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Group Planning Director

Richmond, VA

Reporting Structure

This position reports directly to the SVP/MD Head of Planning.

The Role:

As a Group Planning Director at Martin, you are an ARCHITECT …

…You architect greater impact by providing a yardstick of quality, scaling your hard-won expertise across your team and the department as a whole.

…You are held accountable for the strategy of the brands you steward.

…You can work across a few different brands, one big one with multiple verticals, or a global brand with regional scopes of work.

…Your vantage point gives you visibility across more briefs and more audiences. This exposes you to more problems, more pressures and, inevitably, more politics. It’s everything you’ve trained for and you’re ready.

…You will regularly be tapped for new business, and you’re still in the making day-to-day, writing more than the occasional brief. But, overall…

…You will do less day-to-day work and increasingly manage people doing the work.

…You will mentor by not only helping individuals exceed their own expectations but creating room for them to exceed yours as well.

…You must create the conditions for your team to be great and their impact to be undeniable.

The ideal candidate we’re looking for will…

…Lead with conviction

  • Be decisive, the one with an answer when there is no answer — informed by experience, the best available information, and sense of urgency
  • Bring a strong, informed POV to every discussion, but be open to changing it
  • Anticipate the challenges that lay around the bend and spot the unseen opportunities
  • Operate with a growth mindset, marrying business acumen with strong creative sensibility
  • Set the bar for your team and lead by example — setting expectations for quality, simplicity, and craft
  • Delegate as you can; do as you must
  • Be the solution — knowing that sometimes the answer doesn’t exist until you roll up your sleeves and manifest it

…Lead with gravitas and inspiration

  • Be magnetic, skilled at narrative and a master at presentation
  • Bring highly original thinking consistently and deliver it in a style all your own
  • See patterns and parallels others may not
  • Prioritize being interesting over being “right”
  • Let your fire for ideas and the experiences you’ve lived bring energy to the “room”
  • Be a lifelong student of creativity; across formats and domains. Know how it thrives and how to feed it

…Lead through collaboration 

  • Marshal the various strategic disciplines (brand, social and comms), and narrow the gap between creative, account, strategy and data
  • Create a brain trust to dream up new possibilities on your business and build the trust required for clients to feel confident buying provocative work
  • Wield data and analytics to drive decision-making, measure impact, and continually optimize
  • Be a fast draw, quick with lateral thinking, different ways of framing problems, and an arsenal of ways to make the “room” smarter
  • Cast and facilitate breakthrough workshops — from platform-level sessions to everyday collaboration
  • Collaborate on staffing, navigate challenges, and anticipate account needs

…Lead as they wish everyone was led

  • Be someone others can look to for guidance, honesty, support and follow-through
  • Say what you’ll do and do what you say. Always. With clients and with your team
  • Take the initiative on learning & development, finding ways to elevate everyone
  • Listen ≥ speak — discern what’s not being said and create an environment that promotes candor
  • Be disciplined in how you use your time and mindful in how you spend other people’s time
  • Know how/when to manage up — help department and agency leaders help you and your team do great work

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities:

  • 10+ years of experience in strategic planning at a creative agency or at a creatively driven brand.
  • Bachelor’s degree required; graduate degree preferred
  • Experience in mentoring and developing talent
  • A player-coach — able to marshal resources but not above the doing
  • Heart of ideas and an intolerance for fluff
  • Adept at problem-solving, with a war chest full of mental models and creative kindling
  • Exceptional interpersonal skills — tact, diplomacy, maturity in relating to and interacting with cross-functional teams and people at all levels of seniority
  • Deep understanding of research methodology and design, qual and quant
  • Familiarity with an array of secondary tools (e.g., MRI/Simmons, Mintel, WARC, etc.)
  • A track record of new business success
We believe in visibility. This is the radical pursuit of our people and keeping them at the center, investing in and building safe, strong community; pouring into holistic wellbeing; and fostering an environment of maximum contribution, so that they can focus only on doing the best work of their lives.
 
HOW WE MAKE SPACE
The Martin Agency is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We are committed to creating a place of belonging — a space where employees do not need to sacrifice who they are to exist and grow in our workplace. The Martin Agency does not discriminate on any unlawful basis including race, religion, color, national origin, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or any other basis prohibited by law.

Should you need accessibility accommodations in submitting your application, please email talentmanagement@martinagency.com

CCPA Policy: https://www.martinagency.com/privacy-policy | https://www.martinagency.com/legal-ca

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