Planning Manager - Comms Planning

Job Title: Account Manager

Location: London, UK

Reporting to: Planning Director

Who Are We?

T&P m is one of the world’s leading full service creative and media agencies, connecting talent and tech to drive growth for brands. Formed by the integration of The &Partnership and mSix&Partners, it brings together content and distribution into a single, holistic end-to-end marketing solution. Backed by WPP and GroupM and combined with the agility of an entrepreneurial Partner-led mindset, the multi-discipline agency spans four continents with 45 offices and over $1.2 billion dollars in billings globally. As an early adopter with the first ever AI-generated TV ad for Lexus in 2018, T&P m is focused on harnessing AI across all its outputs with its 1,900 people already trained on WPP’s proprietary AI platform Creative Studio, to deliver enhanced outcomes for clients.

We believe in The Power of &, bringing diverse talent together to transform the way great brands are built. Our teams blend creative, media, experience and technology specialists from across our marketing practices. The performance mindset of these teams optimises to business outcomes in every channel, fuelled by the latest innovations in AI. Working alongside our clients’ marketing departments, we deliver ‘&mplified Creativity’ to solve their business and brand challenges seamlessly, creatively and efficiently.

Ultimately of course, we are our people. They’re the most important part of our business, so we want to make a lasting impression on them in the same way they do on us, by striving to become the most important place in their careers.

That’s why we do our best to build strong communities around them; provide the best possible opportunities for them to develop & grow; and empower them to make a difference to their clients and the world at large. Our strengths often lie in our differences, so we challenge and champion each other and our clients, to be the very best we can be.

The Role

The Account Manager leads all day to day channel planning, campaign management and account handling, supporting the Account Director in delivering best in class comms planning and client servicing. As they develop in their career at T&Pm they have the opportunity to take a leadership position on selected brands within the client portfolio, supported by senior leaders within the team. They are supported by an Account Executive, who they will mentor and coach as an indirect report.

The role of Account Manager is two-fold across Britvic and FAGE:

1. They are the day to day account management and client servicing lead - it is their responsibility to ensure that we are servicing our clients brilliantly and that we have positive and productive relationships with our specialist teams at T&Pm. They ensure clarity of communication with clients and internal teams and that our day to day output is effective and efficient.
2. They are the channel planning and activation lead ensuring that brilliant strategy lives in all media planning output and execution.

Britvic is the number one provider of branded soft drinks in GB with huge plans for growth. The company holds family favourite brands; Robinsons, Fruit Shoot, J2O, Tango amongst others. Alongside this there is an expanding portfolio of challenger brands in the UK; Purdey’s, Aqua Libra, Plenish and London Essence. As the consumer pathways to purchase evolve the role of integrated, culturally resonant communications are increasingly important. These brands are at an inflection point in their evolution, seeking to accelerate consumer centricity and digital capability in all communication output. The Planning Manager will support the Planning Director to define and leading this journey ensuring the vision is realised across all campaign activity.

FAGE

FAGE is a dairy company founded in Greece, and currently based in Luxembourg. Pronounced fa-yeh, and meaning 'Eat!', the yoghurt brand has recently expanded beyond its traditional strained plain Total recipe and released a Fruits range. They are a relatively new client to T&Pm, and the Planning Manager will work alongside the Account Director to shape all UK media activity ensuring excellence in strategy application and channel execution, continuing to build our relationship and FAGE’s presence in UK media.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the Planning Director on Communications Planning projects – be it annual planning or bespoke planning projects. Translate the comms framework to detailed channel briefs that are clear and actionable for T&Pm specialist units.
• Lead channel planning responses and brief to internal teams.
• Build a deep understanding and be well versed in client categories, competition and client’s business in the UK to understand the challenges and opportunities they face.
• Presenting regularly at client meetings on a variety of different topics, with gravitas.
• Taking ownership of brand account management, becoming a ‘go-to’ person for clients day to day.
• Ensure that specialists are working effectively across all live briefs and campaigns.
• Challenging historic ways of doing things – ensuring that we continually deliver work that is integrated, commercially sound, and fit for the modern media landscape.
• Manage ongoing media reporting, ensuring this is completed and presented to clients with actionable insights.
• Overseeing all outputs from yourself & the Planning Executive – ensuring that every document is ruthlessly quality controlled for excellence & is delivered on time (e.g. media recommendations, finance queries, competitor reports etc.).
• Maintaining good relations with external agencies, internal teams & media owners.
• Ensuring that all financial aspects are accurate and delivered on-time (e.g. reconciliations, payments, billings, financial tracking).
• Coach & support the Planning Executive.
• Raise the profile of the accounts in the agency by producing, submitting (and talking about publicly) our award winning work.

Skills and Experience

• A high level of enthusiasm; they care about the business and want to make a difference.
• Attention to detail – the Account Manager is the guardian of brand plans and is responsible for making sure they are accurate and updated in a timely manner.
• They have a comms planning background with the ability to translate a communications strategy into channel recommendations, considering best formats, weighting, flighting and activation tactics to deliver against core objectives of a campaign.
• An understanding of all media touchpoints and the ability to define the tasks for media and content, develop channel roles and investment priorities based around tasks.
• Ability to create a good, well thought through media channel planning response which requires minimal input from colleagues to make it ‘client ready’.
• A strong understanding of campaign evaluation knowing how to set and measure against both media, brand and business KPIs.
• An in-depth knowledge and application of core media tools including AdIntel, TGI, YouGov & Media Explorer.
• Ability to think beyond Paid media – able to take a view upon the role of owned and earned channels.

T&P m embraces and celebrates diversity, inclusivity, and equal opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We are a worldwide creative agency that represents global clients. The more inclusive we are, the more brilliant work we can create together.