Client Managing Director

Job Description:

Managing Director - Clients

About Carat.

At Carat, we’re on a mission to make every impression matter – in every sense of the phrase. From the our investments on clients’ behalf, to the craft excellence of every campaign, the societal impact of our work, to the personal influence each person makes when they speak with a client or partner. Every single impression matters.

We’re living through the algorithmic era – a time when people expect to be understood better than ever before, and when everything needs to be more joined up. This plays directly to Carat’s strengths: our national footprint, our integration as part of dentsu’s Media++ offering, and our blend of human understanding with algorithmic practice.

Our superpowers? Understanding people through tools like dentsu Audiences, using AI to uncover deeper human truths. Creating joined-up experiences across media, creative and CXM. Translating human values into hard business metrics: footfall, revenue, profit, lifetime value.

The attitude we bring? Willingness, bravery and openness. These human qualities turn good work into great work, and transactions into true partnerships. It’s what makes every conversation an opportunity to make a real impression and influence what happens next.

Role Purpose.

The role of Managing Director - Clients is our most senior role in the horizontal leadership of clients and client teams and is focused on the growth and development of our relationships at the very highest level (Marketing Director/CMO and above)

As we move to a much more connected Dentsu operating model, the role exists to run Carat relationships, originating in media, into and across all lines of business (LOBs), with responsibility for a complete client P&L.

Leading significant teams and with significant revenue responsibility, the role encompasses strategic and commercial leadership of key accounts, leadership of acquisitive new business projects and ownership of key workstreams within the Carat UK business plan. The role can include not just UK responsibility but responsibility for client relationships at a regional and global level, too.

Reporting into the Carat UK President, this role supports our overall migration to a ‘Carat+’ service platform for clients and sits on the overall Carat UK leadership team.

Key Accountabilities.

Managing Director - Clients directly leads a team of over 40, and guides 210 colleagues in client service standards and quality control programmes, including TRR oversight, making this position central to talent development, retention, and maintaining Carat’s collaborative culture.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Building best-in-class relationships with clients under your care at the C-suite level.
• Ensuring the team prioritise and manages great TRR outcomes.
• Building and nurturing a team of brilliant client service and media planning practitioners
• Building a rewarding, collaborative, and inclusive culture within your team
• Creating an innovative, winning work mindset and slate of output. Pushing clients to be brave and ambitious, and supporting our people to meet this expectation.
• Key clients include The Co-op, The Post Office, Lionsgate, Microsoft, Wickes and Pandora.
• Leading Pitches: Actively leading and engaging with new business personally
• Represent Carat within appropriate industry and prospecting environments
• Responsibility for facing into the industry/market and building a profile around themselves, the Carat proposition and the client work and relationships we are driving.
• Developing a plan for clients that benefits society under our manifesto of Making Every Impression Matter – underpinned by our philosophy of fiscal responsibility, craft excellence, societal impact and personal influence - a clear roadmap of how your clients can engage with audiences and media partners in a way that enhances purpose and society.
• Plotting the path to growth in client income in partnership with CPS in partnership with Dentsu CCO; annual growth planning/Key account planning for your clients
• Mapping and managing the renewal of contracts and proactive retention plans
• Team resourcing and career management
• As a member of the Carat UK Leadership Team, participating in the development and execution of the agency-wide strategy, representing clients and team in leadership forums
• Being a part of the dentsu-wide Integrated Client Leadership (ICL) to represent Co-op and ensure seamless integration, growth, and transformational value for clients by leveraging the full breadth of dentsu’s capabilities
• As a key deputy to the Carat UK President.

Person Specitication.

• Demonstrable Passion for Clients: keeping current ones and finding and winning new ones - this sits at the heart of this role. You need to live and love this as standard.
• Winning Work Mindset: we exist to help clients grow, having a brave, strategic view on the role media can play in this is key. We need work that can grow our clients and grow our reputation, and we need teams mobilised around this to deliver fewer, bigger, better work. We want your eyes to light up when you talk about the power of media and what it can do for business, and for society.
• A seller of aspirations, ideas and future states: we sell Carat and dentsu. Every day. You need to be epic at this.
• Leading Transformation: As we move towards the Carat+ model for our clients, this role is key in taking our people on this journey with clarity of purpose and empathy. Think pull not push.
• Commercial Acumen: the key to this role is ensuring that all team members play their part in revenue and margin delivery for Carat UK and the wider LOB. You don’t need to be a pushy closer; you do need to know how to spot an opportunity and have an entrepreneurial flash that turns it into a win-win reality.
• Collaboration: working seamlessly within LOB/Dentsu and acting and thinking across the whole of the UK is how this role fulfils its highest potential
• Creativity and an enquiring mind: we need a team leader who can understand this and envision how it can work best for the team you lead
• People focus: Bringing the team together under a unified culture and ethos, and ensuring they feel supported and part of the Carat UK world.
• Gravitas: managing relationships and leading a team of this size requires the right skills in communication and impact.
• Open and outgoing, prepared to lead on stage and in client boardrooms with warm, friendly and honest communication.

Inclusion and Diversity

At Dentsu, we embrace diversity and inclusion, valuing the unique perspectives and contributions of every individual. We believe that diversity fuels creativity and innovation, benefiting our employees, partners, and communities.

We welcome applications from all individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic. Beyond recruitment, we strive to create an environment where everyone feels respected, supported, and empowered to bring their authentic selves to work.

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