Planning Director

Agency :

Havas Media Group

Job Description :

Planning Director | BBC

About Havas Media Network

Havas Media Network (HMN) employees over 950 people in the UK & Ireland. We are passionate about helping our clients create more Meaningful Brands through the creation and delivery of more valuable experiences. Our Havas mission: To make a meaningful difference to the brands, the businesses and the lives of the people we work with.

HMN UK spans London, Leeds, Manchester & Edinburgh, servicing our clients brilliantly through our agencies including Ledger Bennett, Havas Market, Havas Media, Arena Media, Forward Media, DMPG and Havas Play Network.

Our Ambition

At Havas Media Network we create Meaningful Media that drives growth for the world’s most ambitious brands. Guided by our values—Human at Heart, Head for Rigour, and Mind for Flair—we embed genuine human insight, data-driven discipline and creative daring into everything we do.

This role sits at the heart of that promise—bridging day-to-day planning with specialist capabilities to ensure data-driven thinking enhances every stage of media delivery.

The Role

The BBC is our flagship account and as such working on the BBC is a privilege and we want people to join the account who understand the responsibility involved.

The Planning Director plays a vital role as guardian of the media and communication planning craft, responsible for getting to the heart of the BBC’s challenges and uncovering appropriate media solutions and strategies. The right candidate will be able to manage multiple tasks at once and thrive in a fast-paced and busy environment.

You’ll make real impact on some of the UK's most beloved TV shows. This is a unique opportunity to work across a diverse portfolio of entertainment content - from the thrilling drama of Traitors, epic journeys of Race Across the World, electrifying energy of Glastonbury and excitement of the greatest sporting moments such as the Women’s World Cup. This role also extends across the broader portfolio of BBC products, including Sounds, News and Kids.

What behaviours we need from you:

As Planning Director, you are the heartbeat of the agency, your team and often your client’s gateway to the Havas. You will be a positive, motivated individual with an attitude and mindset to convey real care, craft, and creativity.

For your team, you will be a leading figure, and someone that will play a pivotal role in motivating those around you, bridging the requirements of both the client and wider agency.

You will:

• Work with specialist team leads to manage planning and activation workstreams, ensuring any bottlenecks are mitigated and clients are kept aware of campaign status.
• Manage upwards and sideways effectively, provide solutions when escalating campaign or process issues to SLT, Specialist ADs and cross-functional teams.
• Proactively develop more junior members of the team and draft clear objectives, including ownership of appropriate appraisals.
• Get the most out of your team, delegate authority to match their job level and hold them accountable.

For your clients, you are representing the best of Havas. The face of our offering and someone that can build brilliant, trusted relationships based on exceptional work and genuine interest in their business. You will be someone who:

• Actively seeks out the opinions from others in the Havas Village to strengthen planning recommendations.
• Builds collaborative relationships with Media Owners.
• Works with partners to identify growth opportunities on the account, proactively pursuing these opportunities and making them a reality.
• Independently interprets insight and PCA data to evolve planning responses into actionable channel briefs and media plans.
• Suggests well thought through, reasoned alternatives to identify better strategic and commercial opportunities.
• Presents to senior client stakeholders, clear and well thought out proposals and recommendations.

Role Competencies:

The successful candidate will be able to deliver upon the following:

• Apply planning expertise and industry knowledge to enhance planning responses, identify process efficiencies in activation oversight, and lead on specialist workstreams.
• Is able to employ best practice methodology from inside and outside the business.
• Identifies gaps in information and looks to close them, but is also able to make assumptions in order to act.
• Demonstrate working knowledge of Havas products and media owner partnerships, applying these to deliver campaign solutions that meet client objectives.
• Is able to develop project plans and justify their decision-making process based on established principles
• Able to evaluate responses and proposals brought forth by more junior members and apply a more advanced lens based on knowledge of client’s business (sales, targets, broader business goals).
• Able to use and demonstrate the use of tools in appropriate circumstances. Can direct team in appropriate sources of information to test hypotheses or find information.
• Provide clear KPIs to evaluate campaign effectiveness.

What’s on offer from Havas:

• We want you to do the best work of your career. To support you in managing your career, as well as your commitments and priorities in your life. We have created a modern, market leading approach to personal benefits, wellbeing, and care:
• We have shown at Havas, that we can all work productively in a new Hybrid manner .
• To give you even more flexibility, and support a better balance between work and life, Havas employees are given the opportunity to work remotely from anywhere in the world for up to 4 weeks per calendar year.
• Alongside a generous holiday allocation and birthday off, we are all allocated one day per quarter as mental health days. These are simply days you can take off, guilt free and without eating into your holiday allowance.
• We have modernised and introduced a market leading parental package for our employees. The Parental Life at Havas policy enhances, broadens, and encourages the uptake of parental leave for all parents, regardless of gender, type of relationship, type of parentship or any other potentially defining characteristic.
• We also haven’t forgotten about those benefits that make a meaningful difference to you personally, from a Rental Deposit Loan (so you can secure your new place), season ticket loan to ease travel and free mortgage advice for the getting on the property ladder we have you covered and much more!
• We haven’t lost the fun stuff either, subsidised gym membership, social club, bar nights, early Friday finishes.

We work in a hybrid working model – in office and remotely

Current policy is for minimum 3 days in office.

Office Location:

Manchester – Havas Media office

Contract Type :

Permanent

Here at Havas across the group we pride ourselves on being committed to offering equal opportunities to all potential employees and have zero tolerance for discrimination. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applicants irrespective of age, sex, race, ethnicity, disability and other factors that have no bearing on an individual’s ability to perform their job.

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About Us

Founded in 1835 by Charles-Louis Havas, Havas is one of the world’s largest global communications groups, with more than 23,000 people in over 100 countries sharing one single mission: to make a meaningful difference to brands, businesses, and people. Havas has developed a fully integrated model covering all communications activities. The teams of the three business units, Creative, Media and Health & You, work together with agility and in perfect synergy to offer clients tailor-made, meaningful, innovative and entertainment-oriented solutions that support them in their positive transformation.

Life at Havas

We take great pride in our Havas family. They bring many unique personalities, perspectives and passions to their work. Collaboration is at the core of how we operate, and Havas Villages are the homes we work in. We encourage our people to take advantage of our many opportunities to learn and grow. Through local agency training sessions, our unique global and development programs, we offer our people endless opportunities to explore.

Havas Creative Network

At Havas, we believe creativity isn’t just a description of our business, it is part of our agencies’ DNA. We bring together some of the industry’s most creative and accomplished agencies. By combining creative expertise with the strategic and innovative power of our Villages, we can build seamless teams around the individual needs of each of our clients.

Havas Media Network

We create the best media experience, capitalizing on the most meaningful media to build more meaningful brands. We know how to connect a client with their target audience – in the context of where they are, through the content they pay attention to. We deliver this expertise through the Mx System, our global operating methodology and strategic planning process, that creates value for our clients by turning consumer intelligence into clear growth targets, aligning stakeholders and KPIs, and measuring the impact of media experiences.

Havas Health

Driven by human purpose and focused on the betterment of humanity through health, Havas Health & You leverages a global collection of experts and individuals to help people everywhere live healthier lives. With a spirit rooted in innovation, creativity, and education, we are dedicated to delivering consistent excellence and groundbreaking work.