investment.
• Drive client-centric solutions that exceed expectations and deliver tangible business value.

High-Performing Culture, Team Collaboration and Inclusion

• Manage a Planning team within a client hub, including line management of one or more Planning Managers.
• Ensure all Strategy & Planning work delivered to clients is of the highest quality and market-leading.
• Contribute to a culture of continuous development within the Strategy & Planning team, and help to advance our product and offer to clients.
• Give feedback on requirements for training, working with Planning Partners to ensure availability of required resources.
• Represent Croud at industry events, public speaking and thought leadership.
• Be a champion of Croud's values and culture, fostering a positive and inclusive work environment.
• Represent Croud with integrity and professionalism both internally and externally.

Working hours, location and culture

Standard hours are from 9.00am to 5.30pm, with flexibility if agreed in advance with line managers. It may also be necessary on occasions to work outside of these hours. Croud operates a hybrid working model with a minimum of 3 days a week based in our London office and the remaining days from home if you wish.

Requirements

• Demonstrable in-depth experience as a Planner or Account Director. We are open to candidates from comms, media or digital planning backgrounds, or who currently work in strategy roles.
• Experience of campaign planning that has driven demonstrable results for clients.
• Experience in CPG and/or Multi Brand Retail a bonus, but not a requirement.
• Extensive experience of presenting to clients and 'selling-in' ideas, and of working closely with senior stakeholders to understand their business objectives.
• Hands-on experience of key digital marketing platforms is preferred. These include (but are not limited to) Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Ads Manager, DV360.
• Hands-on experience of industry planning & insight tools is a nice-to-have. These include (but are not limited to) TGI, GlobalWebIndex, SimilarWeb.
• All the essentials: Excel/GSheets, Powerpoint/GSlides.

On completion of the three-month probation period, every employee is eligible for the benefits listed on our careers site which include a range of health and wellbeing, financial and lifestyle benefits.

Benefits and values

Croud is a global, full service digital marketing agency with a unique business model that helps businesses drive sustainable growth. We were named a Sunday Times Best Place to Work for the second year in a row, and Performance Marketing Employer of the Year by PMW.

We offer a hybrid working model, clear path to progression, regular performance reviews, and development opportunities.

Five core values: In it together; Eye on the future; Generous in spirit; Do what you say; Make a difference.

Additional benefits listed on the careers site include sabbatical, holiday allowance, discretionary incentives, health & wellbeing contributions, pension, learning platforms, and more.