Hiring - Business Director
- jen
- May 6
- 7 min read
Updated: Jul 15
INTRODUCTION TO CRAFT
Craft Media London launched in 2018 with the intention of filling the strategic hole
that exists between media and creative agencies. We focus solely on
communication strategy, plugging into the planning teams at creative agencies or
clients directly to help determine exactly what comms needs to do in order to
meet business objectives. We had noticed (and don’t tell them this….) that creative
agency planning wasn’t business rigorous enough so ideas were just that, ideas.
And media agencies were overly focused on the commercial numbers which
resulted in bland planning with no creative leap. So, we sit in the middle, acting as
an interpreter and ensuring that we deliver campaigns that are both effective and
efficient.
We are a small specialist strategic agency. This is important as it means that we
can get to the answer faster than most agency teams. It means that we don’t
have to send a squad of people to a meeting each with their own areas of
expertise. We can give you an immediate point of view based on years of
experience rather than waiting for a piece of analysis to be done. It also means
that we absolutely know our stuff. We have a reputation as the Crafty team who
get to grips with complicated comms challenges, give creative agencies an
opportunity to create great and different work and who play nicely alongside
every partner.
If media buying is needed, we have a relationship with all the independent
agencies (and some of the networks) which we partner with to provide this
specialism.
Craft provides strategic direction and planning and we help clients identify the
right agency for them and they would focus on delivery/buying.
Small but mighty
We are small but have already started to make our mark, working with startups
like Smol and Ruggable, through to established brands which needed some
strategic love – like Fever Tree, Selfridges, Wagamama & Interflora through to the
biggest brands in the country and worldwide – Deloitte, Twinings, BrewDog and BT.
We never know what the next brief might be….
Business Director
This role is to take on a leadership position with our most important retained
clients and a key role in managing a growing team of Planners.
As we’ve grown, we’re now updating our Planning Team structure to be set up in
‘pods'.
Business Directors will lead a pod of clients; there will be retained clients in
these pods and projects will be assigned based on capacity and Planner ‘fit.'
It is a role which requires you to strike a balance between being ‘in the weeds’ enough to
know what’s going on: being involved in the day-to-day, with demonstrating
leadership so that clients feel they can share feedback and have an escalation
point.
This role requires you to take a strategic view of our client relationship, identifying
areas we need to improve and also identifying opportunities for us to leverage
additional services.
While this is a client leadership position it will require you to dive into day-to-day
business when required e.g. covering off holidays or during intense campaign
periods. We also expect our BDs to be strong communications planners so they
can recognise and contribute to our high standard of work.
We want to do work that makes others jealous, which means we need to do things that they can’t or won’t.
And we need to do it with style.
Key Requirements:
Client Relationship Management:
Maintain the highest levels of client service across their accounts
where they are the account lead or support.
Have oversight of the client relationships across retained clients and
projects within your ‘pod'.
Keeping an eye on our scope and general relationship health of clients
within your pod - making sure we are servicing them well enough and
there is space and time for them to feedback regularly.
Make sure we are making the right connections in their business -
feeding into insight, broader marketing, editorial teams etc. where
relevant.
Leading on major projects: Annual strategy, reviews, measurement plan
etc. Providing regular feedback and guidance to the wider team about
how we can maintain best-in-class client service
Quality: To maintain the highest standard of our planning output, to coach,
teach, amend and create plans that we can be proud of. They are
responsible for raising the quality of the agency’s output, ensuring that
Craft’s planning output is always the most effective and brilliant iteration of
the campaign strategy.
Inter-Agency Relationships: They own the relationship with Craft’s media buying
agency partners, maintaining contact with relevant senior stakeholders and
facilitating bi-annual check ins. The appropriate SLA is in place to ensure that there is a seamless flow between Craft and our partners.
Strong Planning skills: Ability to recognise and produce high quality
communications responses across paid, owned, earned and shared
touchpoints.
Team Management: Practical management of Planning pod
Being a point of escalation for line management challenges
Having a bird's eye view on team holidays, keeping an eye on how
they’re phased and clash management.
Providing constructive feedback, internally and externally, to maintain healthy relationships.
