Global Digital Business Director in London

With a history that dates back over 80 years, Starcom is a global communications planning and media leader. We are an agency still grounded in our founding principle that people are at the centre of all we do. Each day, we apply this belief to harness the transformative power of data and technology to inspire and move people and business forward. With more than 7,000 employees in over 100 offices around the world, we are the flagship Publicis Media agency that uses our ‘Power of One’ business model, with teams that span multiple disciplines across clients such as Aldi, P&G, Primark, Samsung, Stellantis, and Visa.

We place a huge focus on our People, and have driven flagship D&I and L&D programmes within Publicis Media; our goal is to help every individual reach their fullest potential, and we encourage everyone to make “Brave Plays” in how they approach their work and their own career development. As a result, we have an exceptionally energised and committed talent base, all of us proud of our welcoming and supportive culture, as evidenced by our recognition as one of Campaign’s Best Places to Work for five years in a row, Media Week's Agency of the Year 2025 and one of the Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2025.

What will you be doing? You will be working on one of the world’s fastest growing grocery retailers with exciting expansion plans across key markets, and well-established market share across most European countries offering unrivalled quality and price for all its customers. Exciting Global Digital Business Director role across the agency’s newly expanded clients, your strong leadership skills, digital business development, digital activation expertise, and strategic superpowers will come into play whilst talking to senior regional clients and local agency teams across multiple markets and leading the digital team to greatness.

Your ability to multitask and leverage your leadership and digital experience will play a vital role in shaping the current and future growth and quality of digital output of the account across both local and centralised digital specialists. As a leader who is digitally (activation) very proficient, this role will provide you with the opportunity to take your digital leadership to the next level by identifying and driving strategic business growth and biddable activation excellence across US and EU markets.

Responsibilities

• Accountable for leading the overall business development and growth of Account’s digital throughout locally and centrally activated media and projects.
• Package and sell in new digital models, services, and solutions to regional clients to drive account growth and profitability.
• Drive digital buying excellence and maturity improvement across all markets, remain POC for senior clients channels, markets, and business units.
• Collaborate with wider agency digital leadership and departments to deliver the identified new services and solutions, build a business case for any required funding to create/deliver new solutions (In partnership with Digital Managing Partner).
• Develop, own and iterate the digital vision and strategic areas of focus on an annual basis. Clearly communicate and set expectations with all local digital teams.
• Accountable for identifying areas of improvement across digital standard adherence/evolution, quality, efficiency, and effectiveness.
• Accountable for leading your direct and local teams to deliver processes that output world-class optimisation and campaign result insight/performance commentary.
• Accountable for the digital Model and WoW, including London and offshore collaboration, identifying evaluations and deploying throughout the Hub and into local markets.
• Responsible for identifying evaluations in the Hub team structure and staffing, including profitability of the Hub and cost control (P&L ownership).
• Ensure key Publicis technologies are being utilised to improve speed and accuracy of digital output.
• Collaborate with senior local leadership on specific local market needs (e.g. evolution to model), where needed identify improvements in specific local markets.
• Engage with multiple stakeholders in Starcom and local market leads (and key Publicis Media/Publicis Groupe practice leads).
• Manage senior Account’s global clients across digital marketing and activation, procurement.
• Build rapport and trust with regional clients.
• Manage client expectations, always focusing on exceeding where possible.
• Directly (centralized) and indirectly (local) lead a team of digital channel specialists, set the vision, excellence, and expectations for the digital across all markets.
• Empower channel and operations directors to deliver their best work.
• Foster a culture and team spirit of collaboration, openness, trust, and digital excellence.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience across biddable channel strategy, planning, and activation within social, search, programmatic and e-commerce (multi-market).
• Extensive experience in centralised digital hubs and local market digital teams.
• Experience across digital reporting, ad technology, governance.
• Experience in leading large digital activation teams across multiple locations.
• Experience managing senior stakeholders and building trust and credibility.
• Experience working across multiple markets and managing a diverse team.
• Ability to manage upwards and engage with senior leadership within Publicis.
• Integrated, strategic media experience with a good understanding of digital with some knowledge of campaign activation management.
• Strong team leader who provides support and empathy for all team members.

Starcom offers a wide range of benefits to support our employees. Full details are shared when you join, but highlights include core benefits such as Pension, Life Assurance, and Private Medical cover, alongside enhanced policies like Reflection Days and Shared Parental Leave. You’ll also have access to a range of additional initiatives.

At Starcom, we are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, and do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion or belief, disability, age, citizenship, relationship status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected characteristic. We are committed to providing a fair, accessible, and inclusive recruitment process. If you have any access needs - for example, related to disability, neurodivergence, or a health condition - please let us know. We’ll work with you to ensure the process works for you. Sharing this information will never impact your application. Guided by our values, we listen with empathy, uplift each other, take responsibility, and embrace change - building a culture where everyone feels seen, respected, and genuinely included.