Associate Activation Director

Spark Foundry is looking for an Associate Activation Director to join us in Sydney. We are one of the fastest growing agencies in Australia and the world.

At Spark Foundry our vision is to Fuel Famously Effective Ideas. Famous and Effective. Not one or the other, both. That sounds nice, but to get to famously effective ideas you need some key ingredients.

You need diverse thinkers and diverse thinking. We call this Allsorts. This helps us tackle challenges through different disciplines and perspectives. You need to thrive on the belief that great ideas are only great if they work. It’s not enough to be new, or cool, or interesting. Our solutions need to drive a business result. Everything else is vanity. You need to embrace both the art and the evidence. Right and left. Imagination and activation. Intelligence and technology. Big ideas, forensically measured.

All that while being a good human? Sound like you? Sound like where you’d like to be? We’d love to meet you.

WHAT BENEFITS DOES SPARK OFFER?

Be a part of the Publicis Groupe family, one of the world’s most progressive and dynamic modern communications businesses, enjoying all the perks that come with our network offering:

• A comprehensive Wholeself program supporting Physical, Mindful and Financial wellbeing
• A creative, fun and rewarding office environment backed up by our Publicis Liberté flexibility approach “working your way, with us!”
• Access to our Global AI Platform, Marcel, connecting Publicis Groupe employees with opportunities for career mobility and collaboration across our global network.
• Extensive Learning & Development opportunities, including more than 15,000 learning programs via our online learning platform Marcel Classes
• A culture of open feedback and support to reach your goals through our Career Conversations program.
• A committed Diversity, Equality and Inclusion strategy driven through our Viva! Women, Égalité, enABLE and Embrace (reconciliation action plan) programs. 
• Work Your World program enabling employees the flexibility to work from anywhere in the world for up to 6 weeks per year!
• Parental leave policy with up to 18 weeks paid primary carer leave and generous secondary carer benefits.
• Access to counsellors, psychologists, and professionals through Sonder - an all-in-on digital wellbeing technology platform designed to support psychological, medical & safety needs.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS ROLE

The purpose of the Associate Activation Director is to oversee the Activation team to deliver exceptional results across their client patch, including managing major client or sponsorship negotiations. Provide a high level of client service and maintain a cohesive working environment.  The Associate Activation Director is responsible for the development of Activation Manager, Snr / Activation Executive and Coordinator, management of their workload, supervision of their output, regular feedback and conducting formal reviews.  The Associate Activation Director supports the Activation Director / AGD in both the delivery of annual media negotiations and support to PMX. This person should ensure that their team is working to best-in-class, efficient processes and working to extremely high standards of output.

WHAT KEY RESPONSIBILITIES DOES THIS ROLE HAVE?

Activating all campaigns using the Spark Activation Model & Philosophy:

• Support Activation Director / Group Activation Director for annual media negotiations and quarterly deals.
• Help analyse and negotiate major sponsorships and cross channel media partnerships including digital.
• Negotiate trading positions where there are no long-term deals in place across all media ensuring all benchmarks (client & internal), trading strategies & contractual agreements are met.
• Manages and ensures maximum savings and added value are delivered and merchandises these to clients.
• Oversees overall client Campaign reconciliation reporting to ensure 100% accuracy and elevates results internally and to clients.
• Ensure their team fully understands the client KPI's that need to be met including any 3rd party auditing benchmarks.
• Understand PMX product offering (such as Apex & Screens) to ensure clients are able to take advantage of solutions where relevant.
• Oversee team are using best practice briefing and negotiation process to ensure best outcomes can be achieved.

Client Management

• Activation point of contact for clients – proactively presents relevant update, commercial opportunities, and relevant market first opportunities.
• Escalation point where necessary to ensure issues are resolved in a fair and objective manner.
• Ensures all clients across the agency are kept up to date with media marketplace.
• Has a good understanding of client’s business and clients internal pressures

Market Analysis 

• Proactively completes regular and continuous analysis of market trends, economic issues and other factors effecting buys.
• Sources content and provides relevant insights for inclusion within market reviews and other adhoc client requests. 
• Keeps up to date with latest audience data and shares knowledge with the Activation team and the wider agency team.
• Voice opinions within agency and to clients on market trends to demonstrate expertise.

Team Development & Management

• Oversee workflow across client patch, manage internal process effectively to minimise error and increase efficiencies.
• Develop, train and delegate effectively with clear instructions. Particular emphasis on upskilling Activation team knowledge of media channels, the media landscape and best practise activation, as well as inspiring Spark values 
• Motivate team through personal influence, enthusiasm, creativity, and energy. Take responsibility for their behaviour and display integrity in all you do.
• Deliver feedback to each member of the team on a regular basis, conduct appraisals and set KPIs in conjunction with the Activation Director / Group Activation Director.
   

KEY REQUIREMENTS

• Preferably a university degree or higher education qualifications.
• 7+ years relevant experience.
• Preferably a University degree or higher education  qualifications.
• Expert across the following Office platforms: Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
• Possess sound financial management skills including a good understanding of the revenue reporting process.
• Expert media understanding including an understanding of the full suite of media tools.

Spark Foundry, as a part of Publicis Groupe believes that to deliver the best solutions to our clients, our people need to reflect the diverse communities in which our clients operate. We value diversity and the skills, knowledge and experience that difference brings to our culture and solutions. We encourage applications from Indigenous Australians, people with disability, people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, mature age workers, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people.