Wavemaker Planning Associate Director

**Planning Associate Director**

At Wavemaker, we believe there always is a better way to grow. By Positively Provoking Growth for our clients and our people, we shape decisions and experiences through media, content and technology.

Wavemaker is a global media, content and technology agency. In Australia, we are currently ranked as the #2 Media Agency. We have over 250 people working across six offices: Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Auckland, New Zealand. We are part of GroupM and WPP; the largest media buying alliance and marketing communications group in the world. For the last four years we have rated in the top 20 ‘Best Places To Work Australia’, we pride ourselves on our culture and our people.

**The role**

The Planning Associate Director will drive the holistic planning approach across all media channels in order to balance the client’s twin goals of ROI driving performance and unlocking growth via innovation. They will be responsible for delivering the highest standard of campaign approach leveraging the best of our global platform partners (Google and Facebook) as well as the strategic introduction of new partner platforms and creative ideas.

This is an exciting role for one of the largest and fastest growing Wavemaker clients. With a brand accelerating their digital maturity, they go to market with campaigns of all types making this is an opportunity to build experience across a range of objectives for a client that pursues growth and encourages innovation.

**Core responsibilities**:
At Wavemaker we classify role responsibility across four key areas.

People
- Responsible for planning development of the junior team. Lead by doing with best-in-class work, finding opportunities to bring the junior team into the process and ensuring training needs are addressed appropriately
- Working with the Head of Strategy and Group Digital Director to elevate ability of wider team members in communications planning and media narrative
- Builds expert knowledge of the wider Wavemaker offering to be equipped with solutions to enhance our capability
- Support a planning capability community within Wavemaker Melbourne that can benefit from shared learnings

Clients
- Responsible for leading planning responses to brief;
- working with the strategy team to create actionable comms tasks
- addressing those comms task with the relevant roles of media/channel
- exploring the tactics within each channel that unlock the short and long term objectives
- ensuring all work is measurable back to brand and business outcomes
- Have a deep understanding of the clients more macro challenges, objectives & initiatives and develop relationships with the CX team in delivering on those objectives across fields including but not limited to eComm and data
- Build relationships with media and/or platform partners, ensuring strong relationships are developed from the outset and resulting in access to alphas/betas, tailored product updates, aligned communication with clients
- Help build on the agency's reputation for outstanding client service. Ensure delivery against client expectations every time

Product
- Continue to develop the planning product of the team with clear principles but also guidelines as to when those principles should be broken
- Bring media creativity to the fore finding a place to develop richer, more nuanced thinking and ideas based on people, places and platforms
- Ensuring up to date knowledge of digital innovation, product launches and ability to share relevant updates with a point of view
- Challenges the status quo offered by media partners, thinking critically about their solutions in order to get the best outcomes for our clients

Growth & Marketing
- Be a thought leader for the client and the agency (locally and globally) sharing best in class work, POV, industry updates and opinion pieces that can be widely circulated
- Support in the management of the junior teams planning capability and their subsequent development in communications planning
- Be prepared to support the local and national agency team in driving business growth via winning new clients; whether that be through participation and contribution to pitches, submitting case studies and thought leadership or attending and knowledge sharing from industry events or talks

**Specification**:

- A skilled communications planner, well versed in digital platforms and solutions
- A person who thrives on innovation and thinks creatively in answering of problems, unafraid to positively provoke
- An excellent presenter, well-practiced in creating and tailoring content and tone for stakeholders ranging from internal junior team members to client C-suit
- A thorough understanding of the media ecosystem across paid owned and earned; able to craft rationale as well as story tell recommendations
- A passion for delivering the best possible outcomes for our team and our client
- A proactive, solutions mindset, able to think critically an