General Manager - Starcom KSA

Company Description

Starcom is a world-renowned media communications agency that architects
connected human experiences to create value through precision marketing,
content and technology solutions. With more than ‎5,000 employees worldwide,
Starcom partners with the world's leading marketers and new establishment
brands, including: Samsung, Stellantis, VISA, McDonald's and more. Starcom is
part of Publicis Media--the global media solutions group which also
encompasses Zenith, Spark Foundry and Digitas.

Job Description

The General Manager is a strategic trailblazer that boldly take risks and make
difficult decisions that propel the agency into the future. Transforms
capabilities, inspiring and engaging talent along the journey, while setting
the vision and strategic direction of the client's business through
consultative partnership. As a growth mindset leader, the General Manager is
an advocate of high performance culture and uplifts team performance by
empowering and coaching, while creating a distinctive culture of
accountability and inclusivity that ignites engagement and enables high
performance and collaboration.
Strategic Business Consultancy Input:
* Manage and maintain the client relationship including servicing the business end-to-end.
* Responsible of all outcomes, quality control and the health of the relationship with the client across all disciplines, practices, facets of the business internal and external.
* Drive both business and digital transformation and innovation for the clients based on the multiple frameworks of the practices including but not limited to the BCG framework.
* Set the yearly strategic roadmap with the client on business transformation by becoming the trusted consultant and authority on the client 's Consumer Journey and the advisor on how to optimize ROAS (return on ad spend).
* Be the single reference to setting, negotiating, understanding and activating the client's Master Service Agreement (MSA) end to end. Ensure that the MSA is upheld in its entirety and ensure all SLAs are followed.
* Responsible for the management of the client's P&L end to end ensuring a healthy and profitable P&L. This responsibility spans across understanding all the elements of the P&L and optimizing them for the best outcome of the agency and the client.
* Responsible for the commercial tracking, forecasts, and KPIs ensuring no blindsides negatively affect the company's local and global commitments.
* Be the single point of contact for all practices products ensuring a continuous focus on cross selling and up selling the client where applicable.
* Being the constant audit holder of opportunities with the client and ensure the constant involvement of practices' experts.
* Drive collaboration between client, client's team and practices to ensure that the best strategic solutions are presented to the client and ensure an unparalleled competitive advantage is given to the client within their vertical / industry.
* Constantly aim to have award winning work delivered to the client with the aim to both give recognition to the client in their industry and get recognition as an industry leader in our field.
* Elevate the client and the client's team by training and knowledge sharing across the different disciplines and areas that our industry covers.
* Be an integral part in new business development specifically if the group is hunting a client of similar vertical.
* Ensure a RASCI matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Supportive, Consulted, and Informed) is always up to date for your client's end-to-end management including of all the tasks, products, projects, reports… that are delivered to the client and are existing in the MSA or any additional contracts/scopes that are signed with the client.
Knowledge & Skills Development:
* Develop and drive the skills matrix required to service the account(s) end to end and ensure these skills are acquired by the team in collaboration with the talent team.
* Ensure all products training driven by the practices throughout the year are attended by members of the client team for upskilling and enhancing the knowledge of the team.
* Educate the team on business framework ranging from simple time management techniques to advanced leadership and managerial techniques ensuring that the team is acting as one.
* Ensure client educational sessions are periodically set by quarter to educate the client on the latest tools, methodologies, products and processes that we have as a partner.
* Drive collaborative education sessions between the client team on ground and the client team in hub if applicable ensuring there is zero gaps, zero tasks falling in the cracks and zero misalignment between team members both on a professional level and on a personal level.
Product Implementation & Support:
* Proactively seek new products that will add benefit to both the client from a ROI perspective or to the internal team from an optimization or automation perspective.
* Be the facilitator and the catalyst to driving cross practices complex product delivery to the client that shows a superior offering than any other agency or consultancy house.
* Keep in touch with all the Playbooks of all the practices staying up to date with latest products and capabilities; ensure your client's requirements are met in the offering of the practices.
* Ensure all strategies developed for the client's briefs are sound, quality-checked and are creating value for the client.
* Automate the processes and the operation through innovative products and solutions to cut down cost, time to deliver and efficiency.
Campaign Level Planning:
* Accountable towards the flawless delivery of all client 's campaigns.
* Responsible towards meeting business KPIs for both client and brand.
* Knowledge of in depth channel planning and management to ensure that no matter what channels mix is used, the business lead can have a constructive strategic input.
* Always on top of all campaigns' planning ensuring a smooth planning process, solid and robust insights, and proper plan creation.
* Be the reference on most of the sections of the consumer journey keeping the big picture in mind and ensuring each campaign plan is covering what is needed from the consumer journey (upper to lower funnel / intent…).
* Be the authority on the customer segments of the client and what is required for the campaigns at hand.
* Be on top and aware of all campaigns' metrics to clients with deep knowledge on the analysis on performance and next steps optimization required to deliver to the client.
* Drive competitive analysis and adapting to market, business and competitive signals ensuring your team is up-to-date on the surrounding scene.
Leadership & Talent Management:
* Responsible for the end-to-end team management including setting goals and objectives, strategies and KPI measurement framework for the team.
* Setting SMART goals and ensuring the cascading of these goals are kept true to the SMART technique.
* Review set goals at least twice a year across the entire team.
* Create a positive culture by leading by example and setting high standards for team members to follow.
* Design and deliver inspirational sessions including a vision and a mission from a leadership perspective that serves the client's strategic objectives for each year and if needed for each big bet campaign.
* Responsible for the recruitment of new team members in collaboration with the recruitment vertical in the talent department ensuring each team member recruited passes probation.
* Responsible on minimizing turnover on the account by address all issues on the team. Ensuring no people are leaving because of people rather leaving due to a lifetime opportunity.
* Aid the team members in managing their day-to-day tasks by supporting, nurturing them and educating them.
* Responsible for gaging and managing stress on the team by understanding the values of each team member and upholding their values true at all times. • Responsible for future proofing the talent on the team by leading by example and upskilling self and team with the latest technologies, techniques, certifications, and methodologies…

Qualifications
* At least ‎15 years of experience in media and advertising and managing clients.
* ‎8-‎10 years' experience in managing and coaching successful teams.
* A strong record of accomplishment of meeting or beating revenue goals and set KPIs.
* A strong network of senior level industry professional and experts.
* Demonstrated success at building industry leading intellectual capital, processes and ideas.
* ‎5 Years of demonstrated hands on experience in performing strategic planning and leadership.
* Thorough understanding of all aspects of selling, designing, performing and delivering large complex projects.
* Strong leadership abilities and the ability to teach and mentor direct reports.
* Project management skills with ability to co-ordinate multiple projects of different scales simultaneously.
* Self-starter and self-motivated with ability to work independently.
* Ability to communicate across all levels of clients (from executive to C-level) and all levels of the agency/client.
* Deep level of understanding of offline and digital media.
* Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
* Exceptional problem-solving skills and constant positivity upholder.
* Proven ability to build close client and inter-agency relationships.
* Strategic thinker - able to challenge the client's brief to provide the right solution.
* Ability to work under pressure and tight timelines.
* Ability to work cross borders to source the best solution for the client.
* Strong understanding of technology and media to be able to operationalize the business.
* Have the ability to understand the impact of the user journey on media and tech.
* Understanding of content within the user journey and how personalization and automation enables and powers that process.
* Advanced understanding of AdTech and MarTech solutions.
* Understands media analytics and its impact on the business.
* Ability to transform data into meaningful insights and business KPIs and vice versa