Business Director (BD) is a leadership role among different stakeholders, including clients, the agency team across capabilities and departments, partners (internal and external stakeholders) and agency account leadership. The BD is a key driver of business stability as well as growth.
The role is critical to the success of the business. For the clients which the BD works on, the BD must be capable of delivering the agency's strategy and playing a pivotal role in helping to develop and implement best practices.
The role also requires juggling two imperatives: harnessing the agency’s capabilities to bring the best of agency and its capabilities to the table for clients; while ensuring that client growth and profitability are also strong, and that people working on the accounts are motivated and inspired. These different imperatives sometimes clash with each other, so there is a need for someone who understands what to push and pull at different instances.
The role:
1. Obsession with delivering the highest client value through product excellence and borderless creativity
- Partnering with clients in achieving short/near/long-term business goals through the agency’s work.
- Leading the agency team in being able to develop and implement brand strategies and plans for clients.
- Working with agency partners to ensure that best practices are applied for clients.
- Ensuring that the agency team is able to provide strong strategic guidance, creative excellence and day-to-day operational excellence.
- Understanding our brands’ customers, and understanding how to activate across the journey to build experiences through our different capabilities beyond traditional comms.
- Merchandising the agency’s work strongly to clients, ensuring that objectives are aligned and measures are in place to assess the effectiveness of our work.
- Helping to nurture a strong creative culture within the team and with clients that enables us to do work that gains attention and recognition.
2. Brand stewardship and creative excellence
- A strong understanding of brands – their purpose and positioning, and best practices. The ability to discern what is on and off brand, and what makes the brand distinctive.
- A strong ability to recognize and nurture creative ideas, and provide useful input and feedback. Good partnership with the strategy and creative leads in developing the work.
3. People Management
- The ability to recruit, lead and coach a team that provides strong client management and delivery on commitments.
- The ability to be a strong ambassador for the clients the BD works on within the agency. Ensuring that the best people in the agency want to work on the clients, and that the client is high up on the radar of agency leadership.
4. Delivery
- The ability to deliver with excellence day-to-day. Strong leadership of the team on project management, delivery on commitments and timelines, and achievement of KPIs.
- The ability to discern good/great craft from bad, and work with creative and production partners to ensure strong execution.
- A good understanding of paid, earned, shared, owned media and how to orchestrate the entire campaign experience for consumers, and how to get best outcomes by collaborating well with media/channel partners.
- Good commercial acumen and being able to deliver within budgets for client, and profitably for the agency. Strong collaboration with the financial partner to maintain good management of the accounts.
Useful experience and qualities:
- 12+ years of experience and at least 2 years of experience in a similar role in our industry
- Experience working on global FMCG or CPG brands like Unilever, P&G, Danone, Nestle, Coca-Cola where there is a strong brand stewardship culture
- Track record in farming existing clients and growing our scope of work
- Strong leadership qualities, but the ability to be collaborative as well
- Detail-oriented and ability to work in an agile and flexible manner
- Strong verbal and presentation skills. Able to develop presentation decks and deliver compelling presentations.
- Experience working on pitches or on pitch mode.
