KINESSO - EVP, Performance Marketing

Position Summary

As a client-oriented and people-focused leader with significant digital activation experience across search, social, programmatic and eCommerce/retail media, you’re a champion of delivering tech-driven performance marketing solutions that enable brands to turn action into outcomes.

In this senior role, your performance-mind and gravitas will lend itself exceptionally to UM, with whom you’ll partner every day. You will represent our Addressable Activation Craft, directly overseeing the management of team members across UM client business.

You will enable a foundational bridge between Activation and Design Craft (planning) ways of working, flexing your leadership muscle and expertise to seamlessly deliver client objectives. In partnership with UM Business Leadership, you will proactively integrate Addressable Activation capabilities within client-centric teams, helping to scale delivery excellence in a standardized way.

Paramount to this role is your ability to foster a high-performing culture where collaboration and shared accountability drive collective success. As a key member of the KINESSO Senior Leadership Team, you will oversee the implementation of our market-leading approach to Addressable Activation, advancing capabilities by working alongside senior activation leads to manage practioners across digital media channels. Through this leadership remit, you will be tasked with delivering against 4 priority objectives:

You will be solutions-oriented, tasked with driving client satisfaction and building successful cross-Craft partnerships with senior leaders across the agency network.

Your mastery in tech-driven performance media and cross-channel addressable activation is crucial, but we equally value your collaborative spirt, ability to problem solve and lead a large team by example, playing an active role in cultivating a healthy culture.

Key Responsibilities:

Business Partnership

• Drive strategic alignment and partnership between KINESSO and UM, collaborating with senior leaders to deliver performance and value for clients.
• Create and articulate a unified approach to activating addressable media across channels and formats with consistency, speed and accuracy.
• Partner with UM to promptly solution items across teams, recognizing and actioning feedback to ensure high client satisfaction.
• In collaboration with key stakeholders, support UM’s new business efforts by helping to mobilize the very best resources across KINESSO teams, ensuring excellence in the delivery of RFI/RFP materials and pitch assignments.
• Liase with finance, operations and business leadership to input into building team resourcing and hiring new roles to deliver upon the needs of client scopes.
• Drive collaboration with key digital media partners and tech platforms to meet/exceed client performance goals, adopt innovative solutions to stay ahead of the curve and deliver upon agency partnership initiatives.
• Partner with the KINESSO Solutions & Professional Services teams and UM Business Leadership to help identify and grow client scopes/new opportunities.
• Contribute to increasing agency and client reputation through press mentions, participation in industry events and surfacing case studies for awards consideration.

Delivery Excellence

• Ensure teams efficiently & effectively scale delivery for clients by adopting the IPG Mediabrands standard across the end-to-end media campaign process and within activation channel workflows.
• Foster collaboration with Design and Investment Crafts on media plan requirements and partner forecast accuracy.
• Oversee Addressable Activation team activities, accountabilities and outputs. Examples include performance strategy, addressable media planning, digital partner allocation, tactical format recommendations, taxonomy compliance, platform set-up, QA, execution, optimization, pacing and delivery to plan, performance reporting, billing & reconciliation.
• Serve as an escalation point and interface with internal/external stakeholders to promptly resolve action items.
• Drive media effectiveness, mitigate delivery issues, and successfully deliver campaigns to-market as per standardized SLAs and KPIs.
• In partnership with Delivery Operations and Channel Expertise, improve Craft standards by championing adoption of features & functionality within Interact, as well as new workflow automation opportunities.
• Ensure integrated ways of working across Crafts and client-centric teams.
• Drive accountability between local teams and Global Capabilities Centres.

Team Oversight

• Lead, mentor and develop a team of practioners by providing ongoing performance feedback, supporting professional development goals and inspiring great results.
• Drive talent retention and improve team eNPS.
• Effectively communicate agency objectives and expected key results, driving accountability of goal achievement and implementation of priority initiatives.
• Serve as a senior resource for team advice & counsel.
• Staff and optimize team structures/role mix in line with utilization goals and evolving client and organizational needs.
• In partnership with key stakeholders, proactively identify key opportunities on UM business, while taking actions to ensure ongoing service-level quality, campaign delivery and optimal workflows to better serve the client.
• Partner with the Learning & Development and Channel Expertise groups to build high-performing teams and enhance employee experience across onboarding, talent development/team dynamics, and upskilling across channels/platforms through training & certifications.

Desired Skills & Experience

• Professional or educational background in Marketing and/or Advertising would give leverage to this application
• Cross-channel media expertise with a minimum fifteen (15) years’ experience focused in full-funnel performance marketing, paid digital media activation and team management
• Full understanding of the roles of various digital channels
• Proficient with digital media partner/platform management and ads solutions across top DSPs and SSPs (e.g. Google Marketing Platform, Meta, Amazon Ads, TikTok, The Trade Desk, Snap, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Spotify, Yahoo DSP, Reddit, Vistar, Criteo, Loblaw Advance, Walmart Connect, Instacart, Magnite, Index Exchange, Sharethrough, PubMatic, etc.)
• Familiarity with integrated 360 media planning and ability to bridge between planning and activation through strong understanding of integrated ways of working and process hand-offs
• Fundamental knowledge of digital ad operations, trafficking and website tagging processes
• History of developing positive business relationships internally and externally, oriented towards a client-service mindset
• Senior agency experience managing digital media delivery across a portfolio of clients
• Solutions oriented and approaches obstacles with creativity and resolve
• Ability to manage complexity across multiple groups, clients and inter-agency partners
• Active involvement in developing capabilities of direct reports, prioritizing and delegating work accordingly
• Exposure to data-driven technology solutions, audience strategy & activation, and performance analytics
• Finance experience, complimented by strong negotiation skills
• Strong learning agility, with a passion for continuous development
• Excellent communication skills (both written and verbal)
• Independent thinker with highly developed organizational skills and a strong attention to detail and accuracy
• Ability to work well under pressure and multi-task in a fast-paced environment
• Ability to work collaboratively as well as independently
• Ability to investigate, analyze & solve problems, and clearly communicate results

KINESSO is the technology-driven performance marketing agency that sits at the very heart of IPG Mediabrands, providing actionable growth for both our agency partners and clients. We turn 'action' into 'outcome' for our clients, leveraging our unique capabilities in optimization, analytics, AI, and experimentation. KINESSO has brought together the collective power of what was formerly Matterkind, Reprise, and Kinesso under one collective entity that will serve as the most powerful delivery engine in the industry. We have extensive offerings spanning across performance marketing and data and technology. Fueled by a deep understanding of consumer behavior, we offer an end-to-end engine of planning and optimization while also delivering on data-driven strategy for social platforms, actionable growth in e-commerce, and creating curated marketplaces specific to each client's function and needs. The company has more than 6,000 employees operating in more than 60 countries. Learn more at www.KINESSO.com

KINESSO is an equal opportunity employer, committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, colour, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, citizenship, genetic information, disability, or any other basis prohibited by applicable federal, provincial, or municipal law. If you require an accommodation in any aspect of the selection process, please reach out to canadatalent@mbww.com