About the Job
WPP Media is WPP's AI-driven media operating unit, bringing together media, data, and partnerships to deliver creative personalisation at scale. Connected through WPP Open and powered by Open Intelligence, clients see exactly where, how, and why their media investment is working.
For more information, visit wppmedia.com.
Powered by exceptional talent and WPP Open, our agentic marketing platform, we deploy AI at scale to help our clients navigate a rapidly changing world and optimize their marketing investments.
Key Responsibilities
Lead the development of best-in-class global communications plans for B2C and B2B priorities, including the global brand campaigns, regional campaigns, and corporate campaigns.
Drive the translation of the client’s objectives into clear communications/media objectives, audience strategies, channel roles, investment principles, and activation approaches.
Partner closely with the Global Strategy Lead to ensure that campaign planning fully reflects and delivers against the client’s global media strategy, strategic guardrails, and growth priorities.
Develop and maintain global communications-planning frameworks, campaign toolkits, media principles, and implementation guidelines that can be effectively adopted across markets for Global/Regional campaigns.
Ensure plans are audience-led, integrated across paid, owned and earned touchpoints where relevant, and built around clear communications tasks for each channel.
Bring a strong point of view on media innovation, emerging channels, digital ecosystems, content, partnerships, and media creativity—identifying opportunities that are relevant, scalable, and commercially meaningful for the client.
Champion high standards of planning craft, including audience definition, channel architecture, phasing, reach and frequency thinking, investment allocation, creative-media integration, and measurement design.
Work as a seamless strategic partnership with the Global Media Strategy Lead and external Creative Agency, with clear and complementary responsibilities:
The Global Media Strategy Lead defines the overarching global media strategy, strategic direction, innovation agenda, and senior strategic counsel.
The Global Communications Planning Director turns this direction into excellent communications-planning outputs, campaign frameworks, market guidance, and consistently strong execution.
Bring market, campaign, audience, and implementation learnings into the strategic agenda, helping to refine future global strategy and identify new growth opportunities.
Support the development of senior client recommendations, ensuring strategic thinking is grounded in practical, deployable planning solutions.
Partner with Creative Agency to ensure strategic alignment during strategy development and creative development to deliver a seamless integrated campaign.
Lead the planning relationship with the regional and local market teams across Europe, Asia, Latin America.
Partner with Market Excellence team to ensure best in practice is cascaded.
Be a champion of media effectiveness across the account, ensuring measurement is built into planning from the outset.
Partner with data, analytics, econometrics, brand-tracking to follow relevant KPIs, learning agendas, and measurement frameworks.
Translate campaign results, brand studies, econometric findings, audience insights, and market intelligence into clear recommendations for optimisation and future planning.
Create a culture of continuous learning by capturing, sharing, and scaling best practices across markets and business lines.
Ensure that both B2C and B2B planning approaches reflect the different customer journeys, decision-making dynamics, consideration cycles, and measurement requirements of each audience.
Act as a trusted senior partner to client’s global media stakeholders.
Lead planning conversations with confidence and clarity, balancing strategic ambition with operational realism.
Build productive working relationships with creative agency partners, contributing audience insight, customer journeys, communications strategy, media creativity, and channel expertise throughout the campaign-development process.
Collaborate effectively with all relevant agency and client partners, including creative, research, analytics, brand-tracking, technology, and media-owner teams.
Ensure all client deliverables are of a consistently high standard, delivered on time, and aligned with agreed objectives and expectations.
Lead, coach, and develop a team of two Account Directors, two Account Managers, an Executive, and an Intern across B2C and B2B workstreams.
Set clear priorities, roles, responsibilities, and standards, ensuring the team understands both the strategic purpose and expected quality of its work.
Provide active senior guidance at key strategic moments—such as briefing, campaign architecture, client recommendations, major presentations, and issue resolution—while avoiding unnecessary involvement in day-to-day detail.
Delegate ownership appropriately and empower Account Directors and Account Managers to lead their respective workstreams, client relationships, and team members.
Maintain strong operational oversight across workload, resourcing, timelines, deliverables, governance, and financial processes, identifying risks early and resolving them constructively.
Foster a collaborative, curious, accountable, and supportive team culture.
Required Skills & Abilities
12-15+ years’ experience in media planning, communications planning, integrated media strategy, or related disciplines.
Significant experience working with global, regional, or multi-market clients; experience across both global and local market environments is preferred.
Strong B2C experience, with proven ability to lead or adapt planning approaches for B2B audiences and complex decision-making journeys.
Demonstrated expertise in modern media planning, integrated channel strategy, audience planning, full-funnel communications, and media effectiveness.
A strong understanding of digital media ecosystems, data and audience capabilities, measurement, performance analytics, and emerging media opportunities.
Proven experience translating high-level business and media strategy into clear, practical, and effective campaign-planning outputs.
Strong senior client-leadership skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders with varying levels of media knowledge and across complex organisational dynamics.
Experience leading and developing teams, with a coaching-led leadership style that combines empowerment with accountability.
Excellent presentation, storytelling, written communication, and facilitation skills.
Ability to navigate cultural differences and collaborate effectively across international markets.
Comfortable working in a fast-paced, matrixed environment involving multiple agency, client, and specialist partners.
Fluent English and French required.
Success in this role will mean:
Client receives consistently high-quality, strategically robust, and operationally excellent communications planning across B2C and B2B activity.
The Global Media Strategy Lead’s strategic vision is translated into practical, scalable, and impactful plans across markets.
Media effectiveness, learning, innovation, and planning best practice are embedded in the account’s ways of working.
The planning team is empowered, well-managed, and visibly developing in strategic capability and confidence.
The client and its agency partners view Wavemaker as a proactive, trusted, and commercially valuable strategic partner.
