Creative Account Director

Purpose of role
It’s not every day that an opportunity comes along as big as this. Williams Lea are looking for a Creative Account Director to help establish an in-house global creative services offering in New York, that’s already going great guns in other regions. The brand is one of the world’s leading banks, so corporate experience would be ideal or design / creative agency experience.
We’re looking for someone that will promote and spearhead a new location, sharing the services of the team already producing great in-house creative work around the globe. You’ll be a combination of new-biz, account direction, project management, and all through a lense of creativity in a highly regulated environment with strict brand guidelines. You’ll know your social media from your ATL, motion graphics from print, and be happy having creative conversations with clients, working as part of a global team with the Global CD - who is based in EMEA. But you won’t be alone.
You’d be responsible for maintaining excellent day-to-day communications with clients, while aligning creative delivery across broad campaigns and business objectives, with oversight of delivering operational excellence. And while you won’t be expected to do any designing, you’ll need to understand the design-process and executional excellence across an entire suite of mediums.
The Creative Account Director is a strategic and operational leader who will connect creative ambition with operational excellence, communicating a vision for how we at Williams Lea best serve our clients across our multiple service offerings. It’s someone who works with the Global CD to empower and enable their team to bring that vision to life. They would be responsible for maintaining excellent day to day communications with clients. The role focuses on aligning creative delivery across broad campaigns and business objectives, with oversight of delivering operational excellence, implementing optimized cost to serve models, applying continuous improvement initiatives, and team growth and development.
The ideal candidate will have a creative background, not on the tools, but in the environment to include design, motion graphics, and film, alongside strong leadership, organizational and communication skills and a proven track record of project management delivery.
Client management skills will be critical as we define and build new operating models and key stakeholder engagement will assist Williams Lea in shaping a service delivery team that is fit for the emerging business changes and growth plan.
The Williams Lea business supports a wide network of clients, with a dedicated team and is supported by the wider Williams Lea senior management team. The scope of services currently delivered, combined with the support of Williams Lea leadership engagement enables the account management team to truly take ownership in running their business, driving innovation and best practice, while delivering a world class business support service.
Key responsibilities
Gather and analyze client feedback to inform creative process improvements
Partner with client leads to identify growth opportunities and improve delivery
Responsible for strategic planning across the account
Identity new services and manage those from sale through to implementation and management
Implement tools and systems to improve team efficiency and visibility
Responsible for Operational Excellence and client satisfaction
Oversee the creative workflow, working into the Global CD, highlighting potential risks to the client
Analyses data and reports that give insight into how to adjust to improve the service
Proven experience in growing services and identifying new ones
Track Williams Lea and client budgets and POs across all creative projects
Work on month-end activities and invoicing
Responsible for contractual governance
Personal attributes
Strategic thinker
Must be personable
Good listener, inquisitive and inwardly questioning – searches for underlying truth – questions if unsure
Confident speaker – happy to lead a conversation
Inspirational leadership attributes – the post holder will need to lead their teams through challenging and busy times whilst maintaining the Williams Lea values
Essential skills
Experienced Creative Account Manager ready for next step into a demanding role
Pragmatic adopter and approach to AI
Capable of developing and implementing strategic objectives
Strong commercial awareness, ability to plan and negotiate
Detail-orientated outlook
Self-motivated, able to work autonomously
Understands Williams Lea company values and business objectives and is able to deliver against them
Able to manage, motivate and develop a diverse team
Key Competencies
Proven project management and delivery skills
Fluency across the marketing ops stack - creative production and campaign delivery
Quality communication at all levels
Client Focus
Leading the Team
Planning and Organizing
Delivering against strategic objectives

Employment type
Full-time

Work arrangement
No