Business Director

Team: Unilever

Location: London (Hybrid Working)
Contact type: Fixed Term
Full Time/Part Time: Full Time
Contract Duration: 6 - months
Reporting into: Global Managing Director 

About Ogilvy:  

Ogilvy UK has been creating iconic ideas that deliver impact at scale for clients ever since David Ogilvy founded the company in 1948. Ogilvy UK specialises in bringing together brand advertising, customer experience marketing, PR, influence and consulting, all fuelled by Behavioural Science. Our world-class award-winning creative campaigns deliver solutions for clients including Sainsbury’s, Argos, , Mondelēz International, Unilever, TK Maxx and Pernod Ricard.  

In 2023, Ogilvy UK celebrated their 75th anniversary and was the most awarded agency in Europe. Ogilvy is home to the largest influencer marketing practice globally, and hosts the world’s biggest festival of behavioural science and creativity, Nudgestock – now in its 12th year. 

The Role: 

As a Client Lead at Ogilvy, you liberate the power of the whole team and make it possible to fulfil the potential of the business and category you oversee. You are mentor and guide to your team and clients. You are a strategic thinker in every sense, the brand guardian. 

You work in partnership with the most senior clients, helping them to navigate across a wide range of business challenges and ensuring that the agency and all its capabilities are being utilised to the full extent possible in services of their goals. 

You will have the proven experience to build the right platform to get to great creative work, with robust strategic skills as well as commercial minds and entrepreneurial spirit. These attributes should be actively demonstrated every day with the intention to find better and more innovative ways of solving our client’s problems. 

This is a Client Partner / Managing Partner level role, experienced in Global focusing on award-winning, culture-shaping work. You will serve as the one point of contact for our C-suite Global clients, working closely with our teams across WPP 

Responsibilities 

Building client relationships 

• A strategic partner to the most senior clients, they have a strong network of contacts throughout the client's organisation and the Ogilvy network. 

• Has a very thorough knowledge of the business, market, and industry which enables them to bring a well informed and valued perspective to a variety of conversations. 

• Can identify strategic opportunities and problem solve with the client, to ensure the agency client relationship can flourish and growth opportunities can be fulfilled. 

• Can handle the most difficult conversations, and situations, to bring them to a mutually agreeable close. 

• Be able to foster and lead relationships with Media, Tech and network partners ensuring collaboration and the right WOW are implemented. 

• Grow the business through introducing new capabilities and innovations. 

• Be able to foresee any areas of opportunities or issues and be proactive in resolving them. 
• Have a can do, problem solving, and culture enhancing spirit. 

Do the best work 

• Sets the tone and direction for the whole team, exhibiting through their words and actions that they have enormous ambition for the work and will create the conditions needed to fulfil that goal. 

• Has a deep understanding of production, strategy and creative, and their partnerships with colleagues in those crafts is key to the fruitful creative environment that you create. 

• Has knowledge of Social, what work the client should be doing in this area and how we make that work. 

• Can push the team in the direction of Social through knowledge sharing, process updates and talent mapping. 

• Ensure we are presenting best-in-class social work throughout our workstreams. 
• Is able to focus the team on what matters, and drive towards long term success. 

Responsibility & accountability 

• As the most senior account person on the business is accountable for the client/agency relationship and the performance of the whole team. Is a mentor and guide to the team. 

• Responsible for monthly revenue targets, yearly revenue targets and works with the client and internal agency team to meet those targets. 

• When issues arise is the person who resolves what others cannot, does not seek to blame, and never panics. 

• Delegates to their team effectively, so that they can focus on the leadership tasks only they can and do. 

• Always focused on their accountability to the wider, longer-term needs of the team and client. 
• Ensuring team and partners are aware of their roles and responsibilities within every project workstream. 

Commercial Acumen 

• Sets the long-term financial goals of the business they manage with their operations, commercial and PMO partners, based on a strategic business plan. Has a deep understanding of the client's commercial context, and how that impacts the client/agency commercial relationship. 

• Highly cognisant of the commercial targets of Ogilvy as a whole, and the wider WPP context. 

• Understands or willing to understand the Unilever commercial knowledge. 

• Ability to deep-dive into project scopes and ensure client alignment and team alignment. 

• Instil a sense of commercial knowledge and accountability within the entire project team. 

