Associate Director, Strategy, MENA

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.

Role Summary and Impact

We have an exciting opportunity to join our Growth team. This role is based in Dubai and will work closely with the growth team, intelligence team, and marketing team to deliver exceptional new business responses.

As a Growth Strategy Associate Director, you will be part of one of several squad teams, spearheading the delivery of compelling strategies to win and retain key multi-market clients for the group and agencies.

You will be an experienced strategist with strong client-facing experience and ideally exposure to multi-market work across UAE, KSA and wider markets. You will play a key role in supporting and leading strategic work across pitches, prospecting and growth initiatives, working closely with the Head of Growth and senior strategy leadership.

Core responsibilities include:

• Supporting strategic workstreams across multi-market pitches and global prospecting opportunities, while supporting local pitches and growth opportunities where required.

• Leading on medium and small local pitches through and through from strategy writing, to connection planning, to presenting.

• Developing and presenting compelling strategies in pitch, prospecting and internal meetings, with support from senior leadership where appropriate.

• Working with agency brand planning teams to apply the distinctive planning approaches of the three agency brands — Mindshare’s Good Growth Platform, Wavemaker’s Provocative Planning and EssenceMediacom’s Breakthrough — to create differentiated and connected strategic thinking.

• Bringing together inputs from multiple disciplines into a clear and compelling strategic story, working collaboratively with stakeholders across the group.

• Working closely with the Insights team to identify and incorporate relevant category, company, consumer and cultural insights into strategic recommendations.

• Supporting the Head of Growth across multiple pitches and growth initiatives, helping to maintain a high standard of strategic thinking, quality and delivery.

• Building productive relationships across WPP practices to help strengthen your strategies.

• Sharing strong work, learnings and best practice across the wider strategy team, helping to ensure that successful approaches and pitch learnings are replicated and adapted across markets.

• Working collaboratively with Strategy Squad counterparts to develop compelling growth stories and strategic propositions that can be applied across pitches, client work and award opportunities.

• Contributing to the evolution of our growth approach, bringing an informed perspective on best-in-class work, emerging client needs, market trends and learnings from pitches.

• Sharing relevant thought leadership, trends and category insights with the wider squad to strengthen the team's strategic capability and collective knowledge.

Skills and Experience

At WPP Media, we believe in the power of our culture and our people. It’s what elevates us to deliver exceptional experiences for both our clients and each other. In this role it will be critical to embrace WPP & WPP Media’s shared core values:

• Be Extraordinary by Leading Collectively to Inspire transformational Creativity.

• Create an Open environment by Balancing People and Client Experiences by Cultivating Trust.

• Lead Optimistically by Championing Growth and Development to Mobilize the Enterprise.

• Strong experience in strategy, growth, new business or client-facing strategic roles, ideally within a media, marketing or agency environment.

• Proven ability to develop and present compelling strategic thinking, particularly in pitches and prospecting situations, with strong storytelling and presentation skills.

• Ability to translate business and marketing challenges into clear, differentiated strategic opportunities and ideas.

• Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to work effectively across disciplines, markets and seniority levels.

• Proactive, commercially minded and adaptable, with the ability to independently lead strategic workstreams while working closely with senior leadership.

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