Media Director (Pharma)

GoodApple•New York, NY

About The Position

The Media Director is a senior member of the GA media practice who serves as a strategic media leader for GA and their clients. They oversee and guide the development and execution of comprehensive media strategies across their direct teams, and the MD is responsible for aligning these strategies within Good Apple’s overall goals, ensuring effective use of media budgets, fostering collaboration across disciplines, and driving creation of bespoke media and analytics solutions that drive our client’s business impact. They play a crucial role in maintaining their client partnerships, managing/negotiating vendor relationships, and their direct team skills/professional development. The MD is starting to get more involved with overall media team strategic planning, staying abreast of industry trends, and driving innovation in media campaigns across the media organization. Leadership, strategic thinking and a deep understanding of media channels and technologies are essential for success in this role.

Requirements

8+ years media planning experience
4+ years of management experience
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Negotiation and influence skills - steeped in required industry, brand, and competitive knowledge

Nice To Haves

Requires minimal supervision, relies on advanced experience/judgment

Responsibilities

Partners with senior media team members to build an overall successful media organization
Take a leadership role in the recruitment process to attract, evaluate and select top talent
Aim for diversity in skill sets and backgrounds to enhance team capabilities
Collaborate with senior media leadership to align media strategies with overall organizational goals
Ensures that media efforts contribute to the broader success of the organization
Ensure that team members are informed about the broader company vision and how their work contributes to it.
Cultivates a work environment that encourages positivity, creativity, collaboration and innovation
Conduct regular team-building activities to enhance camaraderie and communication within the team
Fosters a sense of unity and shared purpose through team-building initiatives
Defines specific, measurable, and achievable performance goals for each team member, aligned with overall departmental and organizational objectives.
Regularly assess team members’ performance through constructive and timely reviews - provides feedback on strengths, areas for improvement and areas of outstanding contributions
Works collaboratively with team members to create individual development plans, career growth and opportunities for skill enhancement.
Identifies training needs within the team and implements professional development programs to address skill gaps and enhance overall team capabilities
Stays informed about industry developments and shares relevant knowledge with the team
Conducts regular training sessions to keep the team updated on best practices and emerging trends
Encourage and support team members in pursuing relevant certifications and educational opportunities that enhance individual and team expertise
Provides opportunities for skill development by strategically assigning tasks aligned with growth areas
Empowers team members to take ownership of projects, fostering a sense of accountability and autonomy.
Provides guidance and support while allowing space for creativity and independent decision-making.
Allocates resources efficiently to ensure the team's success in executing media campaigns.
Monitors workloads and adjusts team assignments as needed to maintain a balanced workload.
Collaborates with other department heads to share resources and expertise as necessary.
Encourage cross-functional projects to promote a holistic approach to marketing and media within the organization.
Address conflicts or issues within the team promptly and professionally.
Mediate disputes when necessary, fostering a positive and collaborative team dynamic.
Recognizes and celebrates team achievements, both big and small.
Responsible for ensuring the team’s media strategy aligns with the brand’s SIs and goals
Collaborate with key stakeholders to analyze overall business objectives and marketing goals, to develop cross-discipline solutions
Align media strategies with broader organizational goals, ensuring contribution to Good Apple KPIs
Provides strategic guidance to align the team’s efforts with broader GA goals
Ensures teams are adhering to overall GA media team goals - 2024 goals include scorecard based media planning, R/F measurement, migration to self-service, preferred managed service partners
Fiscally responsible for the media budget in partnership with the senior media team and Account
Leads internal cross-discipline collaboration & integration, swim lane identification and execution oversight
Establishes Good Apple and the media team as thought leaders internally and externally
Fosters an agile mindset within the media team, enabling quick adaptation to changing market conditions
Stays informed about media-related regulations and compliance standards - ensures that all media activities adhere to legal and ethical guidelines
Embraces flexibility in strategies and tactics to respond to evolving industry and client landscape
Creates high-level CMO level decks that show how Good Apple is driving business impact and value
Leads new business pitches - responsibilities include brainstorming, media strategy development, tactical slides, and pitching
Leads the team to develop value creating client deliverables - rebates, savings analysis, competitive analysis
Leads future-proofing thinking and strategic roadmap developments incorporating latest GA products and industry technology (i.e. AI)
Represents the organization at industry events, contributes to publications and participates in relevant speaking engagements
When applicable, presents the overall strategy of the media plan and larger strategic presentations - larger value-add wins (i.e. rebate, savings decks) across brands to senior level client leadership (i.e. procurement)
Partners with account lead (i.e. AD) to drive client satisfaction, deliver business outcomes and to drive account/business innovation and opportunities
Partnership with account lead should serve as leadership example to the team with successful communication, strategic synergy, proactive, positive dialogue and continued encourage of the team to execute in support of the client’s vision
Leads and guides client conversations to empower them with the media decisions and strategic rationale for the media decisions that drive business impact
Communicates persuasively tying back to business and media landscape, audience trends, client business climate, consumer/HCP insights
Supports and actively leads client’s media education - explains media concepts, leads Media 101s, spearheads Media Day efforts and brokers publisher relations when applicable
Guides the team to provide the appropriate level of detail based on receiving audience - tactical information vs high-level CMO communication needs
Assembling the right resources/support to achieve comms needs
Presents to the most senior level clients (i.e. procurement, CMO)
Translates clients wishes/request into actionable plan for internal cross-discipline team - the what, the why, the how
Remains up to date with marketplace and industry trends and overall understanding and landscape of client business
Creates and proactively socializes POVs along with presenting to clients
Negotiates larger account-wide or agency-wide partnerships with media, data, or measurement partners
Drives awareness and education of new channels/partners among the media team by organizing relevant learning sessions and sending out POVs/trends
Educates their team on the larger media landscape by organizing training sessions and sending out industry POVs
Promotes a culture of curiosity and continuous learning by encouraging team members to ask questions and to setup new partner learning sessions
Teaches the team how to negotiate using techniques like outcomes-based and value creation and how to measure negotiated savings using SQAD benchmarking data
Regularly audits and guides the team on how to evaluate and analyze partner proposals using a scorecard based framework
Responsible for making sure the team is reviewing Ts and Cs to ensure desirable payment terms, out clauses and sequential liability; instills importance of desirable Ts and Cs among internal media team
Responsible for escalation and resolution of partner issues, bringing senior media team members and other relevant team members along to teach/guide them on partner conflict resolution techniques
Inspirational leader who motivates their team to develop transformative media solutions at all levels
Fosters a mindset of continuous improvement, regularly seeking feedback and identifying areas of enhancement in team processes and workflows
Creates frameworks, processes and structures for the team to develop media innovation ideas - meeting of the minds, cross-discipline and cross-team share-outs
Partners with discipline leads to ideate, detail, phase and execute opportunities that improve and make GA workflows more efficient and cost-effective → Adops solutions, PRISMA adoption, AI & automation
Leads key GA agency initiatives that drive differentiation in the marketplace - proprietary products marketing
Leads the team to develop inspirational, mind-blowing Media Days that wow and inspire the client to expand beyond their media horizons
Attends industry conferences and studies market trends; shares their strategic POVs on how teams could leverage it for their clients.
Partners with the other senior media leads on larger strategic initiatives - adops integration, video education/expansion