Senior Media Planning Director, GOC

About WPP Media

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. With exceptional talent, trusted data and intelligence, and world-class partnerships – all united by our pioneering agentic marketing platform, WPP Open – we help clients navigate change, capture opportunity, and deliver transformational growth.

WPP Media is WPP's AI-driven media operating unit, bringing together media, data, and partnerships to deliver creative personalisation at scale. Connected through WPP Open and powered by Open Intelligence, clients see exactly where, how, and why their media investment is working.

For more information, visit wppmedia.com.

The Senior Director, Client Development is responsible for building and leading the Client Development discipline for GOC.

The role strengthens stakeholder relationships, drives growth, and establishes consistent approaches to client and market engagement across the GOC portfolio. While directly representing selected strategic accounts in client forums, the primary focus is to create a scalable Client Development capability through frameworks, governance, stakeholder engagement practices and communities of practice.

The role acts as the senior advocate for GOC capabilities with clients, markets and account teams, helping increase awareness, adoption and growth opportunities across the GOC portfolio.

The role serves as the voice of the client and market within GOC, ensuring stakeholder feedback and emerging client needs are reflected in future capability priorities and investment decisions.

Ownership of capability development, service excellence, operational standards, training, automation, innovation, GCS engagement and service line leadership remains with the relevant capability leaders.

The role also partners with counterparts across other GOCs to promote consistent engagement approaches for global clients served by multiple GOCs.

Key Responsibilities

1. Build the Client Development Discipline

• Define the Client Development vision, operating model and success measures.

• Work with L&D to create frameworks, playbooks and governance for stakeholder engagement.

• Establish standards for client, market and agency interactions.

• Build a scalable and repeatable Client Development capability across GOC.

• Partner with capability leaders to ensure client-facing engagement approaches accurately reflect GOC capabilities, strengths and strategic priorities.

1. Lead Strategic Client Relationships

• Act as the senior relationship owner for selected strategic accounts.

• Guide account leads in building and managing senior stakeholder relationships.

• Lead executive engagement and business reviews.

• Identify growth, transformation and expansion opportunities.

• Provide executive relationship support where required.

1. Lead the Client Development Community

• Create a community of practice for account leaders managing major client relationships, including leaders responsible for accounts.

• Establish and chair a GOC Client Development Forum.

• Partner with account leaders to strengthen stakeholder engagement and relationship development across their portfolios.

• Share stakeholder insights, growth opportunities and relationship management best practices.

• Promote consistency in how GOC is represented externally.

• Partner with capability leaders to ensure client and market feedback is communicated effectively across GOC.

1. Expand Senior Stakeholder Engagement

• Build executive relationships where none currently exist.

• Identify priority accounts requiring senior engagement.

• Create stakeholder engagement plans.

• Increase GOC participation in governance and leadership forums.

• Create pathways for future growth opportunities.

1. Drive Growth

• Identify opportunities to expand existing client relationships.

• Support transformation and offshore growth initiatives.

• Promote new and existing GOC capabilities and services.

• Support business development, pitch activity and strategic growth discussions.

• Act as a senior sponsor for opportunities that increase adoption of GOC capabilities.

1. Voice of the Client and Market

• Capture stakeholder feedback and market insights.

• Identify opportunities to improve stakeholder experience.

• Ensure client and market perspectives influence GOC priorities.

• Identify emerging capability needs and growth opportunities based on stakeholder feedback.

• Translate client and market insights into recommendations for capability leaders and GOC leadership.

1. Drive Cross-GOC Alignment

• Ensure consistent engagement approaches across GOCs for shared global clients.

• Align engagement approaches for global clients.

• Support consistent client experiences across the GOC network.

• Partner with capability leaders across GOCs to communicate stakeholder priorities and growth opportunities.

Success Measures

• Stronger executive stakeholder relationships across priority accounts.

• Active Client Development Forum and knowledge-sharing community.

• Consistent client engagement practices across major accounts and across GOCs.

• Increased growth opportunities, specifically senior activation roles, planning and strategy roles.

• Improved awareness, adoption and utilisation of GOC capabilities across strategic clients and markets.

• Effective translation of client and market feedback into future capability opportunities.

The role combines:

• Client Development Leadership — building scalable stakeholder engagement frameworks and governance.

• Strategic Client Leadership — leading selected accounts.

• Community Leadership — sharing best practices.

• Market Development — creating new senior relationships.

• Voice of the Client — translating stakeholder needs into future opportunities.

• Cross-GOC Alignment — ensuring consistency across shared clients.

The role owns client engagement, stakeholder development and growth outcomes.

Capability development, service excellence, operational leadership, training, automation, innovation and service line strategy remain the responsibility of the relevant capability leaders.

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