Business Unit Director (PR & Communications)

Our international client, operating in the global PR & Communications space, is looking to employ an experienced Business Unit Director (Africa) to their Sandton based team.

This is a senior management role with a salary package commensurate with the role.

An awesome career opportunity awaits.

Responsibilities:

• Provide direct input and management on paid media initiatives across diverse set of clients and industry verticals.
• Establish strategic relationships with the most influential media partners (Facebook, Google, Twitter, NYTimes, NBC, etc).
• Evangelize the role and impact of Paid Media on successful content marketing strategies, evolving the traditional PR model.
• Manage multiple facets of client programs including strategy development, campaign execution, and analytics and reporting.
• Lead proposals and oversee budgets and timelines for client projects.
• Oversee media research and POV development.
• Work with industry partners to gain insights and understanding into top trends and opportunities in the media space.
• Understand online research techniques and methodologies and use them to support development/execution of client campaigns.
• Aid in developing partnerships, including buying platforms, financial systems, and outside buying firms.
• Serves as a positive role model; supports and respects colleagues, clients and partners; focuses on self-improvement and ensures work is based on strategic insights.
• Effectively and consistently manages strengths and weaknesses of self and others; enables self and others to bring the best of their skills and talents to work; is consistently ambitious in setting and achieving goals.
• Always takes all feedback as a constructive learning opportunity and acts upon it; enables others to thrive as part of agency life and adapts to others’ styles to do so; ensures excellence is repeated by rigorously identifying and socializing key learnings for all colleagues.
• Delivers substantial change for clients and the communities in which we operate; ensures new insights from self and others fuel innovation in agency approach and client work; uses diversity of perspective to elevate client counsel, the agency and own career.
• Ensures work and relationships are founded on open and honest communications; listens and asks the right questions during day-to-day work; upholds creative, ethical, and legal standards.
• Ensures that client counsel and agency action is always purposeful and challenging; prioritizes the interests of the wider agency; holds subordinates, peers, and superiors accountable for demonstrating integrity and ethical behaviour.
• Demonstrates a strategic and thoughtful approach in challenging others to ask the right questions; prioritizes the interests of client service excellence ahead of individual advancement.

Requirements:

• Minimum 10 years of experience.
• Proven track record managing and developing Paid Media specialists at a regional level.
• Experience evaluating, negotiating, planning, and purchasing of traditional and online media, especially social, mobile and search media within an agency environment.
• Passion for growing a media strategy practice that focuses on content strategy, emerging distribution technology and audience insights.
• Experience managing large-scale media programs on behalf of consumer and B2B.
• Strong understanding of social media platforms, trends, and measurement approaches.
• Ability to manage the budgets and interdisciplinary account teams on sizable pieces of business.
• Experience managing account profitability, new business solicitation, and quality of account service and employee development within an agency setting.
• Superior communication skills and ability to counsel clients’ top executive management on online marketing issues.
• Interactive development experience is a plus.
• Understands role that PR and social media play in the overall communications marketing mix.

Please note should you not receive a response within two weeks of applying please consider your application unsuccessful.