Account Director – Technology

You’ve led workstreams, accounts and the rising stars at your agency on award-winning integrated communications campaigns, earning the trust and respect of your teams, colleagues and clients with every new success. You love what you do and who you do it with, but lately, you’ve been wondering if there might be more for you somewhere else. The freedom to lead your own portfolio. Deep analytics, insights, creative and digital resources available to you on demand. To learn from smart, focused and driven leadership who to help you accelerate your growth. And colleagues who truly like working with each other in a politics-free, one P&L environment.

Our client is looking for someone to lead and grow their expanding technology client portfolio. You’ll be leading, developing and motivating a distributed team that’s charged with crafting data-driven campaigns for emerging and established brands that move the needles that matter to each. You’ll want to own some client relationships, and coach some of your team as they take on broader project and account management responsibilities. And as one of the leaders of their technology practice, you’ll also be tapped to lead or support new business pitches, working collaboratively with colleagues from the firm and across their network to develop and deliver killer proposals that win in the room.  

 Here’s a bit more about what they’re looking for, what you’ll be doing and what it takes to succeed at the firm. 

What You Bring

• BA or BS in PR, Communications, Journalism or Liberal Arts.
• Seven to eight-year track record of success and increasing responsibility in an agency or fast-paced client environment (some agency experience is critical).
• A real passion for consumer trends, consumer behavior and emerging technologies and the changes they’re bringing in communications, the economy and society at large.
• A natural digital- and mobile-first mindset to all you do.
• Ridiculously strong oral, written and interpersonal communications.
• An insatiable curiosity combined with an innate ability to think critically that translates into creativity, founded in strategy, that you can apply to our programming day in and day out.
• Current knowledge of and comfort operating within and across the PESO media landscape.
• Juggling skills. Seriously, you’ll be expected to keep a lot of balls in the air, with each progressing towards an on-target, on time and on budget delivery.
• An innate ability to identify and recruit amazing talent, and to engage and inspire those under and around you to work together and deliver talk-worthy work.  
• The self-awareness to know when to listen, when to speak and when you’ve said enough.
• The self-confidence to sell what you believe in and own it when things go south (and they will).
• A genuine thirst for learning, self-improvement and personal growth.
• A fierce competitive spirit that compels you to play to win at whatever you’re doing.
• The ability to work independently while working collaboratively towards a common goal.
• A willingness to actively contribute to making their agency a better place to work.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Growing your business organically, and through net new account wins.
• Leading multi-disciplinary teams in the design, sell-in and execution of evidence-driven, integrated communications plans and programs that move the needles your clients care about.
• Ensuring your team’s work is client- and/or media-ready before we press send.
• Collaborating with experts across the network who can strengthen your team’s efforts, and/or whom your team’s expertise can help strengthen theirs.
• Ensuring all clients are kept informed on emerging trends, actively engaged in their relationship and delighted with their work. 
• Setting performance standards for your team and tackling performance issues quickly and empathically.  
• Coaching and mentoring your team, and actively championing for their continued growth through professional development and relevant networking opportunities.   
• Broadening their base of relationships within each client organization beyond the day-to-day PR teams, ideally into the C-Suite.
• Nurturing and growing your network of trusted relationships with the media, industry analysts and influencers.  
• Contributing to the agency’s content engine to help cement them as the voice of authority/credibility and you as a thought leader in the consumer behavior/experience space.
• Building the agency’s and your own personal profile through active engagement in relevant industry/trade groups, events and initiatives.

What it Takes to Succeed Here

• Help them improve. Become fluent in the agency’s brand and business; familiarize yourself with their teams, clients, best case work and best proposals. See a missed opportunity along the way? Call it out. Share your thoughts. Make them better.
• Make yourself smarter. Invest any downtime you have in your first six months to become certified in Google Analytics, and to master Google’s keyword tools. Both will help you prepare client-ready work more quickly as requested.
• Know what’s going on. Read/watch/listen to and then analyze and report the news that’s important to you and your clients; provide recommendations for actions that the client can/should take as a result.
• Have a point of view. They’re not looking for people who agree with everything we say. They’re looking for people who think independently, believe in things important to them and can bring and defend that passion to work with them every day.
• Make your team smarter. Get and stay up to speed on the market, competitive and internal business dynamics shaping the worlds and impacting the decisions of the clients to which you’re assigned. Become the go-to resource on your team for this kind of information. 
• Learn the agency business. Ask questions of those around you/ attend prescribed training programs to understand how we budget, how we manage projects, how we develop and nurture client relationships and how we measure our own success as an agency.
• Raise your hand. Don’t ever wait for someone to ask you to do something; ask what you can do to help your team, their clients and their agency succeed. Daily.
• Find your passion. Some of their people are expert in certain verticals; others are expert at certain functions. Many have become experts at multiple sectors and multiple functions. What’s important to you, and to them, is that you find something you love to do and do whatever it takes to master it.
• Live their values. Nothing is more important. We’ll hold you to that standard and you can hold them to that standard. It’s that simple.
• Love what you do. Agency life is not for everyone. We work hard and have a lot of fun in the process. We’ll both know within your first few months if it’s for you. We certainly hope it is, but if not, chances are you’ll make a great client. We want you to be successful and love what you do, wherever that may be.