Who We Are:

We are a fiercely entrepreneurial ad agency that blends creativity and performance to build great brands. We call this approach Soul + Science. With offices in San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Seattle, we serve as collaborative business partners to some of the world’s best brands including Ben & Jerry’s, Jose Cuervo, Alaska Airlines, Charles Schwab and OkCupid, among others.

Being a Mekanista requires a rare combination of being a weird, fearless and wonderful person who enjoys birthday cakes, well behaved dogs, and shared sensibility of respect and not taking ourselves too seriously.

Mekanism has been named to Ad Age’s A-List and twice to their Best Places to Work list. Most recently, Mekanism was named Independent Agency of the Year by The Drum and a Top 10 Most Effective Independent Agency in the US by the Effie Index. We have been profiled by The New York Times, Fast Company and ABC’s Nightline. Our campaign methodologies are studied by Harvard Business School.

The Associate Director, PM 

The Associate Director, PM has the primary responsibility to represent the Project Management discipline for Mekanism’s east coast. They will have a counterpart on Mekanism’s west coast and report to the Head of Project Management & Agency Operations. This is a leadership role and one that will manage direct reports. 

In addition to leadership, this position is the hub of communication for project teams regarding all project phases, deliverables, and scope. The work focuses on multi-channel planning and delivery, collaboration with discipline leads across Mekanism’s capabilities to develop complex integrated work plans (scope, timing, and resources), and implementing agency services across both short-term and long-term client engagements.

The Associate Director, PM is a seasoned leader and problem solver and thrives on leading all levels of the project, especially defining the intangible and turning chaos into order, and helping others do the same. This role will be responsible for a set of clients/projects with budgets totaling between $7-12MM.

Key Areas of Responsibility:

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Project and Holistic Account Planning: 
• Responsible for developing and managing the project plan and working with discipline leads and project teams to execute plans, as well as multi-channel, tactical planning, and roadmap development 
• Orchestrate timelines based on client and/or internal needs and changes, keeping accurate timelines throughout the life of the job 
• Workflow: 
• Serve as a liaison between Account Management, Creative, Strategy, Production, and other agency partners 
• Remind team members of upcoming due dates and alert the key partners if dates shift along the life cycle of the task 
• Coordinate and run weekly status meeting and provide day-to-day project status to the team 
• Quality Assurance: 
• Quality-check all work before sharing with internal and external teams 
• Consistently manage client expectations, ensure delivery of the highest quality service, and solicit and act on client feedback 
• Maintain up-to-date and organized files for all stages from concepts to completed work 
• Scope and Risk Mitigation: 
• Consistently identify needs which clients may not recognize and ensure approaches and solutions are linked to objectives and future needs, partnering with discipline leads from context to solutions
• Manage budgets, scopes, capacity planning, change management, and overall agency facilitation to ensure requirements and project deliverables dates are clearly communicated, understood, and executed  
• Effectively and efficiently plan and prioritize all deliverables and resources working across project(s) based on scope of work and project goals 
• Actively monitor project risks and scope creep to foresee/identify potential problems and proactively identify solutions to address them in advance 
• Management: 
• Manage a direct report(s) pending agency and departmental structural needs 
• Operations:
• Help lead operational initiatives directly for bettering the PM Department or agency delivery as a whole in support of the Head of Project Management & Agency Operations 

Qualifications:

• Proven project management, time management, organization, and prioritization skills 
• Strong organizational skills, attention to detail, and the ability to efficiently handle multiple tasks  
• Understanding of advertising principles and creative project process methodology 
• High level of emotional intelligence, language, communication, and decision-making skills 
• 6-10 years’ experience in Advertising or related field 
• Embody Mekanism values (loyal, weird, realistic, fearless, optimistic, storyteller)
• Be a team player, ability to effectively play nice with others
• Comfort in working autonomously, while also keeping Head of Operations and PM team abreast of all project’s status
• Agency experience mandatory; experience managing multiple brands highly preferred
• Curious and inquisitive: someone that wants to roll up their sleeves and build something new

Joining Mekanism , you are part of the Plus Company. This network of entrepreneurial agencies is designed to collaborate, not compete. It empowers every agency – and every individual – to bring their own unique capabilities together to make magic happen. You will be empowered to take risks, dream big, develop your skills and grow in your career with the full support of the network and all it has to offer.

Pay Range: $110,000 - $115,000

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