Managing Director

Job description

Job Description The Managing Director (MD) provides strategic and operational leadership to the activations agency, with full accountability for growth, profitability, delivery excellence, and culture.

This role requires a leader who can build and scale a business with founder-level ownership, while operating confidently within the structures, expectations, and collaborative demands of a larger group. The MD ensures the agency remains innovative, client-centric, financially sound, and deeply people-led.

Key responsibilities

Strategic leadership

• Develop and execute a business strategy grounded in consumer and cultural insight, aligned to group direction while retaining the agency’s distinct positioning.
• Balance long-term strategic thinking with short-term commercial execution.
• Identify and pursue growth opportunities, including new markets, clients, and service offerings.
• Translate group strategy into clear, actionable priorities for the activations business.

Business and financial management

• Full ownership of P&L performance, including revenue growth, profitability, and cost control.
• Set and manage annual budgets, forecasts, and resource plans.
• Build scalable operational systems that support both agility and governance.
• Partner with group finance to ensure transparency, compliance and financial discipline.

Client leadership and delivery

• Act as a senior strategic partner to key clients, building long-term trust and commercial value.
• Oversee delivery of high-quality, insight-led activations that meet both brand and business objectives.
• Drive integrated campaign delivery by collaborating closely with sister agencies across the group.
• Track client satisfaction, retention, and portfolio growth.

People and culture

• Lead, inspire, and grow a diverse team with clarity, empathy and accountability.
• Create a psychologically safe environment where creativity, challenge and collaboration are encouraged.
• Develop leadership capability and succession within the agency.
• Champion transformation, diversity, equity, and inclusion in both intent and practice.
• Reinforce culture and values through day-to-day leadership decisions and behaviour.

Integration and group collaboration

• Actively participate in group leadership, contributing to shared strategy and governance.
• Balance agency autonomy with group alignment, ensuring consistency without stifling innovation.
• Enable cross-agency collaboration to deliver integrated, client-centric solutions.
• Represent the activations agency confidently within group forums.

Innovation and insights

• Embed consumer, cultural, and behavioural insight into strategy, creativity, and execution.
• Stay ahead of experiential, BTL, and digitally integrated campaign trends.
• Encourage experimentation while maintaining delivery discipline.
• Measure what actually worked and clearly communicate the impact on brand and revenue.

Requirements

Qualifications and experience

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business management, communications, or a related field (MBA or equivalent advantageous).
• Minimum 10 years’ experience in marketing, brand activations, or experiential agencies, with at least 5 years in senior leadership roles.
• Proven experience scaling or leading a business, brand, or division with P&L accountability.
• Demonstrated ability to operate entrepreneurially within a structured or group environment.
• Track record of building profitable client portfolios and leading high-performing teams.
• Experience in group, holding company, or multi-agency environments is a strong advantage.

Knowledge and expertise:

Marketing and commercial

• BTL, Brand strategy and integrated marketing communications.
• Experiential and activations marketing from concept to execution.
• Consumer insight development and application.
• Business planning, commercial governance, and sales pipeline management.

People and leadership

• Culture-building, employee engagement, and leadership development.
• Performance management and succession planning.
• Leading teams through growth, change, and ambiguity.

Operations and integration

• Cross-agency collaboration and integrated delivery models.
• Legal and compliance considerations for events and activations.
• Supplier, partner, and stakeholder management.
• Strong understanding of the South African marketing and events landscape.

Technology and trends

• Digitally integrated experiential campaigns and data capture.
• Use of analytics and measurement to demonstrate ROI.
• Awareness of sustainability and ESG considerations in experiential work.

Behavioural competencies:

• Strategically and innovation minded with strong commercial judgement
• Comfortable holding both autonomy and accountability
• Collaborative, influential, and relationship-driven
• Calm, credible, and decisive under pressure
• High integrity, professionalism, and cultural intelligence

Posted on 20 Jan 09:40, Closing date 27 Jan