Account Director

Who We Are

TBWA\Media Arts Lab (or MAL as you'll hear us called) is the bespoke global advertising agency dedicated solely to Apple. Our mission is to create smart, simple and iconic work that transforms business and makes culture for the world's best brand.

Role

The Account Director is a senior role running the origination workstream of the Apple business across Southeast Asia.

Account Directors at MAL must be natural leaders and communicators, able to juggle multiple responsibilities. Influence at MAL only works when people are hands on with the business vs. solely having leadership roles. It allows for greater understanding of the ins and outs of the business and how the client and the agency works organizationally. Someone who can learn the Apple and MAL way but is also experienced, strong-minded and mature enough to be able to challenge how things are done, both internally as well as with the client. We’re looking for a leader who will collaborate and listen, but will have the confidence to make decisions for the greater good of the agency and demonstrate the positive impact change can have on people and the entire organization.

Responsibilities

The Business:

· A strategic and big picture thinker.

· Ability to operationalize and align different disciplines around the core campaign objectives; from Comms, Creative and Strategy through to Social, Digital & Production.

· Someone who can identify opportunities for growth; whether that be the evolution of a brief, or new business across the pod.

· Shepherd, and champion ideas – make the work better by bringing fresh thinking and relevant POVs to the table while ensuring it is strategically sound and culturally relevant.

· Someone who challenges the status quo and pushes the team to operate in spaces that MAL has not been to before.

· A partner to the Creative and Strategy pod leads.

Collaboration & People Management:

· Strong client partnership skills: ability to scale up and down as necessary.

· Experience partnering with group-level leadership across Creative, Production & Strategy to create large-scale campaigns.

· Proven leadership skills managing large internal teams across different levels of seniority.

· Ensure proper training and mentoring of junior team members and sharing best practices or learnings with the Account Department

· Model exemplary client management skills to the rest of the department: be responsible for the team showing up to meetings the MAL way – simple, buttoned down, with exceptional thinking

· Actively track progress of team members through regular performance check-ins, ensuring they have clear goals, direct feedback & balanced workloads to grow appropriately

Who will thrive in this role?

· Someone who is mature and unflappable under pressure and tight deadlines, with an art for solving problems

· Someone with an unrelenting ambition to create smart, simple, iconic work for our client

· A master communicator – someone who can give clear direction and support to the team and client

· Desire to partner with other members of the Account leadership team to continuously evolve process, collaboration, and DEI & culture initiatives for the department and wider agency.

· Global perspective is critical

· A strong point of view, with the emotional intelligence to know when to voice a POV vs. when to listen.

· Someone with the ability to turn lessons learned from each project and experience into training tools & growth opportunities