Group Director in London

Reporting to: Managing Partner (Rights Consultancy)

Following a series of new business wins and organic growth, Fuse is seeking a Group Director to spearhead the direction and success of key agency accounts, all prominent brands with exciting sports partnerships.

At Fuse, Group Directors take a central role heading up their accounts, trusted to get to know the client businesses and lead communication with stakeholders, offering sound strategic council & recommendations that support the optimisation of client partnership investments. They are sport and entertainment partnership experts with fluency in the nuances and trends within these passion points, applying IP & rights expertise to create exciting plans that meet objectives, engage target audiences and overcome marketing challenges.

Working collaboratively with other agency divisions to introduce services at the right time and for the right briefs, Group Directors help to provide consistent tangible value to clients. Internally, Group Directors will help ensure clarity on the division of responsibilities, guiding the day-to-day account teams by leading from the front, setting the tone for their teams, and supporting junior team member development, whilst ensuring proactive, seamless client delivery.

Commercially astute, Group Directors have a seasoned understanding of budgets, profitability and commercial levers, and are comfortable discussing commercials, whether related to client sponsorship investments or agency scopes and fee propositions. They have responsibility at account P&L level and work collaboratively with other Group Directors and our Operations team to drive resource efficiency, manage scopes, and ensure alignment across agency accounts.

They also play an important broader role within the agency, particularly from a new business perspective, bringing their knowledge and council to new business proposals and pitches and contributing to agency marketing and cultural initiatives.

The successful candidate will be joining a creative and dynamic team, supporting on ongoing projects. Main day-to-day responsibilities will include, but are not limited to:

• Advising clients on new partnership opportunities in the market and recommending which are worthy of further interrogation
• Leading on annual activation planning briefs, using the candidate’s knowledge of how IP and talent regulations can be navigated
• Being the most senior point of responsibility for key projects, working with clients, specialists and third parties to achieve best in class delivery
• Taking a leading role on partnership acquisitions, including rights holder engagement and contracting support
• Creating and negotiating scopes of work with clients, as well as overseeing account profitability
• Overseeing the output and development of more junior team members

Desired Skills & Experiences

Industry Knowledge & Experience

• We are seeking a senior partnerships expert, confident in developing partnership strategies and providing expert council to senior-level (Director/CMO/CEO) clients
• You’ll enjoy maintaining a degree of involvement in partnership activation plans, whilst being an effective delegator and senior team leader to hand over the detailed project management to your team.
• You’ll be fluent in key partnership trends and nuances and how these can impact on brand activities

Commercials & Operations

• Understanding of key financial relationships and levers e.g. resource planning and scoping, budget tracking, reconciliations, profitability, staff-cost ratios.
• Ability to confidently discuss and negotiate budgets, manage revenue and profitability targets and manage P&L for a group of accounts
• Excellent execution of scoping process
• Experience of negotiating partnership contracts would be beneficial

Communication & New Business

• Exemplary written and verbal communications skills
• Articulate and confident to lead senior level client meetings and presentations
• Able to sell strategies and ideas with confidence, conviction and commitment
• Capable of outlining, creating and delivering major presentations and proposals such as new business pitches and client proposals
• Growth mindset – always looking for growth opportunities

Attitude:

• Shows up with positivity, confidence and intent
• Desire to take proactive ownership of projects and processes
• Ability to build and maintain strong, mutually respectful relationships with clients, colleagues and stakeholders
• A mature communicator with the ability to overcome challenges calmly and considerately
• An approachable team player and keen manager, who actively seeks opportunities for their team to learn and develop with an understanding of when to jump in and when to step back; confident in effectively managing people’s development.
• Acts as a role model within the agency

You need to have the ability & willingness to work flexibly, usually in the London office, with occasional UK travel, on-site at events and some weekend work. This is a full-time role & you must be eligible to work in the UK.

Fuse job descriptions are not intended to be restrictive and are a guideline to the duties in this role. We are committed to providing comprehensive training & development plans for all team members.

About the Agency:

Culturally Connected, Seriously Effective. A global agency with local expertise, connecting brands to the things that matter most to their audiences in culture through partnerships in sport, music, film & television, gaming & esports. These connections make our clients more memorable - the key to unlocking effectiveness. Powered by Omnicom Media Group, we bring an extra edge to strategy, execution, and measurement. Our work has won numerous awards, and the industry frequently recognises our people as top performers in their field. We place great importance on trusted relationships, sound moral judgement, and strong governance, all delivered through transparent processes. We have a fantastic team of 120 in our London HQ and 300 more across offices worldwide, working with incredible clients, including PepsiCo, Vodafone, Nissan, British Gas, Renault, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, McDonald’s, and Just Eat Takeaway.com.

Omnicom’s policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager. Our objective is to increase this requirement over time, and many of our agencies as well as Omnicom’s corporate group already require five days of in-office attendance.

Omnicom is committed to hiring and developing exceptional talent. We agree that talent is uniquely distributed, and we’re focused on developing inclusive teams that can bring the best solutions to everything we do. We strongly believe that celebrating what makes us different makes us better together. Join us—we look forward to getting to know you.

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