Associate Director

Why is this role crucial for C Space?

We’re looking for an experienced insight practitioner who believes in building market leading client recommendations based on a deep understanding of consumer psychology and behaviour. You will likely have experience across a range of research methodologies (online qual / quant / co-creation / ethnography…) or in other consulting businesses - and you are passionate about building fantastic client relationships and are both firm (scope management and price) and generous (finding opportunities to add value to clients where we can).

We have two tracks in our business at this level – practice track and business track. Business track is for you if you are motivated to learn the skills to lead and run your own business unit that could eventually lead to a general manager / managing director position. You want to build the culture that enables high performance and results, you are interested in line management and helping people progress in their careers, and you are interested in managing a portfolio of clients that you embed in our business long term. You are the consummate advisor to your Client – helping them navigate their internal professional goals and giving them access to the best of C Space.

Reporting into one of our Business Directors, your role is focused in two main areas:

1. Building strong client relationships across ongoing accounts
2. Being the Business Director’s no. 2 in the development of a thriving and inclusive team culture

You would have ultimate responsibility for ensuring the success of your 3-4 clients, making sure that we’re delivering work that meets our clients’ objectives within scope and budget. You will be responsible for managing the overall account, and you will manage the renewal process (or selling repeat projects for ad hoc clients) - ensuring that we continue to work with each of your clients from one year to the next, building on the work we have already done together.

You will line manage 3-5 Associate Consultants and Consultants, and you will play a key role in helping your Business Director manage the wider team. On your account teams (which will be staffed with a mixture of people you directly manage, and those that you don’t), you will be accountable for developing your team to the highest possible standards in both quality and level of insight across all deliverables for your accounts. You will ensure that people feel motivated, are learning, you’re providing constructive feedback and you’re holding them to account with the high standards you expect.

Role & Responsibilities:

• Lead and manage 3-4 on-going retained client relationships, all of which will be underpinned by an ongoing consumer community
• Work with clients to understand and define key business problems and insight and innovation needs
• Inspire your team to create brilliant approaches for how we could meet clients’ needs
• Lead and manage fruitful relationships with your clients to ensure they act on our recommendations
• A senior relationship within your key accounts, becoming their strategic partner
• Lead your clients to ensure they renew year on year, with a minimum of 85% renewal rate
• Line manage Associate Consultants and Consultants
• You will be confident in costing work, writing proposals, and pitching compellingly

About C Space

C Space is a pioneering Customer Agency with offices in Boston, New York, San Francisco, London and Tokyo. Our promise is to help our clients find new opportunities to grow by deep understanding of their target audiences and their needs – which we call Customer-Inspired-Growth. Over the years we have helped clients like Google, Samsung, McDonald’s, Air France/KLM, L’Oreal, Orange and Ikea grow by developing new products, services and communication together with their customers. For instance, we are helping L’Oreal develop new product formula to innovate in haircare, we are supporting Google in creating new products for emerging markets, we are helping Ikea to imagine what the retail experience needs to look like across physical and digital. By working at C Space, you will be exposed to clients across tech, auto, retail, hospitality, healthcare and more.

Most of our clients have worked with us for a number of years and about 80% keep coming back for more every year: building long-lasting relationships with our clients is the key ingredient to our success. Over the last year we have won six insight and innovation awards.

Insight at C Space isn’t like insight at other agencies; it’s faster, more entrepreneurial and more integrated. And it doesn’t just focus on finding the ‘truth’ but more importantly on leveraging that truth with those who matter in our clients’ organisation: we truly care about and organise ourselves around having impact on our clients' business – by either making them or saving them some money.

To help us make good on our promise to clients, we’ve developed four differentiating capabilities:

• Behavioural and cultural insight
• Customer Closeness
• Customer Experience
• Innovation

We pride ourselves on our friendly but high-performing culture. We love people who are self-starters, see the glass as half-full and thrive in a fast paced, entrepreneurial environment: six directors of the EMEA business have started their career at C Space as entry level consultants.

We are passionate about our people and proud of our culture. We have six ‘behaviours’ to ensure that we are delivering fantastic work, continuing to learn and develop and building a high-performance culture which creates opportunities for those who work here:

• I’ve got this: taking responsibility, doing what we say we will.
• Only accept awesome: delivering high quality work that we are proud of and has impact.
• Show the love: celebrating successes & ensuring everyone has a voice.
• Do what scares you: challenging ourselves, taking risks and learning more.
• Tell it like it is: being honest and freeing ourselves from "office politics" and "hidden agendas”
• Open up and listen: Listening first and fully before we respond or react

You can find out more about our culture on our culture page - https://cspace.com/culture/ and through this video - https://vimeo.com/cspacelondon/review/304868770/b2ddca64f1

To learn more, visit www.cspace.com or follow us on LinkedIn or on Twitter @CSpaceGlobal. C Space is a part of DDB, a division of Omnicom Group Inc.

Salary/Package

Alongside a competitive starting salary and bonus structure we offer a comprehensive suite of benefits – from a contributory pension, private medical insurance, cycle to work, free breakfasts, weekly drinks and regular company socials including our Summer Sports day and renowned Christmas parties too.

Desired Experience & Ethos

• Strong relationship builder. You get your energy from working with others and really listening to their needs.
• Successful problem solving. You have a creative outlook, ‘Yes, and’ attitude and the ability to bring new thinking to problems with energy and enthusiasm
• Demonstrate gravitas and EQ in all your stakeholder management interactions: you can manage relationships with both senior and junior team members, and bring people of all levels into exploring solutions to given problems and communicating those solutions in a way that ensures buy-in
• Able to balance commercial needs with people needs. You can operate, and deliver, within a fast-paced environment whilst appreciating the individual differences of people and their resourcing constraints
• Super organised. You’ve developed ways of working to successfully juggle multiple needs at the same time
• Great communicator. You have excellent creative writing and oral communication skills
• Ownership and able to work autonomously and make judgement calls about how projects should run
• Flexibility and adaptability so you can pivot and adapt priorities as projects run their course
• Growth mindset and passion for new ways of working – always being on the lookout for how we can add most value to our clients

Our Commitment to building an Inclusive Workforce

We are very keen to receive applications from people with a full range of life and work experience – talented, creative people with their own voice, own ideas and perspectives.