Director, Planning

3118 - Director, Planning - UK

Role Summary and Impact

This is an incredibly exciting opportunity to join our digital-first agency and lead one of the UK's most vibrant, fast-paced, and culturally loved brands: ITV.

ITV is an absolute powerhouse within the UK’s media and entertainment landscape. They run a highly diverse portfolio of campaigns that shape the national conversation. Your mission is to partner directly with ITV’s senior marketing and strategy teams to build their consumer-facing brand, launch their biggest, most talked-about TV shows—from blockbuster dramas and live sports to cultural phenomena like Love Island—and aggressively drive digital customer acquisition to scale Monthly Active Users (MAUs) on ITVX.

As the senior strategic and operational lead on this flagship account, you will tackle the thrilling challenges of digital, data, and ad-tech integration to power marketing communications that create a true competitive advantage. This role offers a massive focus on innovation and digital excellence, providing a brilliant opportunity to drive our signature “wholebrain” planning philosophy across a high-profile, culturally relevant brand.

You will be part of a senior leadership team, working closely with the Managing Partner, Partners, and Digital Directors. You will also collaborate on cross-portfolio agency workstreams and help shape the future of our broader agency product.

The Team: You will lead and inspire a talented, integrated team, typically consisting of Planning Senior Associate Directors, Account Directors, Account Managers, and supporting Planner and Executive resource.

Reporting Line: This role reports directly to the Client Partner.

Key Deliverables & Objectives

Client Leadership & Strategic Excellence

• Brand & Growth Delivery: Take overall responsibility for the quality of the work exiting the agency. Ensure all media plans are first-class, insight-led, and masterfully balance high-impact show launches with sophisticated digital acquisition strategies to drive ITVX streaming growth.
• Client Satisfaction & PRF Delivery: Establish trusted, long-term relationships with senior ITV stakeholders. Deliver a proactive relationship-management strategy to ensure consistently high satisfaction scores, successfully unlocking performance-related fee (PRF) targets.
• Adoption of Next-Gen & A.I. Planning Tools: Act as an internal pioneer for the agency's proprietary planning systems. Drive the integration of AI-powered solutions and automated planning software across the account to deliver superior, data-driven planning results.
• Award-Winning Work: Champion breakthrough creative thinking across the team, aiming to deliver high-quality, innovative campaigns that are regularly entered and shortlisted for major industry awards (e.g., Media Week, Campaign).

 Commercial & Financial Stewardship

• Financial Forecasting & Governance: Take full accountability for the financial health of the ITV business. Maintain highly accurate internal revenue and spend forecasting with minimal variance, keeping meticulous trackers of budget adjustments.
• Working Capital Management: Partner with finance teams to ensure seamless client billing, contract compliance, and prompt resolution of queries, maintaining debtors and unbilled accounts within strict corporate tolerance limits.
• Diversified Revenue Growth: Identify organic commercial opportunities to cross-sell and sell-in specialised agency services and managed partnerships, driving Year-on-Year growth in out-of-scope (OOS) revenue.
• Contractual Target Management: Oversee & contribute towards the successful delivery of complex contractual media targets (including barter, contra, and trading commitments), ensuring continuous monthly tracking is in place to mitigate under- or over-delivery.

 People & Team Leadership

• Talent Development & Succession: Build, motivate, and maintain a high-performing planning team. Ensure all team members have clear career growth plans mapped to planning craft KPIs, alongside robust succession planning.
• High-Potential (HiPo) Retention: Foster a supportive, inclusive, and collaborative team culture, aiming to achieve industry-leading retention rates amongst top-tier talent.
• Integrated Activation: Ensure the planning team is closely aligned with internal specialist buying and investment departments to guarantee ITV's trading commitments are executed flawlessly.

Agency Growth & Thought Leadership

• Category Thought Leadership: Actively engage with the wider agency planning community, positioning yourself as the internal go-to expert for the entertainment and streaming category through regular, inspiring thought leadership presentations.
• New Business Engine: Contribute to the growth of WPP Media by actively participating in and leading high-value, strategic new business pitches. 

Skills and Experience

• Our Core Values: You must be All In (deeply passionate about the media industry, ITV, and creating standout work), Action-Orientated (thriving in a fast-paced environment where plans can change at the speed of live TV), and committed to Personal Growth (for yourself and your team).
• Proven Leadership Experience: Extensive experience leading large, multi-level planning and account teams within a media agency, managing high-profile consumer brands.
• Robust Communications Planning: A deep, intuitive understanding of communication planning across offline, digital, and performance channels, with experience using data and cultural insights to drive tangible business outcomes.
• Digital & Tech Literacy: A strong working knowledge of the digital media ecosystem, including experience adopting and scaling automated planning tools and AI-driven platforms.
• Excellent Commercial Acumen: Strong experience managing large budgets, agency profitability, contractual SLAs, and complex commercial arrangements (such as barter and contra deals).
• A Passion for Entertainment: A genuine, infectious curiosity for the broadcast, digital video, and streaming entertainment landscape. You are someone who loves TV, pop culture, and understands how to connect audiences with the content they love.

Life at WPP Media & Benefits

Our passion for shaping the next era of media includes investing in our employees to help them do their best work, and we’re just as committed to employee growth as we are to responsible media investment. WPP Media employees can tap into the global WPP Media & WPP networks to pursue their passions, grow their networks, and learn at the cutting edge of marketing and advertising.

We have a variety of employee resource groups and host frequent in-office events showcasing team wins, sharing thought leadership, and celebrating holidays and milestone events. Our benefits include competitive medical, group retirement plans, vision, and dental insurance, significant paid time off, preferential partner discounts, and employee mental health awareness days.

WPP Media is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in our state-of-the-art WPP Southbank campus around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

Please note this is a UK-based role and requires individuals to have the right to work in this location.

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