• Job Title: Media Innovation Director 
• Level & Responsibility: This role will be a senior leader within our central Innovation team, as well as within the Retail Partnership. You will lead 2+ direct reports and have responsibility for the engagement and performance of the broader teams.
• Location & Hybrid Working: Manchester or Liverpool, 2 days a week in the office 
  

The role

We are looking for a Media Innovation Director to join our central Innovation team, working within one of our retail partnerships. In this role, you will responsible for leading digital and physical media innovation for one of our most influential retail partnerships. You will have accountability for leading both the digital and physical media innovation pipeline for a key retail account and will be responsible for the end-to-end process, including ideation to delivery of new media toolkit capabilities.

Why SMG?

We are dedicated to supporting our employees to be the best version of themselves both inside and outside of work. We have an extraordinary culture built by exceptional people and it’s because of this that we’ve been recognised by Best Companies within the top 5 best Marketing & Media agencies to work for, with a World Class and Outstanding accreditation across the past 2 years.

We are also dedicated to continuously reviewing and improving our benefits package to offer the best that we can for our people. We have a whole page dedicated to our benefits here, but here's some of our favourites...

💰 Generous discretionary bonus scheme

🧘‍♂️ £1,800 yearly wellbeing fund (on top of your salary!) towards your personal wellbeing and passions

🫶 4 additional Wellbeing Days - one to be taken each quarter, dedicated to focusing on your wellbeing

📚 £500 yearly “Uni Fund” towards learning and development

🎧 Free headspace subscription

🕐 4pm Friday finishes all year round

🥳 Two fully paid conferences a year at Summer & Winter, as well as a dedicated team that put on activities and celebrations throughout the year

Why you?

In line with our company values, within your role you'll want to stay honest, stay hungry, stay foolish, and most importantly, have fun! We are looking for an experienced hire who can demonstrate clear industry knowledge and expertise. We are seeking someone with significant digital media development experience, likely from an agency or media background. More specifically, you'll have / be:

• Good understanding and experience of utilising first-party data with experience across a range of media publishers, ad-tech providers and the key players within the martech industry.
• Proactive and comfortable in driving the digital media development agenda across the wider business.
• A proven track record in delivering digital media innovation.
• Coaching and development of a high-performing team.
• Experience in a client or customer-facing role with strong influencing skills.
• Strong commercial acumen.
• Flawless attitude in all environments, with a strong will to succeed.
• The ability to successfully work with multiple senior stakeholders to deliver complex projects.

P.s. we try really hard to make sure that we list only essential criteria here, BUT if you think you can do an amazing job, yet don't have every single thing on this list, we'd still love to hear from you.

What you'll be doing

We pride ourselves on creating challenging and exciting opportunities, meaning that no two days are the same. However, here's an idea of what your responsibilities will look like:

• Future media development: You’ll develop the vision and innovation roadmap for Physical and Digital Media Development at one of our key Retailers. You will be responsible for the ongoing development of their first-party data engine, e-commerce ad-tech capabilities as well as developments to paid and owned media channels. You will develop these capabilities to meet a broad range of client needs for the retailer's supplier brands, agencies, and non-endemic brands.
  • You will be responsible for identifying media capability developments considering the competitive landscape and client’s needs. You will work with relevant stakeholders including the retailer, technology solution providers, publishers, as well as key stakeholders across the broader SMG business to bring these capabilities to life. You will be responsible for project managing these developments, ensuring they are commercially viable for all parties.
  • You will be relentless in seeking out and delivering new media toolkit opportunities to ensure this retailer retains its position as one of the industry leading RMNs.
• Partner management: You will be responsible for establishing and leading the governance for new media touchpoint development. You will ensure that our suppliers and partners as well as key stakeholders at SMG are kept constantly updated. You will be able to build successful networks with internal and external stakeholders to ensure you have all the support you need to drive innovation. You will hold full responsibility for the partnership roadmap, building new media capabilities that leverage retailer first party data and new technologies that move us from the old world of 'shopper marketing' to the new world of 'connected commerce media’. To do this, you will need to successfully navigate numerous stakeholder relationships including technology suppliers, media agencies and publishers.

• Cross-team collaboration and communication: Your team will work alongside several others in the business. It will be your responsibility to ensure that you work collaboratively with your counterparts in other business areas, ensuring effective communication and that the team operates smoothly as one unit, including Media, Insight and Measurement, Planning, Creative, Strategy and Partnership teams.

• Team management: You’ll lead a talented team of direct reports. This will be all-encompassing, from creating and managing their work-plans, through to performance reviews and delivering on the job coaching. You will also play a leadership role for the broader team ensuring that you engage them in the developments that your team will be responsible for. You’ll plan and execute appropriate team training (often in partnership with other SMG teams) to fill knowledge or skills gaps.

• Client management: You’ll support the team in building best-in-class relationships with our clients. In our business, you always have two sets of clients – our retailer partner and our branded clients. You need to be able to always land a solution that delivers for both, navigating your way through potentially complex situations and managing relationships with several senior stakeholders. Understanding the business needs of both our partner and our clients are critical.

• Campaign analysis: We have an in-house insight team who will evaluate every campaign we deliver via our proprietary software Plan-Apps. It will be critical that you understand the performance and effectiveness of new digital media channels and as such, we would expect you to work closely with SMG Insights and Plan-Apps teams. You should be experienced in leading discussions on digital evaluation metrics.

• Contribution to organisational projects: We are a young business, growing fast. Our ambition is to create the company that everyone would like to work for. Whether it’s leading our training and development efforts, managing our PR and marketing agenda, or helping us find the next generation of talent for our business, our expectation is that you’ll get stuck in and help us to build an outstanding business.

More information and resources to support you & your application...

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