Remote Waitrose Account Director - MG OMD in Essex

We’re on the hunt for a passionate, strategic and sharp Account Director to join the Waitrose and Battersea team. Waitrose being one of our most creative, innovative and transformative clients. This is a fantastic opportunity for a capable AD who is both commercially astute and creatively driven. You’ll be leading the charge on media planning, inspiring standout ideas and working closely with both our clients and internal teams. You’ll collaborate with specialists across the agency, manage a talented Account Manager and Executive and report into a Business Director. If you thrive in a fast-paced environment, love retail and want to create award-winning work that makes an impact, we want to hear from you.

About the Role

The role will be fast paced and agile, and you will be pivotal in ensuring that client deliverables maintain a high standard, and proactively look to anticipate client needs, leading and overseeing the day to day running of both accounts. Integration with the wider client and specialist teams will be fundamental to ensure all campaigns deliver to client objectives and are planned, implemented and reported upon effectively. Additionally, there will both a Planning and Strategy Director support on client responses as well as a full digital planning team to assist on that element too.

About You

You’ll be organised, confident and passionate about great media planning. Excellent at building client relationships and have autonomy to run activity and nurture the team. You’ll build strong relationships at all levels, and we hope that you thrive in an agency which is caring, passionate, hardworking, fun and like a family (of 500!) even if only for a short time.

Role Requirements

• This role requires a well-rounded, inspirational Account Director with media agency experience.
• Direct and nurture your team in the coordination and timely delivery of campaign responses and day to day management of client requests.
• You will be as comfortable servicing clients as rolling your sleeves up and leading on media briefings/responses.
• Ability to digest, interpret, and respond to client briefs in a high-paced environment.
• Excellent spoken and written communication skills with proven expertise in presentation storytelling to deliver impactful, persuasive proposals to clients.
• You will look to challenge clients where necessary and work with them to form a trusted relationship.
• You will be competent planning across all media channels – including digital.
• You will also be competent on all media planning tools (such as e-Telmar) and can dissect data to tell a compelling story.
• Without question your attention to detail is sound, you are a conscientious worker, who is as confident in front of clients as the wider agency.
• You will have a passion for brands; the ability to deliver great work; have fantastic interpersonal skills; and be curious and passionate about the UK media marketplace.
• Have strong capabilities within use of data and tools to provide evidence-based media strategies to meet client objectives which clearly describe how each channel contributes to objectives and goals.
• Develop strong relationships with specialist channel teams to ensure effective working processes and best in class work delivery.
• Look to educate the client – provide innovation session with key media owners to keep client up to date with industry developments.

About the Agency

MG OMD was established in 1990 as a challenger media agency (Manning Gottlieb Media) that placed craft, trust and performance at the heart of media planning and buying. Since joining Omnicom network’s OMG (Omnicom Media Group) in 1998, we have continued to retain our founding ethos of providing clients with bespoke approaches, unprecedented insight, specialism, security and transparency; helping our clients to use media to unlock their competitive advantage and deliver innovative, effective and award-winning work and campaigns that create difference that matters.

MG OMD is the second-largest media agency in the UK. We are the most awarded media agency in both the history of the IPA Effectiveness Awards and Thinkbox’s TV Planning Awards and have this year been named as Agency of the Year in The Media Leader UK awards, Campaign Global awards and Campaign UK awards. With over 500 employees working across some of the UK’s leading brands including the John Lewis Partnership, Virgin Media O2, British Airways, Specsavers, HM Government, LNER, Sony Pictures and Age UK; it is our people who ultimately make the award-winning difference.

So, true to our ethos, we work hard at creating a spirit and atmosphere that inspires our people to be considerate, honest, and professional whilst also being stimulating, imaginative and inspirational. We want people who are great to work with, fun to be with and who genuinely care; about each other, our clients, our media partners and doing great work.

In return, we provide an amazingly collaborative culture, where open communication and an unwavering commitment to diversity of thinking, diversity of background and diversity of skillsets runs through everything we do. All backed up by the highest standards of training, development and support in the industry; so much so, that we have attained IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) CPD Gold Accreditation for the 13th year running and maintained our CPD Platinum Accreditation for the 7th consecutive year, showcasing our commitment to continuous professional development. We were also featured in the Sunday Times Best Places to Work in both 2023 and 2024. Our being named is completely based on the opinions and perspectives of our employees which makes the accolade all that more special.

Flexible Working

At Omnicom Media Group, we are committed to supporting flexibility for our people while fostering collaboration, innovation, and teamwork. We have a hybrid working model (three days in the office, two working remotely), to ensure that we meet the needs of both our people and our business, balancing the benefits of in-person connections with the flexibility of remote working. Our standard working hours are 9:30 – 17:30, but we offer the ability to flex around core hours of 10:30 – 16:30 to give our people flexibility on how they manage their working day, whether that’s in the office or working remotely. For example, you could start work at 8:30 and finish at 16:30 or start at 10:30 and finish at 18:30. We encourage open conversations between our people and managers to help navigate high-need periods and individual circumstances. Our goal is to create an environment where people feel genuinely supported to do their best - both in their careers and in their lives outside of work.

Be Your Best

We want everyone to make the most of the opportunity to shine and showcase your talents and we are happy to make adjustments in the recruitment process so you can be your best. Please discuss any specific requirements with your dedicated Talent Team member or if you would feel more comfortable, you can email us confidentially at beyourbest@omnicommediagroup.com to let us know how we can support you.