Associate Director, Global Investment

GroupM
Associate Director – Global Investment Team

Reports to: Senior Partner – Global Investment

Based: London with global travel as required

About Wavemaker

We believe there always is a better way to grow. We positively provoke growth for our clients by reshaping consumer decision-making and experiences through media, content and technology. Fuelled by the world’s most powerful consumer data, we understand where and how marketing can intervene decisively to help the world’s leading brands win more sales.

Our 7,600 people across 90 markets provoke growth through:

1. deep knowledge of our clients’ business
2. confidence to challenge what’s gone before
3. the support to go further than we thought possible

We are a part of GroupM, WPP’s global media investment management company. Discover more on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The Wavemaker Investment team sits at the very heart of our business, managing billions in media billings across the globe. On one hand, we coordinate the delivery of and maximize performance-related incentives from a range of international client trading commitments. On the other, we promote new trading models that offer significant benefits for our clients.

Vision for the Role

We want someone to be responsible for accountability and overall savings delivery for some of our key global clients. You will be expected to support the client dialogue on current media performance and landscape, as well as support in the development of future-facing models as client and marketplace needs evolve. Working with our local markets, the successful candidate will also need relationship-building capabilities to successfully align local, regional, and global needs.

Role & Responsibilities

Accountability for Existing Clients & New Business Offers – Delivery & Management

1. Establish yourself as the client’s trusted advisor on all trading and value matters.
2. Work closely with the local Wavemaker teams and the client to ensure our trading delivery remains in line with all requirements.
3. Manage the relationship with media auditors working across your clients, agreeing relevant and reasonable media value performance KPIs with the auditor and client.
4. Work with local market trading teams to ensure that they fully understand commitment structures and are equipped to maximize incentive delivery against these.
5. Ensure any client delivery issues are flagged with local and global agency / GroupM management to ensure a quick resolution.

New Business & Commercial Alignment

1. Work within the Wavemaker global investment community to identify incremental value creation opportunities on your client portfolio.
2. Lead the data collection to feed investment stories in pitch submissions ensuring all the benefits of Wavemaker, GroupM, and WPP are brought to bear.
3. Work with commercial teams to ensure that the design and application of trading-based incentives are feasible and achievable.

Leadership and People Development

1. Establish strong people management skills to understand team needs now and in the future, to ensure sufficient resourcing and succession planning is in place.
2. Create motivating career goals for your direct reports and create required training programs for ongoing development.
3. Contribute to the Wavemaker investment community and ensure that best practice is regularly shared, and local / regional teams are suitably supported.

Required Experience & Skills

1. Substantial experience in one or a combination of local media buying, international media buying coordination, and evaluation.
2. Excellent client relationship skills with the ability to communicate complexity across multiple geographies and cultures.
3. Good understanding of digital buying and evaluation experience.
4. Solid understanding of client marketing and procurement functions.
5. Experience in people management, training, and development.
6. Keen eye for detail and desire to tell a compelling story through the numbers.
7. Confident presenting to senior clients and senior internal management.
8. Highly numerate, curious problem-solver.

What Makes Us Different:

1. We have developed market-leading technology to manage client commitments with unmatched accuracy to reduce the labor requirement (both centrally and locally).
2. We encourage our team to focus on managing future opportunities and threats with our clients rather than spending too much time talking about the past.
3. We mandate diversity in both the staffing of the team and the work they do – we expect everyone to proactively develop thought-leadership and initiatives to keep us at the front of the business.
4. We enjoy brilliant in-house training and development programs.
5. We are relatively free of hierarchy and look to put new joiners in front of clients at the earliest opportunity.