Group Account Director (Bilingual English/Korean)

Account Management/Korean Business Unit
Group Account Director (Bilingual English/Korean)

About us
Cheil Worldwide is the 11th-largest creative agency in the world. Headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, we were founded by Samsung in 1973 to grow its local and global business. While Samsung is still one of our main clients, our roster has evolved to include other globally recognized brands such as Adidas, PayPal, ESPN, Lego, Coca-Cola, Nivea, Starbucks and many more.

Cheil Dallas serves as the lead agency for all Samsung projects in North America and is located steps from their office at Legacy Central in Plano, Texas. It's the home base for more than 200 creative problem-solvers who share a passion for developing groundbreaking ideas rooted in data, driven by insights, and enabled by innovative technology.

And that brings us to you... or rather you to us. Pushing boundaries and traditional advertising requires a curious mind undeterred by the never-been-done. We need a thinker and doer eager to explore new ways to connect with consumers beyond offering a product. If blending analytics with intuition and imagination makes your eyes sparkle, read on!

About you
Who you are is just as important as (if not more important than!) what you can do.

• A great listener and intuitive.
• Resourceful and inquisitive.
• You have an entrepreneurial spirit and the desire to build and lead.
• Have great people skills and the natural ability to maintain a positive outlook, even when faced with challenging circumstances or high-pressure assignments.
• Ability to connect different cultures and working etiquettes specifically between Korean and American cultures.
• You build relationships far and wide, both internally and externally to see the business from all sides and use them to create momentum and drive clarity during times of ambiguity.
• You are a person who knows how to fix problems and navigate the road ahead to circumvent potential issues with a can do attitude.
• You are excited about integrated marketing plans and creative work that drives results.

About the role
Like you, this job is multidimensional. And every aspect is crucial to creating successful work.

The Group Account Director
Business Leader: Serves as the business lead for multiple assigned business verticals. In this role you would manage our portfolio of clients that are Korean centered.
Agency Leader: Proactively seeks out opportunities to partner with agency leadership, expand the business portfolio, and actively contribute to building the positive culture of Cheil.
Client Leader: Believes their job is to imagine the future of the client's business and of Cheil as an agency and always be three steps ahead while making the connections from Korean business culture to US domestic business outcomes.

Account Leadership

• Provide strategic leadership and road-map for the business that integrates all disciplines, including strategy, creative, media, production and analytics.
• Command complete ownership and accountability for assigned lines of business and relationships with clients and agency team at all levels.
• Encourage a positive, professional environment that supports the clients, management, teammates and the work.
• Sets a standard of excellence through coaching and mentorship that develops strong, motivated internal teams.
• Spot challenges in the distance and know when to bring in agency leadership and offer solutions to help them troubleshoot.
• Positively lead and foster a spirit of healthy debate and dialog in service of the work.
• Demonstrates an expertise in meeting client's objectives across a variety of industries and tactics including campaign, social media, influencer, experiential and digital conversion touchpoints.
• Is inherently curious and eager to learn and try new approaches or tactics.
• Build strong relationships with senior clients, having the ability to have tough conversations, while ensuring the health of the account is strong.
• Demonstrate strong supervisory, delegation, and escalation judgement skills.
• Identify opportunities and grow billings within assigned lines of business, and seek opportunities to deliver break-through work that's on-brand and on strategy

Management Oversight

• Lead the multi-disciplinary team ensuring all team members are entrusted with work appropriate for their experience level, the team remains challenged and engaged, and that the team understands Korean/American culture nuances.
• Provide ongoing guidance to the internal team to ensure production processes and needs (budgets, timely approvals) are clear; pave the way for easy approvals and decisions that lead to the best possible output.
• Mentor a team of direct reports, working together to set goals, training them to ensure best practices are followed and managing the annual review process.
• Provide leadership to integrated teams internally to ensure clients vision comes to life.

Financial Leadership

• Ensure successful financial operations across assigned lines of business adhering to the Scope of Work.
• Manage project plans that can be accurately tracked against and that set the team up for success.
• Establishes processes and best practices to ensure the account is as efficient and profitable as possible.
• Have ongoing knowledge of how work is progressing against projections and billing holistically.
• Understands production bidding and is able to navigate complex conversations regarding production costs/trade-offs and overarching campaign budgets.

Agency Leadership

• Is highly respected by all agency departments, inspiring and encouraging innovative thinking and solutions.
• Actively participates in internal management and training of agency personnel.
• Builds trusted relationships with agency leadership, identifying opportunities to impact agency culture and operations and ensure learnings are shared with the internal team.
• Proven ability to build strong relationships with partners that overcomes day-to-day hurdles.
• Lead new business pitches.
• Stays informed and shares industry and cultural trends and technological advances that may help inform the work.
• Transcends the day-to-day challenges to lead conflict resolution and implement solutions both internally and externally.
• Becomes a trusted right hand to the Executive Director of Account Services and helps champion leadership efforts.

About the requirements
You've got to check the boxes before you can think outside of them.

• Fluent in Korean and Korean business culture
• Bachelor's Degree in advertising, marketing, strategic communication or a related field
• 15+ years integrated advertising agency experience or combination of agency and in-house preferred.
• 10+ years supervisory experience and 5+ years as the leader of client business, leading social media and influencer work.
• A proven track record of solid client partnership, exemplary team leadership, and world-class output.
• A great communicator (written and oral) in Korean and English with experience presenting to C-Suite executives.
• Able to travel to meet business needs (approx.15-20%).
• Able to have work hours that at times align with Pacific Standard Time and Korean Standard time zones. (15% to 20%)
• Experience managing large-scale integrated campaigns and content production, including broadcast/digital, social, email, video production, photo shoots, and audio recording sessions.
• Well-versed in Microsoft Office Suite.
• Able to work in a hybrid office environment with 2 days minimum in office.