Account Director

Brand: Engage, XD  

Location: Philadelphia  

Reporting to: Head of Client Engagement US 

A bit about the role …    

Working within the Client Engagement Team, the Account Director takes responsibility for leading account(s), building excellent client and cross-agency relationships to deliver positive business impact for the client and growth for the agency.  This includes taking an agnostic view of our client accounts, meaning that you will understand our different service lines and how they come together to solve client challenges.  Experience with Learning & Development and/or Training is preferred.  

Your day-to-day responsibilities can be grouped into 3 broad areas:

Leadership

• As Account Director you will work with your CED / SAD to write and implement your account plan, ensuring the agency makes the most of the client opportunity by marrying client business strategy with agency capabilities.  This includes:
• Early identification of possible issues or weaknesses in the relationship that need to be addressed, as well as opportunities that could be converted with the right agency support.
• Building effective relationships with relevant subject matter experts from across the business to ensure we provide the optimal solution for our clients.
• Leading the preparation and presentation of regular Client Boards for your accounts, ensuring these sessions are used to have the right discussions to deliver growth on account.
• Your CED / SAD will be there to support you will all of this when necessary, including ensuring you are aware of the latest evolution in agency offering and approach, but you will drive all initiatives.
• Being an ambassador for the agency, specifically:
• Our philosophy of Creating Experiences that inspire lasting change
• Ensuring excellence in Client Engagement to foster positive client relationships and ensuring the internal agency team has a clear understanding of their business and how TCEG can add value to any given client stakeholder.
• Providing proactive, discipline-agnostic and solutions-oriented account leadership for our clients; continually seeking out and suggesting ways of improving client engagement across the account and wider agency. Proactivity in identifying marketing opportunities through case studies  and client relationships that will support growth across the agency
• Ensuring the agency team are set up for success on your account.  This includes:
• Initiating projects (job set up, smartsheets & box to support briefing and onboarding of the project team)
• Ensuring key people are well versed on relevant aspects of the account, the client’s business, the individuals we work with, category and competitor environment etc.  It’s our responsibility to ensure that the teams working on our accounts know the relevant information.  This doesn’t mean it’s our role to tell them all of this, just to ensure that it is happening, and the right information is being conveyed.
• Ensuring that the client briefs are being interrogated, interpreted, to get to the bottom of what the client is really aiming to achieve, and helping to make sense of this for the agency team.
• Acting as a support to the teams on specialist and integrated delivery teams (from exhibitions, event, video, digital, learning and communications planning and writing) ensuring we are delivering on the client brief, joining the dots across other relevant projects and acting as a point of escalation as and when required.
• Leading pitches on your account and when relevant opportunities come into the agency, outside your account.  We have a clear pitch process, which will help you and the team, and part of your remit is to ensure this is understood and applied. . 
• Managing and mentoring junior team members as appropriate, putting onboarding plans and career pathways in place, supported by clear objectives and structured check ins

Relationship

• Establish the agency as a trusted client partner by:

• Understanding the client’s business, their priorities and the competitive landscape
• Leveraging this, along with great interpersonal skills and proactivity to build consultative client relationships that demonstrate value and add a sense of purpose to the client / agency partnership.
• Ensuring that the account’s contact strategy for your key clients is active and working, allowing each client to feel looked after and supported.  This includes establishing a regular cadence of dialogue outside of projects
• Identifying opportunities to introduce the agency to new client stakeholders, either by leveraging existing relationships or identifying client challenges the agency is well placed to address based on experience on other accounts
• Planning and leading regular, productive Business Review Meetings (BRMs) with your client and procurement stakeholders
• Acting as a point of escalation for project issues emanating from both the agency team or client organisation
• Foster collaborative, productive relationships across TCEG, including:
• Building an understanding of our various specialisms and consulting the right subject matter experts at the right time
• Ensuring the nominated ambassadors for your account(s) and project teams are appropriately versed in the client context (business, brand, MSA, processes etc)
• Driving a culture around your accounts that drives the successful delivery of projects, whilst also acknowledging client MSA and SLAs and industry compliance guidelines (where appropriate)
• Navigating any internal friction to a deliver a positive outcome for the client and learnings for the agency, including raising a flag to your SAD / CED in good time to garner support navigating any challenges before they arise or escalate
• Guiding project teams through scope change conversations with the client to ensure all work is funded and SOWs, PCNs etc remain in place and current.

Accountability

• Developing a strategic understanding of client’s needs at an organisational and individual level, ensuring the agency’s response is tailored to recognise and deliver against these.
• Ensuring we have strong, cohesive briefs for projects, interrogating the clients’ ask and ensuring we understand the objective and what success looks like.
• Being accountable for your account’s financial forecast and overall financial health.  This includes:
• Ensuring that there is an accurate and up to date view of the financial opportunities on Procim for your accounts (starting with the account plan and translating through projects), partnering with your project leads to ensure this is maintained day to day by  ensuring they are clear on their individuals roles in the process. 
• Having a point of view on opportunities and whether or not the agency should pursue them
• Supporting the successful delivery of projects as the client’s senior point of contact from briefing to delivery and post project reviews ensuring TCEG Create Unforgettable approach and methodology, and in accordance with client MSA and SLAs and industry compliance guidelines (where appropriate)
• Working with the operations team and heads of departments to appropriately resource projects, balancing both skills and casting to ensure a positive client experience

  What do you need to have …  

• A proven, demonstrable background in building positive client relationships obtained within a pharma/ healthcare agency
• Experience of working to clear account plans
• Working experience of pharma-based clients and in identifying potential solutions that meet their business priorities
• An agnostic, problem-solving mindset
• Experience in interrogating the clients’ ask and in developing clear agency briefs
• A collaborative approach and ability to bring the right specialisms to the table to address solutions
• Good commercial acumen  

 A bit about us ….  

Inizio Engage is a strategic, commercial and creative engagement partner that specializes in healthcare. Our passionate, global workforce augments local expertise and diverse mix of skills with data, science and technology to deliver bespoke engagement solutions that help clients reimagine how they engage with their patients, payers, people and providers to improve treatment outcomes.

Engage XD (Formerly known as The Creative Engagement Group) is an unusually shaped communications group that creates experiences that inspire lasting change. We partner with clients to provide employee engagement, learning & training solutions, scientific engagement and capability building, all underpinned by applied behavioural science. We engage internal and external audiences through the creation and delivery of live & virtual experiences, film, digital, and immersive content.

Our family of brands is made up of: Ashfield Event Experiences; Axiom; Cormis; Forty1; LogicEarth and WRG.