Associate Director, Consumer Health & Wellbeing (up to £80K, DOE)

About The Job
Virgo Health is a specialist health communications agency, part of the GOLIN group and the wider IPG network of companies with more than 200 offices around the world as well as hubs in London, New York and Chicago. We are passionate about helping people to make better decisions around health and wellbeing. Whether it’s clinicians selecting the best treatment, patients understanding their disease better or empowering consumers to self-treat, we always make sure that the human aspect is at the heart of what we do. We work with pharmaceutical, diagnostic and consumer health companies, industry bodies, public and private health providers, as well as patient organisations. We support clients across the communications spectrum.
Our integrated consumer health team across Golin and Virgo are looking for an Associate Director. Would you like to be part of a team that has won 2 Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity? Keep reading!
What is the role?

We’re looking for an Associate Director to join our Consumer Health team and work on leading consumer health and wellbeing brands. You will be a key overseer of the account, providing strategy and guidance while managing high-profile consumer campaigns and conducting research projects. You will coordinate actions, managing both up and down to ensure we deliver high standards of work to deadlines, embedding strategy and insight throughout, and understanding the broader environment and implications for the team and account.  

This is a fantastic opportunity to work on well-known consumer health brands, playing a central role in delivering impactful earned-media strategies and award-winning creative campaigns.

What will you be doing?

• Drive high-profile consumer campaigns and conduct research projects
• Lead financial and resource management and delivery across account teams
• Continue to build out your leadership with ownership of the day-to-day business operations (finance, culture and client service)
• Drive organic growth of our clients and identify new business opportunities, bringing any opportunities to the leadership team
• Role model great line management through managing mid-level team members and supporting their career development
• Coach and mentor team members as well as your direct reports to drive development and performance
• Identify and address potential issues and pre-empt solutions, being fully responsible for any issues or errors and finding ways to address them in future
• Apply a high level of commercial and strategic expertise and act as a true partner to clients
• Be confident having tough conversations with clients, knowing when and how to push back on clients with a solutions-oriented approach, and when to let go
• Identify potential challenges or risks with your clients, offering thoughtful and informed solutions in a timely manner
• Review of high-level client and competitor materials, and execute activations and campaigns from start to finish
• Have innovative ideas to share with your clients
• Leverage trends/insights into client work
• Counsel clients for issues and ensuring proactive solutions in place with team, with high quality maintained even under extremely tight deadlines

What are we looking for?

• Several years’ experience in consumer health/wellbeing at a communication agency
• Highly skilled in developing strategic plans that meet clients' objectives
• Highly skilled in developing media stories and strategies that generate widespread key message-rich coverage in consumer health and lifestyle media
• Ability to earn the trust of clients and forging strong client relationships
• Experience in managing high-performing teams to deliver excellence
• Experience delivering new business pitches
• Excellent financial and resource oversight to build and manage client budgets
• Excellent negotiating and influencing skills

What do we offer?

• Competitive salary and benefits
• Hybrid working, 2 days/week in the office
• 6 weeks annual leave
• Monthly well-being allowance
• A fantastic office space in Shoreditch with a dog friendly policy
• Clear career progression and leading training programmes developed by our L&D Director

We  appreciate the time take to apply for the role and your recent interest in Virgo Health. We will review all applications within five working days and be in touch with those who have been shortlisted to the next stage. Unfortunately, due to volume we are not able to get back to everyone individually so if you have not heard back from us unfortunately you have not been successful on this occasion and wish you all the best in your search.

At IPG we are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. We are committed to equality of opportunity for all staff and applications from individuals are encouraged regardless of age, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and marriage and civil partnerships.