Senior Planning Director | BBC (Manchester based role)

About Havas Media Network

Havas Media Network (HMN) employees over 950 people in the UK & Ireland. We are passionate about helping our clients create more Meaningful Brands through the creation and delivery of more valuable experiences. Our Havas mission: To make a meaningful difference to the brands, the businesses and the lives of the people we work with.

HMN UK spans London, Leeds, Manchester & Edinburgh, servicing our clients brilliantly through our agencies including Ledger Bennett, Havas Market, Havas Media, Arena Media, Forward Media, DMPG and Havas Play Network.

Our Ambition

At Havas Media Network we create Meaningful Media that drives growth for the world’s most ambitious brands. Guided by our values—Human at Heart, Head for Rigour, and Mind for Flair—we embed genuine human insight, data-driven discipline and creative daring into everything we do.

This role sits at the heart of that promise—bridging day-to-day planning with specialist capabilities to ensure data-driven thinking enhances every stage of media delivery.

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Planning Director on the BBC account within Havas Media Manchester, on a 12 month fixed contract (maternity cover). The role is central to how the team operates each and every day. The role is about understanding your clients in every way; understanding their needs, and delivering best in class media solutions to meet their needs. Our Senior Planning Directors are leaders within the client planning team (CPT) with the talents and skillset to bring everything together on a daily basis. You are required to have well informed and proactive client conversations, with a lens of channel neutrality to deliver against clients objectives.

As Senior Planning Director you will work closely with the internal agency teams & departments to align client & agency needs, with the overall goal to grow the account profitability year on year. This is Manchester based role, and part of the role will involve working directly at the BBC offices in Salford. These days are essential for building client relationships, and working collaborativly as an agency x client group.

The BBC

The BBC is our flagship account and as such working on the BBC is a privilege and we want people to join the account who understand the responsibility involved. You will be working across a range of programme launches and awareness campaigns, as well as performance focused product and user retention activity. The BBC is here to Inform, Educate and Entertain universally across the UK, and our paid media campaigns reflect this broad remit and variety.

What behaviours we need from you:

As Senior Planning Director you and your team are the heartbeat of the agency. You will be a calm and assured, motivated individual with an attitude and mindset to convey real care, craft, and creativity.

For your team, you will be a leading figure, and someone that will play a pivotal role in motivating those around you, bridging the requirements of both the client and wider agency. You will:

• Effectively manages upwards; builds positive cross functional relationships, provides solutions when escalating issues, anticipates the needs of the wider team

• Works with specialist team leads to manage hours dedicated to the account to ensure profitability

• Effectively communicates upwards account challenges and suggests structural changes to retainer/contract

• Takes a proactive view to talent management within the team, optimising the development of others by employing a variety of internal and external tools and resources. e.g. Campus, Equalize, IPA

• Can work with the HR team when required to manage and resolve conflict situations, escalate welfare concerns and deal with team personnel issues, and if required to, is confident in disciplinary matters

For your clients, you are representing the best of Havas. The face of our offering and someone that can build brilliant, trusted relationships based on exceptional work and genuine interest in their business. You will be someone who:

• Identifies commercial opportunities for the client that aligns to wider agency goals and initiatives

• Can make commercial decisions guided by strategic business plans and recommendations.

• Can develop and apply market and economic understanding and insight to support commercial decision making and recommendations

• Independently engages in tasks which require a high degree of interpretation of complex information

• Can articulate to their team how business priorities, client demands, and other commercial considerations influence our work, whilst proactively managing risk

Role Competencies:

The successful candidate will be able to deliver upon the following:

• Uses experience and industry knowledge to identify planning, strategic and where appropriate, commercials improvements to client and Havas.

• Ensures that all strategic and annual planning includes 'Source of Growth' analysis, supported by analytics teams' benchmarks and contributions

• Has a clear understanding of products and services within Havas and how they can help clients to meet their short- and long-term business objectives

• Produces innovative ideas which may lead to award-nominated work

• Able to provide direction in use of tools to interrogate hypotheses or provide direction

• Able to critically evaluate sources and contradictory information and draw conclusions from multiple sources of information

• Can make clear, evidence-based judgements on a range of topics related to their area of expertise

• Can create clear measurement frameworks and set out guidance for appropriate KPIs to assess the viability of plans

• Supports others to see the bigger picture, encouraging thinking that goes beyond their own role and team

What’s on offer from Havas:

We want you to do the best work of your career. To support you in managing your career, as well as your commitments and priorities in your life. We have created a modern, market leading approach to personal benefits, wellbeing, and care:

• We have shown at Havas, that we can all work productively in a new Hybrid manner – this is a Manchester based role, with us typically in the office 3 days a week, 2 days from home.

• To give you even more flexibility, and support a better balance between work and life, Havas employees are given the opportunity to work remotely from anywhere in the world for up to 4 weeks per calendar year.

• Alongside a generous holiday allocation and birthday off, we are all allocated one day per quarter as mental health days. These are simply days you can take off, guilt free and without eating into your holiday allowance.

• We have modernised and introduced a market leading parental package for our employees. The Parental Life at Havas policy enhances, broadens, and encourages the uptake of parental leave for all parents, regardless of gender, type of relationship, type of parentship or any other potentially defining characteristic.

• We also haven’t forgotten about those benefits that make a meaningful difference to you personally, from a Rental Deposit Loan (so you can secure your new place), season ticket loan to ease travel and free mortgage advice for the getting on the property ladder we have you covered and much more!

• We haven’t lost the fun stuff either, subsidised gym membership, social club, bar nights, early Friday finishes

We work in a hybrid working model – in office and remotely

Current policy is for minimum 3 days in office.

Office Location:

Manchester – Havas Media office

Role Tenure:

12 months fixed contract, maternity cover.

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Contract Type : Permanent

Here at Havas across the group we pride ourselves on being committed to offering equal opportunities to all potential employees and have zero tolerance for discrimination. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applicants irrespective of age, sex, race, ethnicity, disability and other factors that have no bearing on an individual’s ability to perform their job.