Description

Role Reports To: CEO, EssenceMediacom Asia Pacific; Chief Investment Officer, GroupM APAC

Role Location: Singapore

Key Working Stakeholder Group: The role sits on the EssenceMediacom APAC SLT, together with APAC CEO, CCO, COO, and CPO.  CEOs and MDs for key markets in the region, Global Chief Investment Officer at EssenceMediacom, Heads of Trading in GroupM and in EssenceMediacom in each of the Asia Pacific markets, the APAC Head of GroupM Nexus

Overview

Media investment management sits at the very heart of our business; it is our heritage and is in our blood! It is however also the most rapidly changing area of our business and the ability to adapt and exploit all new opportunities on behalf of our clients is critical. As agency models transition from providing clients services and outputs to solutions and outcomes, the role of our Investment leadership position will be critical. As our business finishes (not starts) its transition to being heavily digital in nature, what this role delivers must be future forward in how cutting edge the thinking is when it comes to digital media.

What are we asking you to do:-

• To leverage the scale of GroupM and the strength of EssenceMediacom’s talent to provide EssenceMediacom’s current and future clients a clear and measurable market advantage.
• To place clients at the heart of all our operations and ensure a very high level of engagement and partnership with all our key clients
• To lead the way on what media investment management means in Asia and in a digital and biddable landscape, and set the benchmark for market leading thinking in this space. We want you to be the market thought leader that pulls not just the agency but the industry forward.
• To scale the thinking and opportunity of Breakthrough investment in a relevant way for the region and the nuances of each market within it.
• To enhance local market investment strategy development and support their successful delivery of investment KPIs.
• To maximize EssenceMediacom’s commercial potential through the delivery of client performance related incentives and conversion of group proprietary media solutions.
• Be EssenceMediacom’s key point of communication and collaboration between EssenceMediacom global/regional trading and local GroupM Trading teams, ensuring EssenceMediacom is a valuable contributor in all related initiatives and in parallel EssenceMediacom pushes for benefits in line with its leadership share.
• To build and inspire the EssenceMediacom investment community through communication and sharing, development of best practices and collaboration on identifying and scaling innovation.
• Leverage our scale and platform/vendor partnerships to drive key strategic agendas for our people including DE&I, wellbeing, and sustainability

Why You Should be Excited

Simply put we are asking you to own and drive the most important delivery agenda we have as an agency – how to unlock Breakthrough value in challenging marketplaces for our clients that keep us ahead of the pack. It is not an over statement to say that your role and your team’s success are table stakes to any development we want to pursue on our clients. If you don’t succeed then we don’t succeed.

Measures of Success

3 months : Visibility and Context

• Working with EssenceMediacom global Investment team and APAC client leads to understand the current and historical investment profile and requirements of all key regional clients.
  • Including pricing commitments, auditing timelines, commercial risk if any.
  • Covering both traditional and digital commitments also looking beyond price to quality, performance and additional value requirements.
• Understand roles and responsibilities of regional investment team and ensuring that each member of your team have clear KPIs and deliverables that ladder up to the business targets and the investment vision
• Conducted initial Investment reviews with top 5 markets, including:
  • EssenceMediacom Investment resource – talent / structure
    • POV local GroupM CEO / HOT
    • POV local EssenceMediacom Office Head
    • Assess capability for evolved digital investment management and value creation
  • Client competitiveness
  • Commercial impact
  • Understood and are aligned with existing local investment targets and associated strategies for delivery.
  • Aligned with the market CEO on how you and your team will help the market moving forward and what your own impact will be
  • Assesed overall investment strategy and tracking vs this
• Understood and are aligned with existing significant major EssenceMediacom / GroupM regional initiatives:
  • Usage and development strategies for Group products.
  • Understanding of preferred suppliers (inventory and technology).
  • Measurement and systems.
• Work with regional commercial / finance teams to understand Investment’s commercial impact by market and vertical.
• Engaged with the broader investment community across EssenceMediacom and shared an ongoing cadence plan for inspiration and sharing

