Country Director/Associate Partner at PG Consulting Limited

Our CLIENT, an international, award-winning, professional communications and public relations consultancy firm, is looking to expand its Lagos office and engage the services of an experienced professional to play a senior role within the business as an Associate Partner, leading the Lagos, Nigeria operations.

The Associate Partner, Lagos, will report directly to the Chairman, based in Europe.

Job Goals

• Build and deliver new business contacts and contracts.
• To guide team members in their successful management of teams and clients, ensuring both performance and quality standards are met.
• To lead and direct assigned clients by developing strong relationships, understand the clear commercial goals and responsibility of the agency and strategic communications solutions that are value added.
• Start to understand the agency’s revenue targets and commercial goals and proactively contribute to broader company responsibilities, working with colleagues to solve common issues, thereby improving overall business success. Including HR, capacity constraints and employee engagement

Key Tasks and Responsibilities

Client Activity

• Oversee and, as necessary, proactively manage client campaigns, ensuring you and the team know the detail and current status on related business activity;
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of each client’s business and operations and its communications strategy together with a sound strategic understanding of all key drivers
• Be able to critique or defend work and ideas in relation to client’s strategy, both for yourself and your team
• Inspire the Client teams to deliver exemplary delivery of all day to day activity – set the standards, drive quality control
• Robust commercial approach to all Client accounts to ensure correct resources and cost-efficient output
• Build strong relationships with clients and the account teams you manage:
• Deliver exemplary client service without the need for day-to-day intervention from Chairman, Client Company
• Start to be the first point of contact for clients at Board/senior level on most issues
• Lead decision making but give feedback and information on progress to Chairman, Client Company to avoid any communication void
• Flag up and head off early warning of difficulties quickly
• Be able to handle any difficult client situations, such as crisis management and M&A etc (in terms of drafting documents and also dealing with press enquiries) and know when Chairman, Client Company support is required
• Demonstrate curiosity - challenge the assumed where appropriate 
• Quality strategic advice and insight to both internal teams and clients as needed
• Have a perspective beyond the immediate task and build experience through client direction not just client service
• Advise senior management teams with regards to communication programmes - from strategy to implementation - including creative thinking
• Be able to write effective creative briefs based on creative research
• Run brainstorms and generate and identify great ideas
• Independently develop thoughtful content for client materials
• Critique and develop key messages for programmes as needed
• Manage client event days with your team – build their knowledge and experience
• Stay one step ahead - articulate a point of view

Media Activity

• Demonstrate an excellent understanding of how key relevant media across all platforms operates
• Maintain strong press relations at companies/news desk's level and focus on building relationships at Editor level
• Ensure any key media activity is promptly communicated by your team to all relevant stakeholders

Team Development

• Invest time to develop team members reporting to you or working with you to ensure consistent client delivery and strong relationship management both internally and externally
• Lead by example - set the standards, encouraging those who work for and with you to achieve the same
• Flag bad practice or behaviour – take appropriate action
• Highlight training needs

New Business Activity

• Develop and plan a targeted approach to New Business leads, identifying new business opportunities through networking activities with refers (advisors, journalists, former clients etc
• With the support of Chairman, Client Company, take a leading role in pitch process, including drafting letters, proposals and presentations
• Motivate the team involved in the potential pitch
• Draw on experience of fellow colleagues as needed
• Support colleagues on their new business planning – ensure a targeted approach
• Help them build contact books
• Introduce them to key contacts to help develop their relationships
• Generate ideas on wider marketing activities that could deliver leads or incremental revenues and encourage team members to do the same
• Extend networking skills to support CLIENT COMPANY’s interaction with key contacts within, though not exclusive to:
• relevant media
• wider business community
• Strategic planning
• Embed the use of insight tools, such as Signal and Brandwatch, in day to day client, media and new business activity
• Effective use of insight tools for client and sector monitoring
• Be able to write an effective research brief
• Be able to write Boolean search strings in Brandwatch
• Use Brandwatch to research a sector or audience to inform insights
• Use all research avenues to validate a hypothesis
• Be able to able to interpret and develop research and data into strategic imperatives
• Be able to extract insights from research and data to move a client brief forward
• Be able to develop a strategy platform and be able to validate it against insights and product/emotional benefits
• Effective measuring and reporting of earned media analytically
• Real-time creative idea generation for media and social media informed by insights
• Agency activity
• Contribute to broader company responsibilities as directed and or/need
• Be proactive
• Flag up any issue and work collaboratively to solve these
• Be involved in recruitment and selection as needed across the agency
• Be the face of CLIENT COMPANY in Nigeria and support Chairman, Client Company in efforts to build the CLIENT COMPANY offering and develop the agency further

Key Working Relationships

• Chairman
• Partners
• Associate Partners
• Client Directors
• Client Managers
• Client Executives
• Client Coordinators
• Salary Range
• USD 60,000 - 90,000 pa. (Dependent on Experience)

Key Qualifying Indices

• Experience – Minimum of 7 – 10 years’ experience with at least 4 in Senior Roles
• Professional Certifications
• Network and Leadership Experience
• Evidence of Past Achievements