Project Manager - Europe

Project Manager, Chief Operations Office - WPP Media Europe

About WPP Media

WPP Media represents the collective strategic power of WPP's leading media agencies across Europe, including Mindshare, EssenceMediacom, and Wavemaker. Our mission is to redefine value for our clients, guiding them through complex market dynamics and enabling sustainable growth. We foster a culture of intellectual curiosity, pioneering thought leadership, and collaborative problem-solving, empowering our diverse talent to shape the future of marketing.

Role Purpose

This role will work closely with WPP Media Europe leadership to drive transformation projects helping to ensure they're delivering promised and expected results. This will involve overseeing a portfolio of interconnected projects, ensuring their collective contribution to strategic objectives and the realization of defined business benefits. This critical role will act as a facilitator and collaborator across markets, capability communities and senior stakeholders to translate scope into plans needed to deliver required outputs. This role requires management of multiple internal stakeholders, timelines, and resources. The ambition is to consistently optimise processes, delivering better quality and more efficient outputs.

This role will work closely with WPP Media Europe leadership to drive transformation projects helping to ensure they're delivering promised and expected results. This will involve overseeing a portfolio of interconnected projects, ensuring their collective contribution to strategic objectives and the realization of defined business benefits. This critical role will act as a facilitator and collaborator across markets, capability communities and senior stakeholders to translate scope into plans needed to deliver required outputs. This role requires management of multiple internal stakeholders, timelines, and resources. The ambition is to consistently optimise processes, delivering better quality and more efficient outputs.

This role will report into the Chief Operations Office, and be a critical part of building a WPP Media Europe organisation that is fit for the challenges of the future.

Key Attributes:

As a Project Manager for WPP Media Europe, you will work as an integral member of the COO team, driving marketing and media transformation as well as day-to-day delivery of media services. You will play a key role in the management and coordination of multiple concurrent workstreams.

You will design, implement and run simple and efficient programme and project governance processes, including establishing clear reporting mechanisms for overall programme health and progress.

You will build strong relationships across the European organisation, and broader WPP Media global and regional communities to ensure visibility, clarity, collaboration and strategic alignment.

You will be a strategic problem solver as well as an effective business operator. You will work across concurrent workstreams and teams, identifying and solving unexpected issues, and facilitating collaboration to stay on track. A can-do, roll-up your sleeves attitude to problem solving is essential.

You should be passionate about helping WPP Media Europe to build a best-in-class project management culture focused on driving change, organisational agility and continuous improvement. When needed you'll help coach others on project management, process design and change management fundamentals.

You're comfortable wearing multiple hats including project manager, strategic thinker, process designer, change agent and consultative problem solver with a proven track record of driving results.

You are are comfortable creating order from ambiguity and driving results across a range of internal and external stakeholders.

Key responsibilities:

• Own day-to-day project management of highly impactful WPP Media Europe initiatives, driving collaboration and progress across workstreams and keeping teams accountable for reaching milestones and deliverables across their workstreams
• Work effectively with senior stakeholders to identify and scope projects; will be able to identify out of scope challenges that WPP Media has skills and expertise to solve
• Keep relevant stakeholders updated on project status, drives mitigation of risks and actively tracks / communicates dependencies
• Act as an internal connector and facilitator to ensure complex solutions are orchestrated across workstreams
• Be an internal connector and driver to help frame proactive solutions to out of scope problems
• Partner with leadership to define team governance models to drive connection, collaboration, and communication within the team and with the client stakeholders
• Develop an in-depth understanding of the European business
• Manage ad-hoc requests and identify the correct profiles and skills required to action them

Candidate requirements

The ideal candidate will be a highly motivated and analytical individual with a strong background of delivery and transformation, with a desire to continue to drive positive change within a large, sophisticated organization.

Essential skills and atrributes

• Advanced experience in business analysis, project management or management consulting preferably within a global consulting firm - working knowledge of Media Agency and Holding Company capabilities, solutions and operating models a plus
• Firm understanding of project, programme, and portfolio management principles and their practical application. Able to assess and correct established plans, governance processes and tools. Adept at coaching and mentoring others on project management fundamentals.
• Expert at translating strategic vision and priorities into operational reality. Seamlessly moves between big picture and tactical details.
• Comfortable in a fast-paced, dynamic environment where priotities will shift
• Excels at driving results and expected outcomesas well as driving adoption, building enthusiasm and embracing change through effective change strategies and tactics
• Expert planner who can plot the course from start to finish, identify and mitigate risks, and can seamlessly shift between the strategic and tactical; excels at process analysis, documentation and design - able to break down silos, identify hidden interlocks and dependencies
• Strong collaborator comfortable fostering relationships and working across all levels across internal team, other partners
• Excellent written / verbal communication and storytelling skills including ability to tailor message based on audience
• Lifelong learner who is comfortable leaning into unknown subject areas and quickly gaining working knowledge and understanding
• Firm understanding of and capability in project management software

What you can expect from WPP Media Europe:

Our mission is to make advertising more valuable to the world. We achieve this by attracting and retaining the very best talent to solve some of the toughest challenges of today's digital marketing landscape. We are deeply committed to hiring individuals whose values reflect those of our own: genuine, results-focused, daring, and insightful. As an employee of WPP Media, you can expect a workplace that profoundly invests in your career development, genuinely cares for your well-being, and is both fun and engaging. We firmly believe these factors collectively create a workplace where you can truly be yourself, thrive professionally, and consistently do amazing, impactful work.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability.

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