The Crafty Planning Team:
At Craft we have the ambition of becoming the best planning team in the UK. It’s a
big ambition that we will judge by our ratio of awards to staff numbers, versus
other agencies.
Our mindset can be summarised as ‘Taking one step further’.
This doesn’t mean pushing every part of every plan and spending 1000 years to get to an answer. It means finding an opportunity to make at least one part of the plan better than it
would have been, every time.
There are three key planning behaviours supporting our mindset. By making these
a part of our day to day, we produce world class campaigns:
We build around micro-insights: Whilst the big game changing
sledgehammer insights are important, we don’t stop there. We keep
investigating to find ‘micro’ insights that may affect how we execute a plan,
and weave these throughout.
We are audience obsessives: We identify interesting target audiences,
avoid lazy demographic platitudes and use a diverse range of data sources
to complete our understanding. Then we bring them to life through brilliant
storytelling.
We foster a culture of creativity: We reject the notion that creativity is
something people either have or they don’t. We use a number of techniques
to come up with ideas that get campaigns truly noticed.
Key behaviours:
They lead by example, ensuring that their own planning output and
contribution is of exemplary quality
They bring high levels of enthusiasm to everything they do, and care about
making a difference to the business
They can decisively determine which tasks to own and which to delegate to
the other members of the planning team - always remembering that at
Craft, we’re all builders, not surfers.
As you settle into your role, we encourage you to lean into understanding as much
about your client’s business as possible - the structure of the organisation, how
they make money, the relationships with their other agency partners. All of this
brings us closer to our clients and will help build and maintain really strong
relationships.
Experience
7+ years of experience within a media / communications agency.
Measure of Success
This role will be judged against the specific delivery of the outlined tasks by 360 degree feedback from Craft colleagues, key client personnel and media agency key contacts.
Process:
Send CV & note summarising why you would like to work at Craft to
Shortlist invited to have a 30 min chat with one of the Partners
Shortlist will be given a short brief to demonstrating your thinking style
Present to Hiring Manager & Founders
Final Selection
Timing
It is important we find the right person for this role so we are not putting time
pressure on needing this to be filled by a date. We would rather give ourselves
time to find the right person.
Salary bracket & benefits
This role would be offered £65k - £90k depending on experience.
You would be eligible for the Craft Pension, Aviva health cover and the Company
bonus scheme.
IT and equipment
You will be provided with a MacBook, additional accessories required will be
supplied on request. We work primarily on Google Drive, with Slack, we also provide Office 365 to enable better collaboration with some clients and agencies.
We stay in contact across email, Slack and WhatsApp depending on type of
project, account and other stakeholder involved.
You will provide your own mobile phone, of which 75% of the bill can be expensed
monthly back to Craft.
We are supported by an IT contractor for any issues.
Working hours, flexibility and holiday
Craft operates with a flexible working policy:
We are all in the office on Thursdays.
Our working hours are 9.00am - 5.30pm
We then expect in a normal week Craft staff come into the office 3+ times or more.
This is not mandated and you can speak to your line manager about what working
style is best for the task you are working on.
We believe in hiring grown-ups and trusting you, but we ask you to think about:
‘What working pattern is best for me?” as well as ‘What working pattern is best for
my team?’
We operate a right to disconnect policy ensuring clarity in the break between work
and personal life is clear and transparent for all staff.
You are entitled to 28 days annual leave a year, 3 of which are taken between
Christmas & New Year.
Work from Anywhere (WFA)
We offer 1 week (5 working days) a year where you can work from anywhere. You need to ensure your hours are shifted or co-ordinated with your team to ensure all client needs & team needs can be accommodated.
It is your responsibility to ensure WiFi is adequate for work requirements.
Please note that we allow working from a parent or family member’s house and
don’t count this towards your WFA allowance. Working from a parent or family
member’s house should only ever be for one or two days, you should still be in the
office three to five days a week. If you’re travelling to a family home, please do this
in the evening after work and not during the working day. This need not count as
WFA. If your family live abroad, your working time should align to the standard GMT
working hours.
Diversity
We actively encourage applications from those with diverse backgrounds.
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