Senior Planner

Overview

You are the critical connection point between what the brand wants to say and the consumer wants to hear. Planning’s role at Seattle Wunderman is to be a student of consumer, channel and cultural trends. You need to be creative in how you get to know the target audience and then succinct and persuasive in how you distill your insights into creative briefs and related presentations. You love to challenge conventional thinking and relish being the first step in the creative process. As a Sr. you’ll take the reigns of whole business units, open new territories for the company and creative, and be a source of strategic thinking throughout the agency.

The Successful Candidate

• You are or have been an Account Planner at an advertising agency in the past. You get the inner workings of the Creative department, what it takes to inspire great work, and how to get that work made.
• You’ve worked with both senior agency management and senior clients. You know how to work with people at this level and sell your ideas. You understand how to develop the proverbial ‘big idea’ and turn them into meaningful presentations.
• You’re seen as a creative force of nature, with uncanny ability to see opportunities, marshal a project, and build belief in what you find. You’re a high-functioning conceptual thinker who loves to play and mold an idea.
• You’ve written plenty of creative briefs and given countless creative briefings. You know the difference between qualitative and quantitative research, when to use which, and when to just use your gut.
• You are persuasive in spoken and written form. You know your way around PowerPoint and never met a whiteboard you didn’t like. You know when to listen and when to ask questions. You know how to dig deeper, to go beyond what consumers say, and uncover what they mean.
• You play well with others. Account people, Creative, Clients, even Finance likes you and wants you on their team. You get the job done and have fun doing it.
• You are comfortable with ambiguity. You know the best assignments are sometimes the one with the fewest definitions. You are entrepreneurial. You look for forgiveness, not permission, more often than not. Your instincts are usually right.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership and guidance to develop strategic integrated marketing campaigns.
• Proactively identify, communicate, and build new opportunities for client projects
• Effectively manage and understand all research relating to the audience, brand, culture, and media channels.
• Develop accurate and insightful conclusions from research data and presents insights and recommendations.
• Collaborate with pertinent internal teams to brainstorm and deliver work for assigned clients.
• Create inspiring creative briefs that are rooted in a single-minded proposition and translate insights into creative direction.
• Lead internal agency creative briefings in collaboration with account management.
• Partner with go-to-market strategists to determine how an insight/idea can come to life Recommend and evaluate research that will aid in the consumer insight gathering and strategy development processes. Participate in creative presentations – must be able to sell-in, conceptualize, lead, analyze, and present qualitative and quantitative research studies.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing or related field, Masters a plus.
• 6+ years’ experience working in an agency including 4+ years in account planning.
• Strong research skills.
• Experience with B-to-C and B-to-B marketing.
• Must be a strong presenter with the ability to conceptualize, lead and present research studies.
• Demonstrated success and ability to field questions, comments and criticisms concisely and productively.
• Extremely resourceful team player, able to function under pressure in a fast-paced environment.
• Quantitative and qualitative research experience.
• Excellent written and verbal presentation skills with a strong attention to detail.
• Power-user skills in MS Office applications.
• Familiarity with wide range of research and intelligence sources.EEO employer

Wunderman is Creatively Driven. Data Inspired. A leading global digital agency, Wunderman combines creativity and data into work that inspires people to take action and delivers results for brands. In 2015, industry analysts named Wunderman a leader in marketing database operations as well as a strong performer in customer engagement strategy. Headquartered in New York, the agency brings together 7,000 creatives, data scientists, strategists and technologists in 175 offices in 60 markets. Wunderman is a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY). For more information, please visit www.wunderman.com and follow us @Wunderman.