Account Director in London

The Account Director (AD) role sits within the Client Services/Activation Team at Havas Play. This AD role is an integrated role spanning creative content-led campaign planning and delivery, alongside management of partnerships and activations. Experience in managing cross-functional teams is important to this role, with the ability to lead on driving work through Strategy teams, into Creative teams and out of Studio/Production into delivery, while managing multiple creative workstreams simultaneously.

An understanding of the digital content and media landscape is important, and the role will be an integral part of an inter-agency team (IAT) – comprising a Creative agency, Media agency, and Production agency.

Purpose of Role

The AD is one of the most senior day-to-day account leaders responsible for managing incoming work and leading all outgoing work, ensuring high-quality responses to briefs and timely delivery of campaigns. The AD requires strong interpersonal skills, understanding the demands of clients, partners, and inter-agency teams – connecting different teams in the business to deliver on briefs and campaigns; as well as being accountable for all financial procedures across their accounts.

The AD should have in-depth industry knowledge, be an exceptional client handler adept at managing multiple client stakeholders, whilst also leading and developing the team and working within a diverse mix of team structures. They should possess a commercial mindset, managing large-scale scopes of work & budgets and identifying and delivering on potential growth opportunities for the business.

The AD will lead the output of a D2D account team, comprising an SAM and SAE, whilst managing upwards (SAD/BD, Managing Partner). They are responsible for resourcing projects within the team, managing team capacity and working with specialist department teams (Strategy, Creative, Studio, Production, Measurement, Talent & Influencer etc.) to ensure appropriate resources are committed to workstreams.

Key Responsibilities

• Account Management: Working across multiple clients and projects simultaneously, maintaining a high-quality standard without projects falling behind. The AD is crucial in ensuring best-in-class cross-functional delivery, driving high standards and best-practice processes with counterparts within Havas agency teams.
• Strategic Skills: The AD should have a strong point of view on how to interrogate and answer a brief creatively, confidently navigating the brief process from insight to strategy and creative briefing.
• Campaign Planning & Execution: The AD will oversee all campaign planning and activation delivery, including content creation and delivery, activation and live experience, influencer engagement, and social media-focused workstreams.
• Content Management: Lead the development of content and asset production from initial stages of creative ideation and concepting, managing ongoing development of work.
• Writing and Presentation Skills: Have strong creative and corporate writing skills for external and internal documents, ensuring clarity and quality in communications.
• Approach, Initiative & Problem Solving: Be positive, proactive, and solutions-driven, anticipating potential problems and issues ahead of them arising.
• Relationships: Build strong working relationships with clients, being seen as a trusted point of counsel and actively listening to understand their needs.
• Client Services & Industry Knowledge: Show genuine interest in clients' businesses and sectors, staying abreast of new innovations within the industry.
• Growth – Organic & New Business: Identify ways to grow clients organically and contribute to agency RFPs and pitches outside of D2D client accounts.
• People Management: Manage the day-to-day running of the team, keeping all members up-to-date with account work and ensuring regular internal status meetings.
• Time Management: Ensure efficient time management, delivering work on time and anticipating pinch points that may affect capacity and workloads.
• Process Management: Lead and champion internal agency processes, adept at using Monday.com to track and manage scopes, workflow, and revenue.
• Finance: Competent with finance processes, monitoring the team in setting up job numbers, processing POs and invoices efficiently.

Here at Havas, we pride ourselves on being committed to offering equal opportunities to all potential employees and have zero tolerance for discrimination. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applicants irrespective of age, sex, race, ethnicity, disability, and other factors that have no bearing on an individual’s ability to perform their job.