Saatchi & Saatchi

Vice President, Group Director, Account Planning

Saatchi & Saatchi$129K — $186K *
Business Services
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years in marketing or strategic services, ideally in agency planning or consulting
  • Expertise in qualitative research and innovative methodologies
  • Strong quantitative research interpretation skills
  • Undergraduate degree in social sciences or similar field; graduate degree preferred
  • Familiar with analytics and media research tools, such as MRI
  • Exceptional customer insight and empathy for consumer perspectives
  • Proven leadership and team-building capabilities

Responsibilities

  • Determine how consumer insights can enhance client marketing strategies
  • Translate key customer insights into actionable marketing implications
  • Utilize innovative research methodologies to generate breakthrough insights
  • Collaborate with research teams to maximize the impact of insights
  • Inspire and partner with creatives during program development
  • Lead brainstorming sessions to foster innovative thinking
  • Manage and mentor mid-level planners

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
  • Disability and 401(k) plans
  • Parental and family care leave
  • Tuition reimbursement opportunities
  • Flexible time off policies
  • Family forming assistance programs
Full Job Description
Overview

The Digitas Health LifeBrands Account Planning team uncovers breakthrough customer insights, and helps our teams to turn them into big creative marketing ideas. Planning is part of the creative organization (and tightly integrated with creative) and reports to the SVP/Head of Planning.

The ideal Vice President/Group Director candidate has at least 10 years experience developing and applying breakthrough customer insight in a marketing, creative agency or professional services firm, as well as exceptional thinking, communication and influence skills, leadership, and energy. Most importantly, we seek candidates with enthusiasm for pushing the frontier of how marketing can evolve to meet the needs of an ever more powerful consumer.

The VP/Group Director is the customer insight "lead" for designated Digitas Health LifeBrands clients, with 3 primary responsibilities:
  • Leveraging customer insight to help the team come up with great creative marketing ideas
  • Identifying high impact opportunities for developing breakthrough customer insight
  • Creating innovative approaches for coming up with customer insight

Responsibilities

  • Proactively determining where and how in-depth insight about the consumer's attitude and behavior can help make our clients' marketing more successful and where the opportunities are
  • Identifying key customer insights from existing client/Digitas Health LifeBrands data and translating them into relevant marketing program implications
  • Applying innovative research and "listening" methodologies to create relevant, breakthrough customer insights
  • Partnering with our cutting edge primary researchers, internal analysis group and client data/research organizations to maximize their work's customer insight and marketing program application value
  • Optimizing the impact of customer insight in the creative/program development process by inspiring and partnering with creatives on your team
  • Expertly applying the Digitas Health LifeBrands BrandFit approach to marketing program development, and inspiring your teams to embrace a "pull" approach to marketing
  • Leading team brainstorms that efficiently produce breakthrough insight and maximize team contributions
  • Building productive collaboration and enabling successful teamwork
  • Creating demand for account planning's contributions by demonstrating its impact
  • Managing 2 mid-level planners

Qualifications

  • At least 10 years' experience working in marketing and/or strategic services organizations - e.g., general advertising agency account planning group; management consulting firm; brand strategy firm; large DM firm strategic planning/account planning group
  • Qualitative research expertise and experience applying innovative qualitative research techniques
  • Familiarity with interpreting and applying quantitative research
  • Undergraduate degree in a discipline like history, American studies, political science, anthropology/sociology, journalism, or psychology
  • Graduate degree is also a plus (e.g., MBA, Masters)
  • Familiar with segmentation, analytics and media research tools (e.g., MRI) a plus
  • Exceptional customer insight skills
  • Intuitive ability to understand what makes consumers "tick"
  • Ability to discern the customer insight and "human truth" from mounds of data
  • A passion and empathy for the consumer's perspective
  • Avid follower of how marketing is evolving to meet the needs of the ever more powerful consumer; you can tell the difference between YouTube and an inner tube
  • Ability to challenge the team to uncover "what's in it for the customer";
  • Passionate about applying cutting edge qualitative methodology to the development of insight
  • Experience applying insight to marketing program development
  • A knack for helping creative teams understand an insight and translate it into creative magic
  • Passion for working with creative people
  • Exceptional writing, communication and influence skills
  • An inspirational, compelling personality and way of working
  • you have the ability to quickly gain the trust of clients and internal team members at all levels
  • Excellent teamwork and leadership skills
  • A leader and a team builder
  • Web experience (and passion!) is highly relevant
  • Demonstrated ability to build demand for account planning
  • Experience successfully bringing account planning to clients and teams who haven't used it before
  • Ambition, accountability, and drive
  • You like to do things in a new way, you like convincing people of your point of view, you are driven to succeed

Additional information

Our Publicis Groupe motto "Viva La Différence" means we're better together, and we believe that our differences make us stronger. It means we honor and celebrate all identities, across all facets of intersectionality, and it underpins all that we do as an organization. We are focused on fostering belonging and creating equitable & inclusive experiences for all talent.

Publicis Groupe provides robust and inclusive benefit programs and policies to support the evolving and diverse needs of our talent and enable every person to grow and thrive. Our benefits package includes medical coverage, dental, vision, disability, 401K, as well as parental and family care leave, family forming assistance, tuition reimbursement, and flexible time off.

#LI-AG2

Compensation Range: USD $129,485.00 - USD $186,060.00/Annually. This is the pay range the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on the skills, qualifications, and experience of the applicant along with the requirements of the position, and the Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time. Temporary roles may be eligible to participate in our freelancer/temporary employee medical plan through a third-party benefits administration system once certain criteria have been met. Temporary roles may also qualify for participation in our 401(k) plan after eligibility criteria have been met. For regular roles, the Company will offer medical coverage, dental, vision, disability, 401k, and paid time off. The Company anticipates the application deadline for this job posting will be 8/16/2026.

About Saatchi & Saatchi

Saatchi & Saatchi is a global advertising agency headquartered in New York City. The company was founded in London in 1970 by brothers Maurice and Charles Saatchi and is now part of the Publicis Groupe, a French multinational advertising and public relations company. Saatchi & Saatchi has over 6,000 employees in 114 countries and provides a range of advertising and marketing services to clients in various industries, including automotive, consumer goods, financial services, and telecommunications. The company is known for its creative and innovative advertising campaigns, including the iconic 'Nothing is Impossible' campaign for Toyota. Saatchi & Saatchi has won numerous awards for its work, including Cannes Lions, Clios, and Effies.
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