Associate Media Director

ABOUT THE ROLE We are looking for an Associate Media Director to lead integrated media strategy and planning for a portfolio of B2B and consumer clients, with a particular focus on financial services. You'll be the senior media strategist on your accounts: starting from each client's business goals, defining what success looks like in commercial terms, and building the audience, channel, and investment strategy to get there. You'll partner closely with Strategy, Creative, Analytics, PMO, and Client Leadership teams, as well as the activation specialists who bring plans to life in market. The right person for this role thinks like a business advisor first: someone who can explain to a CMO or head of distribution how media is moving the numbers they care about, who uses AI-powered tools to work faster and smarter, and who builds a team that does the same. You'll build long-term relationships with senior clients and supervise and mentor junior members of the media team. YOUR DAY TO DAY Media Strategy & Planning • Translate client business objectives and commercial targets (e.g., asset growth and net flows, advisor engagement, new accounts, qualified pipeline, customer lifetime value) into clear media strategies, investment frameworks, and budget and channel allocations • Develop integrated, full-funnel media plans across paid, owned, and earned channels that balance long-term brand building with near-term demand, and make a clear case for how each investment ladders up to business results • Lead audience strategy, segmentation, and journey development across complex decision-makers, including B2B buying committees, financial advisors and intermediaries, institutional investors, and consumers • Uncover the audience, category, and competitive insights that sharpen strategy, drawing on syndicated research, first-party data, and AI-assisted analysis • Build scenario plans and forecasts that show clients the expected business impact of different investment levels and channel mixes Measurement & Business Impact • Define success up front in business terms, and partner with Analytics to build measurement frameworks that connect media investment to outcomes such as leads, pipeline, revenue, and asset growth • Bring a test-and-learn mindset to every account, applying incrementality testing, lift studies, media mix modeling, and attribution, and knowing which approach best answers which business question • Turn performance data into investment recommendations: shift budget toward what is driving business results, and help clients understand the tradeoffs behind each decision • Ensure clean connections between media platforms and client marketing automation and CRM systems so media can be tied to downstream results • Provide oversight of campaign activation and tracking (taxonomy, tagging, conversion tracking), partnering with planners and activation specialists to ensure execution stays true to strategy AI-Enabled Ways of Working • Use AI-powered tools across the planning workflow (research, audience insight, competitive analysis, plan development, scenario modeling, and reporting) to reduce manual work and create more time for strategic thinking • Evaluate the AI capabilities emerging in media platforms, planning tools, and agency workflows; pilot what is promising and help the team adopt it with sound judgment around data privacy, accuracy, and client compliance requirements • Stay current on emerging media, platforms, and how AI is changing the way audiences discover and research brands, and bring timely points of view to internal teams and clients Client Leadership • Serve as the senior media voice on your accounts, leading status meetings and presenting plans and results as clear business stories for director-, VP-, an