Client Lead

Role purpose

• Owns the client relationship, business context, commercial priorities, scope, revenue protection and senior stakeholder alignment. Ensures every media assignment starts with a clear business problem, growth ambition, JTBD and success definition — so the agency responds to the client’s business challenge, not only a media brief.

Responsibilities

Scope of role

• Client business understanding
• Stakeholder management
• Business brief quality
• Scope & fee protection
• Commercial risk escalation
• Internal team alignment
• Client-facing narrative
• Returning learnings into the next brief

Core accountabilities

• Own the client relationship and senior client confidence.
• Understand the client’s business, category, competitors and growth ambition.
• Translate client needs into a clear business brief and JTBD.
• Ensure all assignments have success criteria before strategy and planning begin.
• Confirm budget, timelines, stakeholders, approvals and commercial constraints.
• Align internal teams around the same brief.
• Protect agency scope, fees and revenue.
• Escalate client-facing delivery, billing or commercial risks.
• Ensure PCA learnings influence future briefs.

Mandatory artifacts owned

• Business Brief
• Defines the business problem, objective, market context and required response.

JTBD Definition

• Defines the job media must do for the brand or business.

Success Definition

• Confirms business, brand, media and commercial KPIs.

Stakeholder Alignment Note

• Confirms decision-makers, approvers and timelines.

Scope & Fee Check

• Confirms whether work is covered by scope or needs additional fee.

Client Escalation Note

• Used when material delivery, billing or commercial risks need client discussion.

Next Brief Input

• Ensures PCA learnings feed the next campaign brief.

Decision rights

• Is the brief complete enough to begin strategy In scope or additional fee
• Whether client escalation is required
• Whether the response answers the business problem
• Whether PCA needs formal client discussion

Qualifications

• 7–10 years with strong client leadership and integrated campaign exposure.
• Manage senior client relationships.
• Business understanding
• Grasp commercial, category and brand challenges.
• Briefing discipline
• Convert client needs into clear briefs.
• Commercial awareness
• Manage scope, fee, risk and revenue.
• Stakeholder management
• Align client, agency and partner teams.
• Communication
• Present clearly and influence decision-makers.
• Escalation management
• Handle sensitive delivery or billing issues