Implementation and Activation Associate Director

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. With exceptional talent, trusted data and intelligence, and world-class partnerships – all united by our pioneering agentic marketing platform, WPP Open – we help clients navigate change, capture opportunity, and deliver transformational growth. 

WPP Media is WPP's AI-driven media operating unit, bringing together media, data, and partnerships to deliver creative personalisation at scale. Connected through WPP Open and powered by Open Intelligence, clients see exactly where, how, and why their media investment is working.

For more information, visit wppmedia.com.

The Implementation & Activation team is responsible for delivering best-in-class media planning and buying for our award-winning agency brands.

The scope of the Implementation & Activation team covers all media channels and touchpoints, with a focus on delivering omnichannel media plans in each of our client patches and brands. Sitting centrally alongside our Implementation & Activation team is our Centre of Excellence, housing the Media Operations team and Craft Heads.

With our collective industry expertise, we navigate the ever-changing media landscape efficiently and effectively, fuelling growth for the brands we work with. Our commitment to transparency and accountability drives best-in-class results consistently, leveraging our exceptional media relationships to keep our finger on the pulse of emerging opportunities.

The Implementation & Activation Associate Director is an emerging leadership role, overseeing operational excellence and responsible for all day-to-day output that delivers effective campaigns, ensuring best-in-class consistent implementation, optimisation, and reporting. Working very closely with your Director, you will produce best-in-class solutions, offer unparalleled service and deliver against targets.

The role involves the development and application of specialist technical skills, and effective team leadership.

• Collaborating closely with internal teams
• Establishing strong relationships with relevant media, data, and technology partners
• Fostering deep trust and understanding with clients
• Contribute to great teamwork in your immediate team

• Cultivate strong, trusted relationships with clients at a mid to senior level
• Offer expert perspectives and POVs on recent market trends or developments, ensuring they're shared with key stakeholders regularly.
• Regularly meet with vendors and partners to drive your client's agenda, creating opportunities for your team members to get involved and engage.
• Maintain an in-depth understanding of client challenges, objectives & initiatives, and be able to clearly articulate these to your team and your media partners.
• Focus on building our outstanding client service reputation
• Robust understanding of the in-scope services of your clients and the process for completing work above and beyond
• Proactively recommend tactics and opportunities that resolve client challenges and objectives.

• Brings innovation and creativity to the table, leveraging market insights.
• When required, a strict adherence to activation commitments that have client contract association.
• Able to construct and present effective and future facing Implementation plans, that are grounded in strategic priorities and data-led optimisation recommendations.
• Maintain an in-depth knowledge of the media landscape, able to confidently articulate and train others on media principles and how each media touchpoint can fuel growth for clients.
• Collaborate closely with internal product teams including WPP Media proprietary product and service teams to ensure you can clearly articulate the benefits of their inclusion, with a focus on identifying growth opportunities that can transform outcomes.
• Seek to find, communicate and implement improvements in all aspects of the role.
• A pivotal role for client media audits, negotiations and billings forecasting, working hand in hand with your key stakeholders to deliver client KPI’s.

• Motivate and empower direct reports to achieve individual, team and organisational goals.
• Conduct fortnightly 1:1s, annual Career Conversations and Performance Reviews with direct reports.
• Liaise with the People Team to resolve any team disputes to ensure a safe and productive team environment.
• Continuously champion company values to build strong and trusted connections, solution-oriented perspectives and demonstrate that you genuinely care for collective team success.

• Identify, collate and showcase examples of great work from within the team, both internally and externally.
• Build the agency’s reputation by contributing to entries for awards and competitions and by contributing to industry thought leadership.
• Actively contribute to new business development and pitching as needed.

• You feel empowered to bring your authentic self to work, and contribute to great teamwork, knowing your individual ideas and thoughts will be welcome.
• Keen interest in our industry and excited to work with market leading partners & technologies.
• Inquisitive and demonstrates desire to understand and know more.
• Ability to prioritise tasks effectively, ensuring that the most important and urgent ones are identified and addressed first.
• Results driven with the ability to identify and clearly articulate what’s working and why.
• Problem solving mentality. Attention to detail. Clear communicator.

• Established collaborative relationships with all key stakeholders.
• A strong understanding of and can clearly articulate the agency and group proposition, core processes and our way of working.
• Immersed yourself in the team with an understanding of the status of all active and upcoming campaigns.

• Demonstrated your ability to deliver on all aspects of the role in an efficient, effective, and proactive way.
• Owning the processes for specific allocated clients/campaigns from end to end, ensuring that your manager and wider team are regularly updated on the performance of each campaign and demonstrating excellent attention to detail.
• Strengthened your key stakeholder relationships to deliver great team work consistently.

• Taking on greater ownership for campaigns and clients – responsibility and volume.
• Building strong relationships with publishers, representing the agency team appropriately and ensuring that campaigns are delivered to the highest quality.

We've always been builders. It's in our DNA.

• The businesses we’ve helped grow
• The brands we’ve helped build
• The cultures we’ve helped shape
• The stories we’ve helped create.

This has all been possible due to the capability and smarts of our people - YOU.

Now, fuelled by technology, our power to build has been amplified. It's... limitless.

Limitless isn't just about dreaming big. It's about doing bigger.

It's about pushing past the boundaries of what's been done before and redefining the game. It’s about embracing disruption by being the disruptors. It's about seizing the boundless possibilities that lie ahead.

In a world where media is everywhere and everything, limitless means opportunity.

• SOLVE: by forging new channels, crafting innovative stories, solving problems with extraordinary creativity, and selling disruptive strategies to unlock new sources of growth.
• ENGAGE: by entertaining consumers in new ways, creating genuine connections with audiences to drive loyalty and deliver wins.
• GROW: by pushing the boundaries in the work you deliver, by learning the skills of tomorrow, by building the business models of the future and by stretching yourself beyond today to deliver impact.
• COLLABORATE: by working with partners who are known to us and those yet-to-be-discovered, to unlock opportunities that were previously unimaginable.

It's a relentless curiosity, a desire to find a better way, to pave a new path, to disrupt what’s been done before, and to never settle.

The technology is our tool, but we are the driving force.

Let's collectively work together and build a future of limitless growth.

#LI-Promoted