Account Director

Job PurposeYou are responsible for ensuring the overall success of our clients and the profitability of their accounts, particularly as the Cricket Portfolio Lead for DP World. You oversee all cricket-related partnerships, activations, and experiential programs, ensuring alignment with the client’s global brand and sports marketing objectives.Your role involves leading the strategic direction, planning, and delivery of the cricket portfolio — from concept to execution — while maintaining excellence in client service, creative development, and operational delivery. You ensure all projects meet timeline, budget, and brand requirements.You are a trusted advisor and subject matter expert in cricket sponsorships and sports marketing, leveraging your industry knowledge to strengthen client relationships and drive account growth. You actively build trust and engagement with senior stakeholders across the cricket ecosystem — including leagues, teams, talent, and event partners.Maintaining a strategic responsibility for nurturing the relationships between our clients and our agency is a key part of your job. You actively work to build trust and engagement with senior-level clients and vendors. Additionally, you are accountable for creating and developing the direction and objectives for the accounts you oversee, and you have become a subject matter expert on our client’s brand, business, and industry. In addition, you support with program direction, objectives, and plans. You possess proficiency in our tools (CRM, Deltek, etc) as well as thorough understanding of our processes. You provide a high level of client service and satisfaction, all while ensuring that you consistently and efficiently deploy GPJ methodologies.Another significant aspect of your role is Driving account growth. You are continuously pursuing and generating new revenue opportunities as a regular part of your activities. You have a deep understanding of our full range of services at GPJ, and you can effectively communicate this both internally and to clients as part of our sales process. Balancing a high level of client service and satisfaction with the consistent and efficient deployment of GPJ methodologies is crucial to your role. You have strong scope of work development skills and are focused on the account health which includes HR%, temp spend, forecasting with levels of confidence, and staffing properly.You take accountability for ensuring that large and complex budgets are effectively built, managed, and reconciled, and you may delegate work to key team members as needed. In terms of team management, you are actively involved in mentoring and leading your team.In your role, you will have influence and responsibility over:– Business Development– Strategy & Creative Development– Management, Delivery / Deployment– Fabrication/Graphics– Project Launch & Resource Mgmt.– Estimating– Invoicing, Project Financial Reconciliation & CloseAbout YouProven experience leading sports marketing portfolios, with deep expertise in cricket partnerships, sponsorship activation, and fan engagementStrong understanding of global and regional cricket ecosystems, including tournament structures, rights holders, and brand integration opportunitiesExperience working with sports properties, teams, or governing bodies in cricket is highly desirableAble to independently create and develop account/program strategic direction and objectives; proactively engage with and enable/inspire the team to add innovative strategic and creative contributionsLead internal strategic meetings and present findings to clientAble to help identify, lead and close new opportunities, strategically leveraging internal resources and teams (for organic and net new opportunities)Fully capable of building decks and presentations which tell a story in the language that the client will understandPossess executive presence – be able to read and ‘command’ a roomUnderstands how to effectively oversee overall, increasingly complex project timelines in line with strategic objectivesUnderstand effective budget oversight and troubleshooting for larger, more complex budgets, leveraging SMEs as neededEnsures team proactively addresses key project financial metrics, including profitability and marginEnsures team accurately interprets and proactively addresses impact of changes on project financial metricsAble to drive accountability with team and assist with troubleshooting/continuous improvement around financial metricsAble to have strategic, more complex financial conversations with clientsHas a clear understanding of PO and reconciliation process; ensures execution of accurate, timely client invoicingStrong proficiency in Google docs, sheets, slides. Previous experience with ERP, Project Management software, or similar tool is preferred.Your Background, Skills & ExperienceExperience & Education10+ years of previous industry / agency experience6(+) years of progressively increasing client management responsibility / experience desired4 Year College Degree; preferred in Marketing/Advertising/Event Management/Business Administration, Hospitality, Communications, or related field MBA or Executive MBA degree is a plusTravel & MobilityAbility to travel as requiredAbility to work irregular hours in addition to normal business hours, to include nights, weekends and holidays as needed