OpenDoor I Planning Director – Job Description

The purpose of this document is to help prospective team members better understand the role and responsibilities with the position of Planning Director at OpenDoor, WPP’s bespoke global operating model for Amazon.

ABOUT WPP & OPENDOOR

At WPP, we’re constantly reinventing the future of creativity on an ever-broader canvas, bringing together unrivalled talent, resources and skills to provide an integrated offer of communications, experience, commerce and technology.

Over the last decade, we have developed a dedicated global client practice with the mission of accelerating WPP’s impact for our largest clients by bringing them the best of WPP. Each team is custom-built around a client’s specific needs and challenges, providing easy access to the right capabilities. And that’s why we’ve built OpenDoor for Amazon.

OpenDoor is a unique integration of the best of WPP and Amazon – building on their respective strengths and visions. Whether at WPP or at Amazon, every project is an OpenDoor on new possibilities. Anything and everything can be an opportunity for our people to drive impact – for them to innovate, learn, thrive, and occasionally fail too.

The unique OpenDoor partnership model is built to deliver next level Productivity, fueled by our industry-leading approach to People, Platforms, and Process. OpenDoor spans across all WPP agencies and disciplines such as media, business consultancy, communications and brand strategy, tech and commerce, public relations, and production.

OpenDoor’s values are built from Amazon’s own 16 Leadership Principles, and WPP’s core values of Open, Optimistic and Extraordinary. Together, when WPP’s Creative Transformation meets Amazon’s next-level customer centricity, our people come together to challenge and impact what’s done today and build a better future.

By joining OpenDoor, not only are you joining a cross-function team partnering with one of WPP’s top five global clients, but you are also taking a step to challenge yourself and the world around you every day, working in the most unusual way on some of Earth’s most ambitious opportunities in marketing, tech, media, business, and creativity.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are searching for a talented and enthusiastic individual to join our OpenDoor team as a Implementational Planning Director. This is a full-time position based in London. The Role will report to implementational Planning lead and will manage a matrixed team of digital planners, channel planning and offshore teams. This role plays a crucial part in supporting WPP's mission to deliver consistency, delivery excellence and best in class service for Amazon in every country across its diverse businesses, including XCM, Prime Video, and RMI.

The Role is predominately on Prime Video, Amazon’s entertainment destination for movies, series, documentaries, and live sport. The Prime Video marketing division deliver all communications for the platform, including large tentpole titles such as The Boys and The Rings Of Power, and live sport such as the Premier League and the NBA, as well as largescale brand campaigns. OpenDoor is Prime Video's media partner everywhere in the world except North America and Latin America and makes up a considerable proportion of Amazons global marketing efforts.  

The Implementational Planning team creates an effective link between the Strategy & Planning teams and Activation, data and tech teams. The Implementation Planning Team ensures that comprehensive briefs are developed in collaboration with the strategy and comms teams and ensures that channel specialists meet clients’ expectations by achieving campaign KPI’s timely and through embedding operational excellence. They are also developing and supporting the delivery of tasks such as reporting output, offer insights and recommendations across strategic planning and agency pitches.

