Planning Manager

Job Description:

Vodafone are one of the world's leading mobile communications providers, operating in 26 countries and in partnership with networks in over 55 more. Across the world, they have almost 444 million customers, and around 19.5 million in the UK.

They are a business rooted in innovation having made the first ever mobile phone call on 1 January 1985 from London to their Newbury HQ, and sent the first ever text message in Dec 1992.

Carat have been working with Vodafone since Jan 2020, our strong track record with this client has led to the contract being further retained at pitch in Jan 2023. The focus of our partnership with Vodafone is to work in a completely different way to the normal client agency relationship as one delineated team. A challenger mindset is in the lifeblood of their business, and they are very ideas led in their communications.

Briefs cover a very diverse mix of campaigns including Network, HBB, Handsets, Promotions, Business and Purpose.

In this position, the Manager will provide support to the Account Directors and senior team alongside mentorship to Account Execs. The account is well renowned within the agency and has a high-performance team in place which are delivering innovative, and varied campaigns - alongside exceptional client servicing.

Key requirements:

We are seeking a dynamic Account Manager, who will enjoy working as a key member of a strong collaborative team across a prominent client. In this role you will deliver innovative, insightful, and creative media campaigns.

You will already be an ambitious, self-starting planner who can work autonomously on smaller projects and briefs (such as those for handsets or promotions) but will also enjoy working closely (and honing your craft) alongside our strategy and planning partners on larger brand campaigns and projects.

You are a master of client servicing, and pride yourself on managing your clients' expectations, and building trusted relationships with them.

Vodafone is a predominantly retail businesses with multiple campaigns live at any point, you are a already a strong project manager and are well able to multitask and react dynamically to changes as they occur.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

• Project Management: Exhibit first class project management skills which support the delivery of multiple live and upcoming campaign workstreams through effective mobilisation of agency and inhouse specialists, effectively prioritise and ensure all key deliverables and deadlines are met.
• Client Management: Support the delivery of outstanding client service for your clients and build trusted partnerships with them. Respond in a timely and accurate manner to requests for information, and work seamlessly with internal stakeholders and colleagues across the network in order to deal with their requests.
• Specialist Management: Maintain a collaborative and respectful relationship with our specialist internal, and client inhouse teams which brings them upstream of key challenges and allows them to innovate and excel within their respective channels.
• Planning Expertise: Master the Dentsu CCS suite of tools and use them to plan, optimise and rationalise our responses to clients briefs.
• Understand our clients business: Demonstrate a strong understanding of the client's products and services, and stay abreast of the changing dynamics within their industry and competitive set.
• Managing People: Responsible for actively mentoring and supporting Account Executives across Vodafone and Post Office, providing support building their media and tools knowledge, client servicing brilliant basics, and prioritisation of tasks.
• Presentation: Comfortable presenting your own work, and leading meeting content both on teams and in face-to-face meetings, taking meeting notes, responding to questions both in the moment and as follow ups.
• Finance: Support the finance process on the account ensuring your contributions are smooth and error-free, obtain POs in an accurate and timely manner, ensuring the PO tracker is kept up to date and that all spend commitments are adhered to by the media teams. Ensure that total invoice amounts are checked within budget at month end, and no unbilled media is built up. Support Vodafone goods receipting process alongside the team. Prioritise swift resolution of any existing issues.

Planning responsibilities:

• Work as a team with the Client Director, Strategy/Planning Partner and Account Directors to develop strategic recommendations that provide consumer focused solutions to client business challenges. Assist this process by mobilising appropriate resources from across the network, utilising our agency tools and insight, and applying your knowledge of our clients business.
• Support briefing of all planning solutions into specialist teams both in agency and inhouse and effectively assist translation of strategic plans into strong and innovative activation.
• Supported by the senior team around you continue to build your planning expertise by developing a strong grasp of media theory, and consulting multiple sources to validate & support media recommendations.

CLIENT ALLOCATION

The role will be allocated to the following clients, split as follows:

• Vodafone 100%
  • Reports into Client Director, Client Partner
  • Supported by 2x AD, 2x AM, 1x Exec, Planning Partner, Strategy Partner

#LI-Hybrid #LI-CARAT

Location:
London

Brand:
Carat

Time Type:
Full time

Contract Type:
Permanent]]>