Account Director (London)

On Board Experiential (OBE) is an award-winning, full-service, experience-led agency that creates meaningful brand experiences worldwide, with office locations in London, San Francisco, Los Angeles and NYC. We help brands to cut through the noise, capture consumer attention and leave lasting impressions that live beyond the shareable, streamable, screamable moment. We are specialists in creating extraordinary brand events – immersive, engaging and unrivalled. The London office is the most recent to open its doors in the OBE family, making us the new kids on the block, but backed by years of experiential experience. Boasting a heavy-hitting portfolio of incredibly active brands and a range of well-established partners, we’re well set for an exciting future.

We are looking to add to our team to work across our high-profile corporate clients, incorporating both B2B and B2C activations. This role will support us on our continued drive to define experiential marketing and help achieve targeted growth. We work with brands that care. Brands that value meaningful relationships. Brands that are prepared to challenge what’s gone before. Brands that aren’t prepared to settle for OK. Brands that want the competitive advantage. Brands that act. We are OBE and we’re a team of experiential playmakers.

The Account Director is a senior driving force and leader behind our daily client work, the ultimate multi-tasker that manages a team across our major clients. At a strategic level, they know our clients and projects better than anyone and work to ensure that the team has every element of delivery to time, to task and to budget whilst focusing on helping the agency to grow accounts in new and exciting ways. They also form a part of the extended SMT within the agency and continue their development in a leadership role both internally with the team and externally with clients.

Key responsibilities of the role focus on:

• Client Relationships
• Account / Finance Control
• Creative Vision

The Account Director bridges the gap between the client, the wider project delivery team and OBE London’s SMT. Leading, motivating and inspiring a client team, the Account Director works closely with their colleagues to manage experiential campaigns and ensure they are delivered in line with the client briefs; with a constant eye on the next project around the corner and beyond. A multi-skilled individual and an exceptional administrator with a high level capacity for figures, the Account Director has the ability to react quickly to different client requirements and the needs of the team at a senior level.

The Account Director will oversee multiple projects for multiple clients as the day-to-day leader of the account team; from large scale major campaigns to smaller bespoke experiential activations in a wide range of settings. They will lead project teams containing specialist expertise, most commonly in account management and event production, but also team members with specific focuses on customer, creative, marketing and technology.

The Account Director is responsible for ensuring that all work is being delivered to client expectation at the highest standard and that everything is running as expected at all times. Even if they are not involved in the physical delivery, the Account Director will ensure they have a top-level oversight of their team’s work.

On a day-to-day basis, the Account Director leads the team as a creative collaborator with colleagues and the client in order to deliver high-quality campaigns. Fresh thinking is part of our DNA, to bring disruptive and innovative ideas to all of our campaigns and the Account Director plays a fundamental role in the process of creative solutions for our client work.

The Account Director has the highest level of understanding of their clients’ needs, their brand and the space in which they operate. This allows the role to strategically advise our clients at a senior level as part of our service offer.

Responsibilities

The Account Director role is varied, and you are responsible for:

• Driving longstanding relationships with our clients, both directly and through their team
• Being an expert of our client’s brand inside and out
• Leading growth opportunities with our existing clients
• Ultimate oversight of the central point of contact for all client needs
• Effectively communicating project requirements internally and externally
• Being the senior connection between the client, the delivery team and the SMT
• Earn the trust of our clients and be invited to walk their corridors, being seen as a genuine extension of their team
• Proven presentation skills both internally and client-facing
• Extensive and expanding knowledge of industry suppliers
• Leading the internal project team to ensure that all projects are to task, to time and to budget
• Ensuring the team are driving a central Critical Path for each piece of client work
• Ensuring the team are driving central project documentation for client projects
• Instilling quality assurance across all elements of project delivery
• Overseeing project meeting infrastructure, both internally and externally
• Efficient delegation across the wider team with a strong understanding for knowing when to get into project detail and when to allow the team to take control
• High level client budget management as the ultimate client budget holder
• Overall financial control of the client account regularly reporting against annual forecasts
• Overseeing the creation of new client/internal budgets from scratch
• Leading project finance management across all areas of a client portfolio
• Reporting on financial status of a project and/or a client as a whole to the SMT
• Being a senior champion for company finance protocols and helping to ensure these are followed by the team at all times

Creative and Strategy

• Being a creative leader within the team
• Ensuring a culture of creativity and innovation exists across all project work
• Being a creative champion for our clients and across new business opportunities
• Delivering strategic services for our clients as required

Cross Department Support

At times, all members of the OBE London team are required to support across other departmental work, even if this is not core to a specific individual’s role. For an Account Director, this can include:

• Event Production support
• Account Directors should strive to have a strong working knowledge of each part of the company’s offer and how this relates to our client work
• Good knowledge of OBE Worldwide services and what relevant teams are delivering for clients
• Proactively share best practices and successful ways-of-working with wider teams at OBE London
• Day-to-day management and upskilling of your client team
• Line management of key members of the team, up to Senior Account Manager level and up to a maximum of 3 direct reports
• Effective management of resource across the team and understanding the importance of giving time to support your team’s learning and development
• Empowerment of the wider team as required, helping to ensure they have the tools, knowledge and skills required to lead on OBE’s behalf
• Create outstanding working relationships with all teams across multiple areas of specialism
• Providing timely and accurate quality reports to the SMT
• Ensuring collaborative working with clients is fundamental to yours and your team’s approach. Ensuring that our team is effectively being an extension of our client’s team
• Sitting on the Extended SMT, the Account Director will have an input into various elements of the strategic running of the agency
• Contribute to company culture creating a positive working environment

About the person

As an Account Director at OBE London you:

• Are passionate about brand and experiential marketing in the B2B, sports and entertainment space
• Are comfortable in a variety of client environments, most notably within the corporate finance and tech industries
• Build outstanding relationships with clients
• Have exceptional communications skills both internally and externally
• Have strong leadership skills
• Have line management experience at a senior level
• Have a proven track record of competent project management and thrive off leading a team via process driven framework
• Can lead multiple projects, of scale
• Have a DNA of fresh thinking to create disruptive campaigns
• Are exceptionally organised and administratively strong
• Are a companywide advocate in using and championing agency project tracking and finance platforms
• Have outstanding interpersonal skills
• Are a high level problem solver and solutions driven, underpinned with a calm and methodical demeanour
• Have the vision and the ability to see the big picture
• Approach all of your work with creativity at its heart
• Thrive under pressure and are approachable at all times
• Have outstanding knowledge of experiential marketing
• Are an aspiring leader throughout the business

PACKAGE

• Contract: Permanent
• Hours: 37.5 hours a week
• Location: Hybrid (Ability to attend Soho Works, 180 The Strand and client environments at least three days per week)
• Holiday: 25 days annual leave, Bank Holidays & time off in lieu