• You will lead one of the lines of business within Prime Video either Sports and Brand or Tentpoles supporting and organizing the digital teams to deliver on the planning, activation, application of data and optimization of campaigns.
• You will need to have a deep understanding of Social, Programmatic, OLV, Pan regional IO buying, Partnerships and Content to help ensure the best digital decisions in planning are made across the full spectrum of opportunities.
• You will be managing both local market campaigns and multi-market campaigns so being able to switch between the two will be critical.
• Work closely with the planning and strategy team to take block plans by media type and flighting from our communication plannings systems and agree or challenge those breakouts to deliver the optimum digital media mix.
• Identify ways of integrating digital plans seamlessly with offline media i.e. aligning TV spots and digital upweights, create geo based digital campaigns to support out of home placements, building a messaging approach of online that compliments offline or vice versa.
• You will be in charge of the media plans for all digital components, including budgets and budget tracking, final deliverable numbers, and tracking daily pacing and performance against those numbers to ensure goals are hit across all digital elements.
• You will also directly be leading IO based pan regional buying / partnerships with multi-market vendors when required. This includes the briefing, management of briefs and delivery of these partners i.e. Multimarket twitch, Yahoo, We transfer deals which unlock content related value for the client.
• Unify disparate streams of information and insights from all biddable channels, in context of client business objectives.
• Help teams develop integrated experience strategies across biddable & digital touchpoints, identify strategic opportunities for proprietary solutions growth in service of solving client business problems.
• Guide clients and key internal or external stakeholders on selection and application of systems, tools and platforms, proprietary solutions, enabling them with the proper resources and knowledge for successful implementation.  
• Provides a consistent and strong POV to clients on digital investment decisions and areas of optimization.
• Outline advanced data analytics/measurement frameworks to shape holistic measurement of performance media strategy and activation.
• Advises key stakeholders by continuously helping them successfully navigate through critical business changes.
• Leads the development, presentation, and delivery of top-quality cross-channel planning work for larger campaigns.
• Plans against client outcomes – quantifying objectives and the likely impact of comms on them across all biddable practice areas, in collaboration with practice leads.
• Accountable for the ongoing management of performance of campaign budgets and daily spend levels, bid strategies and constant monitoring of tracking to performance goals - implementing course correction decisioning when needed.
• Scrutinizes performance planning budgets, of assigned accounts, to identify strengths and weaknesses and ensures proper financial allocations and ensures WPP Open and Amazon’s goals are protected and driven.
• Proactively identify opportunities to improve and enhance clients’ campaigns and advise client/agency teams accordingly.
• Develop an advanced understanding of media channels, channel ecosystems and planning best practices.
• Start to translate strategic approach into planning practices for specific client briefs.
• Oversee campaign management, ensuring quality control and output is of the highest standard.
• Lead Pan regional IO and Partnerships based buying for multi- market campaigns with manager and executive.

Collaboration & Leadership:

• Work in a complex, matrixed environment, influencing stakeholders and leading cross-functional teams towards our common media goals.
• Own deep knowledge of all WPP Open deliverables and campaign KPIs’ that have been committed to Amazon and share it across biddable and digital teams when/if needed.
• Proactively connects, partners with regional and key local market leadership on behalf of Amazon.
• Ensure knowledge sharing and communication flow remains informative, connected, and proactive to help provide repeatable, consistent activation excellence for all biddable/digital channels.
• Monitors and ensures adherence to client and WPP Open excellence standards across practices. Proactively develops actions plans and blueprints to address any gaps and non-compliance to standards.
• Build and maintain client and agency relationships at a mid-senior level, to ensure a comprehensive understanding of stakeholders and client business.

• Can confidently answer client questions and liaise with internal teams on best solutions to use. [strong knowledge of all digital channels, technology and data and how this combines to support activation.
• Uses critical questioning and maintains a broad perspective when analysing information to gain a deeper understanding of the problem and its impact on activation of media.
• Has strong knowledge of the entertainment and subscription industry which is shared to build strategies and plans.
• Leads the delivery of relevant and accurate information to drive maximum impact.
• Consistently delivers communications to influence and educate all levels of seniority, appropriately judging the demands of the situation.
• Multi-market experience activation experience and managing multi-market activation teams.
• Entertainment category experience
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment whilst maintaining a partnership focus throughout

BONUS POINTS

• Applies big picture thinking in work and proactively leverages an understanding of the organization and key industry trends. 
• Understand the different elements of responses. 
• Applies knowledge of client, audience, channel, market and category to effectively deliver compelling multi-media digital plans.  Translates learnings and trends from strategy team to create digital activation that is effective with clear measurement.
• Applies best practices to campaign management and acts as the escalation point for issues. 
• Provide actionable insights during mid and post-campaign reports to improve in-flight optimizations and future campaign brief recommendations.
• Oversees team members to discuss current projects, workload and activities prioritises resources accordingly. 
• Improves workload management by supporting other in setting priorities and by postponing less relevant work.

BENEFITS OF OPENDOOR

• Unparalleled Access: Gain direct experience working with one of the world's most innovative and influential companies.
• Mentorship & Training: Receive guidance from experienced professionals at both WPP and Amazon.
• Cutting-Edge Technology: Utilize industry-leading tools and platforms, including WPP Open.
• Data-Driven Environment: Develop your analytical skills and contribute to data-driven decision making.
• Global Impact: Be part of a team that is shaping the future of marketing on a global scale.

HOW TO APPLY

Interested candidates are encouraged to submit their resume and cover letter to the jobvite posting.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.