Global Category Media Leader

The Opportunity

WPP is the creative transformation company. We use the power of creativity to build better futures for our people, planet, clients, and communities. 

We are proud to be the global partner for Coca Cola, a client with whom we share both values and ambition. 

In what has been called the “the biggest advertising pitch in history,” WPP was chosen to connect our talent and skills in a truly borderless way to create an open platform that will multiply the power of creativity for one of the world’s largest and beloved brands.

Welcome to OpenX, our transformational approach that marries WPP, the #1 global network and largest communications holding company in the world, with iconic Coca Cola valued at 71 billion dollars ,and, with a portfolio of brands that includes Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, Fanta, Dasani, Smartwater, Minute Maid and Powerade among others.

The Role

The Coca Cola Company business is divided into five main categories: Coca-Cola, Sparkling, Nutrition, Hydration and Emerging.

As a Category Media Leader, you will be responsible for leading the thinking on media for the category and acting as the connective tissue between the global category and the in-market execution teams.

You will be involved in global category charters from briefing and will bring in strong platform-back thinking into the entire brief deployment and charter design process. You will also bring value by building strong client relationships with all the Coca-Cola brand leaders within your portfolio. You will lead the market teams to assimilate briefs in their entirety, and analyze, solve and present viable integrated solutions that move the Coca Cola business into the next realm of marketing excellence and consumer experience. You will work closely with senior Clients and OpenX Leaders to maintain and enhance the WPP/TCCC relationship, identify consumer-centric experience solutions that drive revenue growth and troubleshoot at the highest levels

As a Category Media Leader, you will bring to this role your passion to elevate media beyond operations into influencing design and experiences, while delivering best practices and guidelines for markets to deliver uniformly excellent media planning solutions.

Specifically, you will:

• Own your category/brand’s media agenda
• Provide the most current and consumer-centric media insights to influence Long Range Business Planning and Annual Business Planning
• Establish a uniform approach to media planning for your category, which can be adopted across markets
• Develop a category-centric audience approach
• Develop a uniform measurement framework for all charters
• Contribute to driving overall media strategy projects like media investment sufficiency, portfolio management, fit-for-use principles
• Closely work with market and OU media leaders to push strategic thinking on media
• Partner with the broader Connected Transformation team to explore and influence partnerships, experiments and insight development through the lens of your category
• Lead and develop senior client relationships across all the brands within your category portfolio
• Guide global teams with platform-back and consumer-centric inputs for the development of consumer experience journeys
• Work with key Global Client Leaders, OU leaders, Capability leads and other Category leaders to ensure the development of global charters deliver against the integrated vision

The Team 

The Global Category Media Leader will work closely with the Global Category team, Category Integration Lead and the Category Insights Leader. In addition, you will partner directly with Global Client Leaders, Operating Unit Leaders, and Global Capability Leaders to deliver brilliant ideas and inspired thinking to the help solve the client’s business challenges.

KEY RELATIONSHIPS

Senior agency contacts across the WPP Open X business, with particular focus on:

• Global Client Leaders
• Global Category Insights Lead
• Global Category Integrated Leaders
• Operating Unit Leads

You will report directly into the Global Connected Transformation Leader for TCCC.

What you will bring

The ideal candidate will have strong media, digital and data knowledge and a proven track-record in building lasting regional and global client relationships, either within a media agency (or potentially a client organisation, technology, data or content agency). Candidates will be able to demonstrate a deep understanding of the assigned clients’ industry sectors and business challenges, with experience in CPG, and (ideally) in performance-media focused client verticals.

The successful candidate will possess the following characteristics:

• Minimum 12 years’ experience working in a core media function within a media agency.
• A working knowledge of integrated marketing including strategy, connection insights, media, data analytics, social, and creative activations
• Experience in fast paced, multi-layered agency environments
• An outstanding track record of driving strategic insights

• Proven successful collaboration with complex, multi-disciplinary teams
• Proven thought-leadership  
• Willingness to learn, explore, and reinvent
• Ability to navigate a complex matrixed organization internally and externally