Director
Boulder, CO
Account + Strategy – Account + Strategy /
Full-time /
Hybrid
Like our name implies, we’re looking for people who believe in being a work in progress in all aspects for their personal and professional lives. Who have a hunger to grow and to evolve, and to surround themselves with people who also want to grow and evolve too. You know your clients’ businesses, perhaps as well as they do, and you truly want to help them take action to achieve their goals. You’re someone who always asks why, and who their team and clients always seem to want around. You’re strategic, creative, and relentless. No detail is too small, no concept too big. You always feel that where there’s a will there’s a way, and probably, and even better way.
At WIP, you’ll find a small, independent, structurally quite flat, deeply concerned for each other, abnormally transparent, pleasantly collaborative, adamantly ego-free, agency. And you will find an account department that includes strategy within it. That’s right. At WIP, we don’t have a separate strategy department, because we believe every account person should be a highly strategic thinker. Simply put, our primary focus is to ensure we achieve our clients’ business goals, and to do it, we need to get immersed in their businesses to the point where we become viewed as part of their team. To earn this respect and trust we have to be able to think about their businesses strategically to ensure every concept we bring forward will push them one step closer to achieving their goals.
Director_Account + Strategy
As a Director you are responsible for leading all aspects of your account in conjunction with the creative, technology, and production leaders of the agency. Together you will define strategic objectives and create a plan to achieve your goals. Through your deep understanding of your clients’ businesses and a desire to deliver business results, you’ll establish strong relationships so you can listen when they have concerns, and push them when they need to be. You will serve as a fearless leader and mentor for the Account + Strategy team, fostering talent that can flourish at WIP and in any situation. You’re comfortable, and for some strange reason, almost enjoy being in the most high-pressure situations. You can problem-solve on the fly, from Junior to the C-Suite. You’re a champion of your clients, your agency, and your team. But most of all, you’re a good person—highly collaborative, no ego, genuinely personal, and hungry to make the best work of your career. If we’re describing you, and the kind of place you desire, seems like we’d both be happiest if we chatted some more.
The following are the duties customary of a Director_Account + Strategy
- Take a leadership role in helping to build and shape the culture of the agency, holding agency leadership teams accountable for taking action to prove we are a work in progress
- Help to foster a culture that is in line with key diversity and inclusion goals and policies
- Break the definition of what it is to be an “account person” by bringing value, thinking, and partnership to every department across the agency
- Manage client relationships and satisfaction, being a positive and proactive force on the team, and leading with accountability and honesty at all times
- Seek to intimately understand every aspect of your clients’ businesses and categories, including their individual goals and initiatives, and helping shape short-term and long-term priorities
- Proactively bring strategic thinking to the table, including initiatives that continually pay-off a brand’s Why through action, defining key brand goals and objectives, and seeking to enhance every aspect of their business as if it were your own
- Be accountable for managing the profitability of the accounts you lead, treating every dollar, whether client or agency, as if it was your own
- Build strong, trusting relationships that are both professional and personal, including all your clients and team members from junior to C-level
- Hold the core principles and aspects of the agency, brands, and projects you lead dear, pushing strategically and boldly to ensure they remain intact, while making key pivots that advance each initiative to the finish line
- Lead by example as you continue to execute work on all levels, delegating when necessary, but remaining actively involved in all aspects of daily work and execution
- Remain well-informed on all account activities, anticipating issues (internal or external) or client dissatisfaction, taking steps to remedy any such situations, but also recognizing and celebrating positive moments and wins
- Work directly with agency management teams to ensure they’re up-to-speed on all account initiatives/health/status/issues, and that workflow is optimized across all projects
- Manage internal resources across all departments to ensure efficiency and to maintain momentum, and developing new processes to make things more efficient
- Understand the personal and professional goals of all you lead, leading performance reviews, and providing mentoring and resources to help them get where they want to go. And also helping to identify and vet new talent to build the team and culture moving forward
- Help lead new business activities through all aspects of the process
$115,000 - $175,000 a year
WIP Perks and Benefits
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, short-term disability (STD), voluntary long-term disability (LTD), and voluntary life/AD&D.
• 3% 401k contribution.
• “Unlimited” paid time off (PTO) for vacation days.
• 16 paid holidays
• 1-week summer closure in July
• 2-week agency closure in December.
• 2 weeks fully remote per year.
• Discretionary annual bonus.
• Each employee receives a $1,500 personal training credit annually, known as the WIP Fund, to allow for personal or professional growth in specific interest or passion areas.
About Us
We believe every brand, and person, should be a work in progress.
It’s why the founding partners opened the agency in 2016, and why WorkInProgress helps brands boldly take action, innovate, and create to prove why they exist. Then we use those actions to create the most memorable advertising.
As an independent agency, we strive to prove that an agency can care as much about a client’s business as they do. And that advertising can play a fundamental role in building and growing a company.
We’re always looking for smart, creative, and passionate people that care more about changing a company than winning awards.
Inventors more than ad people. Problem solvers more than portfolio puffery pushers. No assholes. No egos. No hiding because you can’t do the job. No selfishness. No disrespecting people or their time. Insanely talented, yet incredibly humble. In other words, one in a million. Lucky for us, we want to stay small and independent.
Our office is located in Boulder, CO, and we require employees to work from the office Tuesdays and Thursdays.