• Creates a performance culture within their business which allows their team to take responsibility for the financial health and growth of the business at every level. 

• Ability to track project performance alongside delivery partner – covering contribution margin, revenue recognition, scope changes. 
• Confident to have commercial conversations and negotiations with the client team and procurement alongside internal delivery partner – covering scope alignment, price negotiation and change requests. 

Collaboration 

• Is a role model for how to work collaboratively with all Capabilities and Crafts and is able to navigate across a complex array of projects and situations to the benefit of the client and agency. 

• Is focused on the bigger picture and seeing opportunities for growth and development, and how those can be fulfilled by working in partnership with others. 

• Open to working across the networking, ensuring we are constantly bringing the best talent forward for our workstreams. 

• Working with our Resource Manager and overall network teams to ensure that we are forecasting and planning for category work for the year. 

• Close relationship with our Global Executive Creative Director (ECD), Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) and Production lead ensuring that they are aware of the relevant workstreams, client challenges and opportunities. 
• Keen to collaborate with other category leads to ensure streamlined ways of work, process alignment, project prioritisation and talent mapping. 

Problem solving & decision making 

• Liberates the power of the whole team and makes it possible to fulfil the potential of the business. 

• Sets the course, giving them clear roles, responsibilities, and shared objectives, and enables them to work within those parameters. 

• Empowers the team to think laterally, question, and challenge to get to the best possible, creative solutions. 

• Inspires the team to have a hunger for successful project health. 

• Encourages the team to think, not just do, at every stage and to make decisions. 

• There to solve the biggest problems and to find a way through. 
• Ability to prioritise projects and understand how to approach different levels of projects. 

Growth 

• A ‘Hunter’ attitude to grow the business and work on new business pitches as and when required. You will need to hunt briefs from our clients and with them. 

• Ability to showcase our Social offering and how we can partner with our client to drive the best work possible. 

• Constantly searching for opportunities within the client business for us to proactively share and pitch our partnership. 
• Ability to forecast, track and convert growth pipeline. 

Insightful 

• You will require a deep understanding of the Client’s brands, their business, its issues, their motivations, industry trends, understanding the health of their business and the consumers relationship with the brand in the relevant markets. 

• Be ahead of the client when it comes to industry trends. 
• Proactively approach client with opportunities to ensure they are best in class. 

Creativity 

• Works in partnership with Creative and become a trusted partner. 

• Be a champion for great creative work and actively seek opportunities to convert this and expand our output. 

• Close relationship with our Global ECD. 
• Ability to bring them into workstreams when necessary and keep informed. 

Masterbrand Masterbrand is the network’s historical creative window. Is what has made Dove famous, and it is now in an ever-evolving journey. This leader will work closely with a diverse team of talent to define our timely expression of our timeless truth, execute and operationalise. 

• You will successfully drive the next chapter of purpose driven work, lead the workstreams and develop brand communication ecosystems. 

• You will drive brilliant creative work and the most successful partnerships with senior creative leaders and clients. 

• You will also be responsible for Cascading the brand knowledge and guidelines to the network ensuring consistency when applied. 
• You will be responsible for nurturing and identifying the right collaborations for the brand. 

Requirements 

• Experience in leading, driving and growing a global brand at scale. 

• Substantial body of creative work with cultural impact and/or industry recognition. 

• You must deeply appreciate brands and have a proven creative flair. 

• Highly experienced in the delivery of global marketing communications across channels including traditional broadcast and online media, digital, Social, and direct (CRM, DM, data), PR and influencer, tech (such as AI, hyper personalisation, automation etc.), branding and media planning. 

• Has extensive experience as a trusted advisor to senior clients, able to speak the client’s language and engage them on issues and opportunities well outside the current scope, perceives client’s marketing challenges within a larger business context. 

• Demonstrated versatility in creating innovative value propositions and marketing strategies that generate new revenue opportunities, create new product/service offerings and open new markets, is intelligently opportunistic. 

• Can do – You will need a resilient can-do attitude, to be able to move from heavy weight strategic thinking to lending support with day-to-day work. 

• Production leadership across complex multichannel campaigns – overall responsibility to deliver campaigns on brief, on time and on budget ensuring team wellbeing, commercial success and project health. 

• Passion for championing diverse thinking and working to build a team that represents a wide range of perspectives, contributing to a positive and inclusive culture within the agency and network.