Planning Manager

Job title: Planning Manager

Group: Mindshare Worldwide

Client: Volvo

Reports to: EMEA Planning Director
 

Mindshare is a media services company that accelerates Good Growth for its clients. Our company values of energy, empathy and impact bind together our diverse global family of 10,000 people from every culture and with every specialist skill you can imagine. People at Mindshare create ideas and solutions that help not only our clients, but also the industry and the world.

You can check out some of our people stories and client work and awards on LinkedIn or Instagram or hear about the company in the words of our own people here.

What We Can Offer You

At Mindshare Worldwide, we offer a competitive salary package, with 25 days holiday increasing with service to a maximum of 30 days, with the option to buy an extra 5 days per year. We also have an enhanced pension scheme, Bupa healthcare, a monthly wellbeing fund and early finishes on a Friday during summer. These are just some of the great benefits we offer.

Based ten minutes from London Bridge tube station, our office has a rooftop with 360 views of London – a great space to hang out with colleagues and friends!

We also offer an extensive training programme to help guide your career development, there’s a wide range of options to suit everyone at all levels of your career.

Our Values & Behaviours

Our new values, of Energy, Empathy and Impact not only align with our Good Growth ambition but represent our commitment and dedication to our people, helping them grow their careers, fostering creativity, embracing humanity, and changing the world. At Mindshare we are open to difference. We believe in being open and supportive of our people and all their differences to help them succeed. Be different at Mindshare and use your difference to shape the world through media.

The Role 

The Planning Manager role is responsible for media and marketing planning in collaboration with the Volvo Central Planning function, and the Mindshare Paid Digital Media Engine. The engine is a fully integrated cross digital unit, in which Planning and Activation teams collaborate to deliver Volvo’s media objectives as a single entity. This unit drives a single unified planning and buying approach to driving maximum ‘Outcomes’ for Volvo.

This role is dedicated to managing integrated digital-focused planning and client coordination planning process across large and smaller scale markets, presenting unique challenges for each.

Working across markets and teams building strong relationships with all key stakeholders (clients, fellow colleagues, activation teams as well as local & WW Mindshare teams) is fundamental. We will work with you to pinpoint key contacts you are responsible for leading and developing.

You will be responsible for managing day to day communication with the local Volvo client and be the key interface for the Mindshare client service teams.

Reporting Structure:

The Planning Manager reports directly to the Planning Account Director.

Experience required:

• Experience across digital media planning & buying. Ideally local and global.
• Understanding of brand and demand media planning capabilities.
• Experience in digital media planning across channels (search, social & programmatic display/video).
• Experience in forecasting, headroom & scenario planning to deliver to client sales targets.
• Excellent client facing communication & presentation skills.
• Hands on knowledge in tools such as Google Analytics, search trends, ad servers (e.g. DoubleClick), data visualization & analysis tools.

Personal Attributes:

• Team player. Gets stuck in.
• A ‘can-do’ attitude who is energetic with a hands-on approach to service client relationships.
• Trustworthy.
• Positive & productive.
• Organized with a strong attention to detail.
• Great interpersonal and communication skills.

Key skills & knowledge: 

The individual will be expected to support a Planning Director to deliver integrated campaigns across platforms, with a particular lean towards search, social and programmatic. You will be expected to champion and support the development of our best practice approach to delivering campaigns, multi market strategy coordination and communication. Through coordination and day to day contact, you will play a key role in delivering exceptional work for our clients.

This role must be positive, proactive and problem solving at the heart.

The 3 key principles of the role are:

• Support insight lead and integrated digital planning across the consumer journey.
• Be a day-to-day communicator for all ongoing and upcoming campaign activity for your assigned markets.
• Lead daily client communications and management of the end-to-end client key deliverables for your markets, working in full collaboration with the local MS team where appropriate to deliver a singular MS experience

Principal responsibilities:

Delivering client performance

• Be the dedicated daily market contact focused on integration to drive outcome focused media planning & data driven marketing.
• Coordinate media plans/documents incorporating communication goals, recommendations, rationale, ideas and implementation, planning costs and budget splits and KPI’s.
• Lead the planning conversation for clients in partnership with local team and Account Director.
• Collaborate with activation teams on plans, insights and recommendations to provide leverage their expertise.
• Participate in discussions of key drivers and barriers to delivering Volvo targets.
• Work on test & learn hypothesis with activation teams and contribute to testing opportunities to drive performance of media campaigns.
• Develop understanding of Volvo business – brand, category, products and competition, issues and challenges.
• Ensure consistency & high standard of output from all stakeholders

Developing product

• Collaborate on a consistent, best-in-class approach to design rooted in best practice.
• Share quarterly roadmaps with clients and ensure delivery of maturity workstreams
• Support the development of ways of working and process enhancements

Driving process

• Manage cross channel planning processes & outputs across the engine and local team planning.
• Support integrated ways of working between the engine and Mindshare Local Teams for your markets.
• Multi-task, prioritize jobs and manage your own and the teams time efficiently.
• Be the daily client point of contact and manage planning timeline and client request efficiently for the team.
• Ensure the activation teams are delivering on the key deliverables from strategies to follow up actions/ tracking from calls to ensure accountability.
• Collate reports and share with clients and capture actions and next steps.
• Manage status documents and ensure teams are on track with key deliverables.
• Support the management of reconciled spend documents and troubleshoot client billing queries.
• Manage internal file and folder structure with Account Executive, including media plan versions and creative assets.
• Constantly review all optimization, budget management and other processes to identify opportunities for improvement in effectiveness or efficiency.

Raising profile

• Surface and share great work from the team.
• Contribute to case studies and share examples of great work with clients.
• Participate in media industry trend discussions and share points of view with clients to keep them on top of the latest trends or tech.

Inspiring our people

• Management and training of Account Executive, including delegation of tasks and participation in their appraisal.
• Maintain a positive attitude towards all areas of our work and looking for opportunities and solutions from challenges.
• Play an integral role in fostering and driving a culture of collaboration and best practice within the team
• Establish a relationship with key clients, through QBRs/proactive projects.
• Contribute to integrated digital thinking across the team.

• Maintain a strong line of communication with all team members especially with the increase in remote working. Its critical to know when to raise issues to prevent further escalation.

Personal performance measures: 

The Planning Manager will predominantly be measured on the outputs below.

• Ensure best in class media plans are delivered on time to clients.
• Collaboration - measured via 360 and informal feedback.
• Client satisfaction via formal and constructive feedback.
• Strong relationships with all key contacts via 360 and informal feedback.
• Contributing strategic thinking to the Volvo planning process, and managing internal teams to ensure annual planning, response to briefs and quarterly business reviews are completed to a high standard.
• Involvement in wider Mindshare initiatives.
• Ensure team delivers 100% excellence in the finance process, and work with activation to ensure the process is timely and accurate.