6 months : Process and Strategy

• Working with local markets and key client teams, develop clear aligned strategies across markets and clients to
  • Maximise the impact of GroupM’s proprietary products. In particular the advanced products (inventory, tech and data solutions)
  • Ensuring that product development is aligned with EssenceMediacom client requirements. Input market, client and regional requirements into product development pipeline in emerging fields of investment such as ecommerce, gaming, metaverse and OTT.
  • Improve Preferred Supplier (inventory and technology) management and drive agency education on why adherence is important.
  • Support Giants value extraction and management plan
• Working with regional commercial / finance teams to improve forecasting.
• Ensure all media investment component of all new business pitches / defences are hyper competitive:
  • Regional = +3 Markets
  • Local = +US$10m
  • All others = as a minimum utilise regionally created template story / value matrix.
  • Including the approach to digital pricing competitiveness and commitments.
• Develop / design EssenceMediacom APAC overarching Investment strategy to maintain EssenceMediacom’s competitive positioning and working with GroupM to future proof and maximise advantage to our clients.
• Have developed relationship and key profile with Singapore based key regional/global vendor partners (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, The Trade desk, Twitter etc.).
  • Ideally also developed a profile with key industry bodies IAB etc.
• Establish positive relationship with key senior regional client, being perceived as key discipline specialist and advisor – (Google, TCCC, adidas, Mars, P&G, Richemont, Uber).

12 months : Control and Investment Results

• Effectively delivered the 2024 investment vision and strategy with clear measures of value and success. This would provide you with a clear blueprint to deveop what 2025 should focus on and what might be the 3 year plan for your role and the legacy you want to create.
• With GroupM have developed automation of base functions and data extraction to improve accuracy, visibility and control, whilst reduce time required for local teams.
• Have a regionally/globally renowned GroupM and Industry best in class regional investment team supporting high calibre local EssenceMediacom Investment leads.
• Recognised as lead agency within Group M on digital investment management and innovation.

What You Will Need

We are looking for people from investment and digital backgrounds. Ideal candidates will have worked at senior levels in media and digital agencies, consulting agencies and digital technology/platforms.

We are looking for someone with a proven record of delivering - rigor, investment control, clear and compelling client media investment vision strategy and successful in driving internal behavioural change and client success:

• Strong Media Investment Experience (minimum 10-15 years media agency experience)
• Strong leadership, interpersonal and communication skills, as maximising results through positive influence rather than authority will be key to this roles success.
• Digital investment experience, in particular on programmatic and performance and proven capability in the same.
• Understanding of digital media ecosystem, including platforms, publishers, technology and data providers.
• Excellent communication skills (English is a must due to international nature of the role)
• Impeccable attention to detail
• A positive, can do attitude and high-level client servicing ability
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively with multiple teams and markets.
• A strong commercial understanding of the media business. Ideally with historical P&L responsibility or at the very least the ability to understand and deconstruct what impacts the P&L.
• A self-starter who is able to build their own work plan and deliver the key milestones of the work plan with independence.

Your Team

Your regional team is a lean operation, with a small number of highly skilled individuals. This role is about establishing structure and skills to maximise the benefit to local teams and advantage for key clients, often exerting influence across teams vs. having a large group of direct reports. 

 
More about EssenceMediacom

• We are a global communications agency leading with breakthrough thinking, building explosive growth for brands, and helping our clients see the bigger picture. Our daring global network of 10,000 Essentials help our clients breach traditional boundaries in media, uncover novel ideas, and unleash exponential growth. EssenceMediacom challenges conventional thinking to build, propel, and supercharge our clients’ businesses at scale and lead our industry in critical areas such as diversity, equity, inclusion, and sustainability.  
• EssenceMediacom understands that our people are tasked with big goals: building breakthrough growth for brands and leading with breakthrough thinking in our industry. Our people are at the heart of this work because their ideas will enable us to decode the intersections of people, content, and technology to bring our aspirations to life. Our success is down to our eclectic, diverse, and talented people.
• EssenceMediacom is a place for us to grow our careers and expand our horizons. EssenceMediacom is committed to building an agency culture that supports our people, puts diversity at the forefront of our operations, and creates opportunity for all. This collective culture will be our “new power” where ideas are freely exchanged, and collaboration is actively encouraged in a place where you can innovate in our hyperconnected world

About GroupM

GroupM is the leading global media investment management company serving as the parent to WPP media agencies including Mindshare, Wavemaker, and MediaCom, as well as the programmatic digital media platform companies, Xaxis & PBU, each global operations in their own right with leading market positions. GroupM’s primary purpose is to maximize performance of WPP’s media agencies by operating as leader and collaborator in trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, proprietary tool development and other business-critical capabilities. GroupM’s focus is to deliver unrivaled marketplace advantage to its clients, stakeholders and people. GroupM is committed to fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion. Our people are our strength so we respect and nurture their individual talent and potential. Discover more about GroupM at www.groupm.com.