Director

M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment are looking for a Director/Managing Partner to lead our operations, clients and office in Amsterdam. This is an exciting and totally new opportunity to drive continued growth in the region, responsible for: the commercials, the team, the work and the cultural impact.

The Role:

You play a pivotal role in shaping and driving innovative work that pushes the boundaries and is industry defining. Your deep understanding of global cultural trends, consumer behaviour, and passion points across Sport & Entertainment will enable you to lead multidisciplinary teams in crafting compelling narratives and campaigns that connect brands to consumers through the things the love, in authentic and meaningful ways.

You are a visionary leader with a strategic mindset, exceptional communication skills, with a passion for culture and fostering creative and inclusive work environments

What you'll do:

You will be responsible for driving the continued growth of our Amsterdam business across Sport & Entertainment clients, leading commercials, the team, the work and the agency:

1. THE COMMERCIALS

As a Director/Managing Partner you are responsible for the commercial success of your department, contributing to the commercial success of the business, which includes:

• Achieving financial targets and goals
• Procuring and progressing new business leads
• Leading pitch work to success
• Negotiating rates and payment structures that are financially efficient
• Managing team time to ensure profitability of accounts and projects
• Developing the commercial acumen of the team underneath you
• Identifying risks to revenue early with a plan to halt or backfill

You are expected to have first-class financial literacy and a forensic knowledge of your numbers to include:

• Tight management of income and pipeline, ensuring figures are kept up to date and that you are abreast of all department-related financial information
• A close grip on income v expenditure, ensuring your department is profitable to the required margins and managing your staff costs and overheads diligently
• Maintaining realistic forecasts to manage the commercial profile of your department and diagnose any areas of focus
• Ensuring finance processes are adhered to and commercial paperwork is completed promptly and in line with audit and internal regulations

You should make prudent decisions about the running of your department to ensure cost-base efficiency and pre-empt financial considerations to ensure current and future success. You should work with other departments across the M+C Saatchi S&E and Group network to find staffing efficiencies and solutions that benefit the commercial profile of the business as a whole to ensure:

• Management of cost-base
• Positive utilisation levels
• Best use of skillset and client need to deliver successful work

2. THE TEAM

You are responsible overseeing all personnel in the Amsterdam office, to include:

•  Setting and maintaining a culture for the team
• Being an inspirational figurehead
• Pre-empting and trouble-shooting any team issues
• Talent mapping key individuals to ensure retention of first-class staff
• Maintenance of a good retention rate to ensure client stability, department efficiency and to maximise the benefits of long-standing tenure 

You are responsible for maintaining an A-class team:

• Recruiting and retaining first-class talent
• Quick decision-making or corrective action against hires that don’t meet agency standards
• Developing team members to ensure progression, addressing any performance issues or area of weakness to set them up for success
• Adapting approach to each individual

3. THE WORK

Clients should work with the agency because of their working relationship with you and your team, and because of our exceptional output:

• Socialising and close relationship building with clients to support retention, growth and prospecting
• Nimble and personalised approach to clients, leaning into who they are and how we can ensure a long-term relationship with them
• Providing first-class counsel and strategic and creative oversight across the work
• Maintaining standards of output and assuming responsibility for the work your team delivers, ensuring best in class work across all deliverables- keeping our standards high and teams accountable
• Driving industry-defining work to ensure our campaigns are celebrated and talked about
• Assume accountability for KPIs
• Have periodical transparent conversations with clients around reviews/performance to pre-empt and address any issues early on

4. THE AGENCY

The agency is a sum of its parts and while departmental focus is your core area of responsibility, you play a huge role in ensuring the success of the business overall, both culturally and commercially

• Having a prominent voice across the business as a leader of the company
• A key voice in agency-wide decision making
• Working collaboratively with other offices and teams and encouraging you teams to work in a collaborative and integrated way, while celebrating their specialisms
• Representing the business internally, working with other parts of the group to work towards overall growth plans
• Representing the business externally, via industry events, trade press, networking and profile work
• Maintaining the upmost professionalism and discretion as an ambassador of the agency, keeping agency information private and confidential and maintaining the integrity of the business

ABOUT M+C SAATCHI SPORT & ENTERTAINMENT

M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment is ‘the’ Passions Agency – we create brand impact through the things people love, forging authentic connections between brands and consumers through their love of sport, entertainment, and culture.

Our clients include, adidas, Ballantine’s, Barclaycard, Barclays, Jameson, Heineken, Kia, LEGO and Unilever. With offices in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Dubai, Sydney, New York and Johannesburg, a team of specialists deliver the agency’s core disciplines across sport, entertainment and lifestyle, including sponsorship consultancy, rights amplification, PR, branded content creation & experiential production. Our work has been awarded across the board, including seventh-time Agency of the Year at the Sport Industry Awards and two-time large Agency of the Year at the UK Sponsorship Awards.

M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment sits within the M+C Saatchi Group. Beyond this, the M+C Saatchi global network spans 23 countries with major hubs in the UK, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia and Australia.

ABOUT M+C SAATCHI GROUP

M+C Saatchi Group has pledged its commitment to create a company that values difference, with an inclusive culture. As part of this M+C Saatchi Group continues to be an Equal Opportunity Employer which does not and shall not discriminate, celebrates diversity and bases all hiring and promotion decisions solely on merit, without regard for any personal characteristics.

If you require any reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment and selection process, please make us aware as part of your application.

All employee information is kept confidential according to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).