Why join us

Joining Sainsbury's Zest as an Account Director means being at the forefront of driving business growth and delivering exceptional client experiences. You'll play a pivotal role in leading client relationships, collaborating with internal stakeholders, and championing creativity as a catalyst for market change. With a deep understanding of our clients' challenges and objectives, you'll have the opportunity to propose innovative solutions, nurture enduring partnerships, and shape brand strategies. As part of a dynamic and collaborative team, you'll be immersed in a diverse range of projects, leading discussions, and inspiring creative work that exceeds expectations. With a focus on growth and development, you'll be part of an agency that values curiosity, resilience, and passion for delivering outstanding results. Join us and contribute to our success while fostering enduring client relationships in a fast-paced, ever-evolving industry.

What you'll do

As the Account Director you will play a crucial role in leading client relationships, driving business growth, and ensuring client satisfaction. Focused on key brands within the Sainsbury's business, you will have a deep understanding of the clients' market challenges and context, their business objectives, and how creative work can contribute to their success. Your expertise in client partnership will involve fostering enduring and trustworthy relationships, proactively identifying opportunities for expansion, and serving as the first point of contact for client needs and requests. As a strategic partner, you will collaborate with Planners to develop and implement strategic responses for brand business and communication needs. Additionally, you will champion creativity, act as a creative advocate, and ensure seamless integration of work across multiple channels. You will contribute to the agency's overall success by partnering with external agencies and facilitating collaboration, generating reports on client status, identifying creative opportunities, and supporting the management of new business pitches. As a leader, you will galvanise the team, nurture them through mentoring and coaching, and demonstrate behavioural flexibility, emotional intelligence, influence, and creative problem-solving skills. Your ability to make decisions on client leadership, strategy, SLAs frameworks, and external agency partnerships will drive the success of Sainsbury's.

Who you are

As an Account Director within the Marketing & Loyalty division, you are a highly skilled professional. With a deep understanding of clients' market challenges and context, you possess the expertise to propose solutions that address their needs, foster enduring partnerships, and deliver exceptional work. Your strategic thinking, creative acumen, and leadership abilities enable you to collaborate seamlessly with internal teams, external agencies, and stakeholders to develop innovative campaigns that exceed client expectations. With a strong focus on client satisfaction, business growth, and creative excellence, you contribute to the success of Zest as the go-to agency for our key brands within the Sainsbury's business.

There are three core components to this interview process with one of those stages comprising of an Assessment Centre.

The dates the Assessment Centre will be taking place on are the 6th, 13th, 15th & 18th March at our Holborn Store Support Centre.

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Qualifications

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.

Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday, and we provide private heathcare. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme.

Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).

Responsibilities

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. We’re one of the biggest supermarkets in the UK with one of the largest websites. So marketing here really happens at scale. We move a lot faster than you’d think too, across Brand Planning, Brand Comms and Creative, Digital Marketing, CRM and Loyalty, Nectar 360, Insights, and Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability. More people shopping with us each week means more interactions. And thanks to data insight, we understand customers in a way that almost nobody else does. We work alongside incredible brand partners and the best agencies around. So if you have a passion to learn, grow and experience new teams, come and explore it all with us.