Junior Account/Project Manager

White Bear is looking for an account/project manager to join our team. Welcome to the Bear Cave.

We’re an independent, award-winning, strategically led creative agency.

We create disruption for Start-ups, Scale ups and Big Brands who need to ‘step up’ to stay relevant. We are passionate about championing the challenger brand, working with cutting edge start-ups in the food & beverage, retail and tech industries.

We’re a small but mighty team looking to make a great new hire. We work via a mixture of remote and studio time, 3 days in the studio with 2 working remotely.

We are looking for entrepreneurial spirits, we want White Bear to be your business and we want you to drive it like it’s your own. With this great individual responsibility, we need to have 100% trust in each other, making us a close-knit team. We admire bravery and a hunger for hustle and personal growth. We’re a team who are driven by purpose and demonstrate action rather than analysis paralysis.

At the heart of who we are is a playful spirit that is the common thread through all that we do. We bring out our inner child in order to bring to life others' visions.

What are we looking for?

As our Junior/middleweight Account/project Manager, you will be working alongside our MD and Head of accounts to ensure that our clients receive the highest standard of service possible. You will be responsible for the complete delivery of projects. Key duties will include communicating with clients regularly, gathering client briefs and ensuring projects are delivered on time and within budget and encouraging further sales from the client. Internally, you will be responsible for resourcing and time planning of the creative and strategic teams.

As the first point of contact for clients, you will be responsible for all aspects of account and project management. Key to the role will be assisting clients, resolving issues and implementing changes that strengthen our client relationships.

Key Responsibilities:

• Onboarding new clients and developing working relationship

• Clearly articulating briefs into the studio, ensuring the creative team has an understanding of strategy, scope, deliverables, timescales and budgets

• Managing projects through the studio from kick-off to delivery. Ensuring all projects adhere to the agreed workflow and are completed on time, delivered to the client’s strategy and budget

• To manage tracking and reporting of performance to uphold team accountability and promote quality of service

• Keeping documentation and records of client interactions

• Escalating issues, proactively resolving problems and making critical decisions

• Programme planning of all new jobs and projects in the studio and allocating them to team members from brief to completion into our project planning and time capturing software, streamtime.

• Weekly updates and planning of the team’s time, to-do’s and action for live jobs in Streamtime, reporting any clashes and issues to leadership for review and support to resolve.

Key Skills:

As our Account Manager you will have excellent communication and interpersonal skills along with practical reporting skills further skills needed for the role are:

• Excellent organisational & listening skills

• Excellent communication skills both verbally and in writing, across channels (i.e. email, SMS, chat), with the ability to voice your own opinion

• A can do attitude

• Good project management skills

• Good financial management skills to accurately manage project budgets

• Ability to explain and justify all elements on a creative proposal

• Working knowledge of relevant software, including project management tools, spreadsheets and Productive.

• Ability to act on customer feedback and provide meaningful solutions

• Ability to compile and present reports to management

• Ability to identify client needs and act upon new areas for growth and increase sales

• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment, work to and within deadlines and to work across multiple client accounts and projects.

You’ll be:

• Enthusiastic about research, strategy and design and create engaging brands, spaces and digital experience

• Passionate about studio life and maintaining a healthy agency culture

• Diplomatic and persuasive in equal measure

• Naturally collaborative and inclusive style, thriving as part of a team environment, whether leading or participating

• Calm and confident manner with exceptional people skills

• You enjoy working in a fast-paced environment balancing and managing your time.

You are positive, ambitious, entrepreneurial and willing to muck in wherever you’re needed.

What you will be looking to...

• Be part of a team that’s on a rocket ship and tangibly seeing the difference you can make.

• Not stay in your lane, carving out a role that’s molded just for you. We've no egos.

• Develop your career fast. We’re non-hierarchical and want everyone to grow with the agency.

• Flexible working.

• Work smart. Shorter hours than most agencies. We work 9.30 – 5.30 with flexibility. We don’t believe in working late - we all have personal lives. Though we recognise that sometimes this is necessary when we need to pull a presentation out of the bag.

• Each of our team is on their own tour of duty to deliver their personal growth and help them to achieve their career goals on a fast track.

• Continuous personal development training budget.

What else...

To tell great stories we need great talent. We create the best quality creative we can for every client we work with and every time we start a new project we strive to improve. The relentless pursuit of perfection is our mindset. ‘Good enough’ is not good enough. If we are going to innovate and be truly creative, we need to fail, and fail better each time. ‘Never stop playing’ is our motto and we carry that vigour through everything we do, which helps us create the novel, marvellous and brave.

We value candour but it needs to be constructive. We take responsibility when we screw up. Mistakes are impossible to avoid but it is possible to acknowledge them, learn from them and set an example. We say what we think even if it is controversial.

We never miss an opportunity to learn. We have a growth mindset and push ourselves to act outside of our comfort zone. We don’t stay in our lanes, we seek to get involved outside of our job description. Ask questions. There’s no such thing as a stupid question.

We value ability over experience. We don’t accept mediocrity. We exhibit bias-to-action and avoid analysis-paralysis. We take smart risks. We measure our impact.

We treat people with respect independent of their status. We inspire others with our thirst for excellence. We help others shine. We can't be big if we belittle.