Senior Account Manager

This is an exciting opportunity to coordinate and facilitate the production and delivery of in-store Point of Sale (POS) for the M&S Food account.  The Senior Account Manager works directly with the M&S Marketing in store team, liaising with key stakeholders and is responsible for the keeping of all campaigns within budget and on time.   The role exists in support of the Senior Account Director and is integral to the effective running of the marketing function within M&S Food, coordinating the delivery of all administrative elements of marketing campaigns and activity.  Working closely with various M&S teams, the role will involve leading the ITG team to hit key critical path deadlines so that artworks, production briefs and costs are approved by key stakeholders when required, in turn allowing for a seamless campaign delivery to stores.

Your day to day responsibilities include:

• Line managing and developing Account Managers within the team, providing clear direction, support and regular feedback to ensure a high standard of delivery across all campaigns.
• Acting as the first point of escalation for the team, proactively resolving issues, removing blockers and ensuring campaigns remain on track.
• Leading by example in ways of working, setting the standard for pace, organisation, attention to detail and stakeholder management.
• Driving momentum across projects, keeping activity moving at pace and ensuring all teams are aligned to critical path deadlines.
• Receiving briefs from the from the client (M&S Marketing) and clearly communicating timelines, creative templates that will be followed and costings.
• Linking all briefs back to your direct teams and managing the relationships between M&S Marketing and ITG team to ensure campaigns run smoothly and artwork can be approved in good time.
• Support on pre-production meetings with your Account Mangers per campaign where required (prior to briefing artwork) to ensure M&S marketing have given a clear finalized artwork brief
• Maintain & manage a great relationship with ITG Artwork Production Team (this team are based in Birmingham at ITG Head Office) and flag urgent or large campaigns in advance, giving them realistic deadlines in order to manage our studios resource and client’s expectations of when artworks will be fulfilled
• Lead the team to brief final artwork to ITG Production team using pre-approved templates, with enough time for them to complete the job well, especially during busy periods. Avoid bottle neck artwork periods by pre-planning and having open discussions with the wider team on when artwork is expected to be briefed.
• You will be the first point of contact & escalation for our main stakeholder on M&S Food and therefore crucial to be in the detail across the full campaign.
• You will accurately manage information from the M&S business units, formulating full production and artwork briefs, liaising with the Production Director to produce detailed print specifications and maintaining print allocations for POS material via our tech system, Media Centre.
• Ensure that printers have been engaged on each campaign on deadlines, workload and realistic timings on when they will receive Purchase Order and final artwork working closely with our Production Director
• Ensure all M&S cost trackers for POS are kept up to date, and costs are communicated regularly with ITG account team, ITG Senior Account Director and M&S marketing.
• Ensure Purchase Orders are raised in good time in advance of the file to print date and all issues are flagged in advance with the M&S planning manager.