Account Director

About Us: George P. Johnson (GPJ) is the World’s Leading Event And Experiential Marketing Agency. For over a century we’ve been partnering with the world’s top brands to deliver creative solutions that make a real difference. Our strategic thinking and creativity breathes life into brands. Our ideas create impact, inspire audiences and grow business. It’s what turns our goals, and those of our clients, into results. We’re happy working wherever the brief takes us. At home or abroad. On the huge, or the hugely important. Our scalability enables us to answer briefs of all shapes and sizes – effectively and efficiently. Job Purpose As Account Director, you will play a pivotal role in building and growing effective client relationships. Your role is to ensure that the agency team provides exceptional customer service, retains and grows the accounts, and ensures the accounts are profitable. This position requires a combination of strategic thinking, project management skills, and an understanding of the events industry. Reporting to the Client Services Director , you will be a senior lead within our agile and dynamic Client Servicing team who helps drive collaboration within the team and wider office environment to deliver on our business objectives . The Account Director should foster respect with colleagues, management and clients alike through thought leadership, creativity, industry knowledge and best practice. Key Responsibilities Client Management Big picture thinking – You will proactively seek opportunities to do more for our clients. You will apply your passion for marketing, your general marketplace knowledge and your deep understanding of the client’s needs to help shape smart, relevant & proactive proposals. Understand clients’ business and business issues and serve as a trusted advisor to drive effective solutions Build and maintain effective client relationships, ensuring that all clients’ needs are listened to, understood and responded to in a timely way Ensure clear communication to the client regarding roles and responsibilities, scope, budget, schedules and project status/ action items Ensure stability of revenues by managing existing projects to ensure client needs are met Guide the development, writing and presentation of incremental project proposals, scopes of work, schedules and staffing plans. Ensure changes are clearly communicated to client and approved Analyze performance metrics and provide insights to improve future events. Seek opportunities to continue engagement with client Team Management Responsible for managing and motivating direct reports and the wider team Ensure regular team meetings and manage communications between team members, ensuring all deadlines are met Document key learnings and share best practices with the team. Coach and oversee junior team members on execution of all individual job details Ensure compliance and championship of internal GPJ processes with internal and external stakeholders Budget Management You will own overall responsibility for account revenue targets You will manage the budget process from a profit generation perspective including expense management, client quoting and profit modelling You will provide accurate reporting in preparation for monthly forecasting You stay abreast of client billing escalation issues and ensure they are being resolved You will provide guidance to finance and procurement to effectively negotiate with clients Creative Management Ensure that an opportunity brief is developed to set the stage for strategy development Collaborate with creative partner to ensure all creative content and agency solutions address the business need Participate in creative brainstorms to generate ideas for clients Ensure that a measurement metric is in place New Business Entrepreneurial Instincts – you’ll understand a need and find a solution to meet it Manage account, contact business development activity and pipeline opportunity informati…