Freelance Business Director | Retail

We’re looking for an experienced Freelance Business Director with strong retail experience to join our Cape Town office immediately . You’ll be on the ground leading a fast-paced retail account, so strong client leadership, strategic thinking and project management skills are essential.

Skills Required:

An M&C Business Director must possess the following skills in order to succeed.

• As the senior consultant on the business, embed innovative thinking and strategic direction for the client.
• Bring a strong understanding of retail and the pace, responsiveness and commercial thinking required to deliver effectively in this environment.
• Lead and coordinate multiple workstreams simultaneously, bringing structure to complex projects and ensuring clear timelines, ownership and delivery.
• Apply strong strategic thinking while maintaining hands-on oversight of project delivery from brief through to completion.
• Be able to ‘connect the dots’ and actively seek to improve the agency's role within the client's business.
• Provide flawless service delivery to client.
• Foster the relationship with the most senior clients (Marketing Director/CEO) and engage meaningfully to drive a partnership model.
• Maintain a partner relationship with the ECD and embed innovative thinking into the core of the business.
• Have a clear understanding of the broader business objectives of the client and be able to act as a strategic consultant on all marketing and communication requirements.
• Manage the financial fitness of the account, including profitability, staff- and income ratios, while driving and identifying additional revenue and business opportunities to increase forecasts. These duties include submitting budget summaries every month as well as new revenue proposals to clients.
• Optimise process and production to drive long-term efficiencies.
• Ensure proper usage of workflow tools by all teams.
• Proactively identifying growth opportunities.

Experience Required:

• 5+ years of experience as a Business Director – big agency experience is preferable.
• Proven experience managing complex, fast-paced accounts with multiple concurrent projects and tight deadlines.
• Strong project management capability is a critical requirement, with the ability to manage projects from brief and strategy through to final delivery and roll-out.
• The ability to own a project from start to finish – strategy to roll-out.
• Strong understanding of the retail sector and retail marketing environment.

Please note:

Due to the volume of applications we receive, we may not be able to respond to every applicant individually. If you don’t hear back from us, it doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the road — we’re building a strong talent pipeline and may reach out should a suitable opportunity come up in the future.