Media Planning & Orchestration Manager

About the role

The Media Planning & Orchestration Manager is the functional engine driving the day-to-day coordination, execution, and optimisation of our media campaigns. Taking a channel-agnostic and customer-centric view, you will support the seamless delivery of campaigns across both Central (brand) and Retail (supplier) media networks. You will act as a primary operational contact for our media agency, helping to land clear briefs, track campaign-specific KPIs, and execute Test & Learn activities.

By collaborating closely with Category and Marketing teams, you will ensure plans are delivered efficiently, on time, and optimised for clear customer outcomes. As a Partner in our unique employee-owned business, you will drive operational excellence and continuous improvement across all live media deployments.

• Salary: £47,000.00 - £73,500.00 per annum dependant on skill and experience

• Contract type: This is a permanent position

• Hours and location of the role:

  • 35 hours per week

  • Your home location will be our London, Pimlico Head Office

  • This is a hybrid working role. The expectation is a minimum of 2-3 days per week in the office as team collaboration is critical in this role - core days are Wednesday and Thursday

Key responsibilities:

• Coordinate the day-to-day briefing process with our media agency. Review agency proposals and plans to ensure they accurately reflect the campaign brief and align with the wider media strategy

• Lead the tracking and execution of Brand, Category and Retail media plans, ensuring a holistic, joined-up view of the live media plan

• Ensure that clear, pre-defined KPIs are embedded into every agency plan before launch, and monitor performance in-flight to suggest optimisations

• Coordinate the operational setup of campaign-specific Test & Learn plans, tracking variables and ensuring data is cleanly captured for analysis

• Act as the day-to-day liaison for Category and Marketing teams, providing visibility on media plans, answering queries on suitability, and gathering necessary campaign assets

• Facilitate the end-to-end Post-Campaign Evaluation (PCE) process with the agency, ensuring performance data and T&L insights are compiled and shared back with internal teams

• Take ownership of personal development, staying up to date on media innovation & trends and proactively collaborating with peers to improve media processes

Essential skills and/or experience you’ll need:

• Proven experience in a media planning role at account manager or director level, either agency-side or in-house

• Strong, proven experience in briefing media agencies and critically evaluating multi-channel media responses and plans (TV, OOH, print, radio, paid social, paid digital i.e. display & OLV, partnerships, or retail media)

• Direct experience tracking performance of multi-channel campaigns

• Hands-on experience working with media agencies, creative agencies and marketing teams to deliver multi-channel campaigns

• Experience working on brand marketing, category marketing, trade marketing, and retail media marketing campaigns

• Foundational understanding of setting campaign benchmarks, KPIs, and structured media tests, ensuring test results influence future campaigns

Desirable skills and/or experience you may have:

• Experience working in either a fast-paced agency or large matrix organisation (Retail preferable)

• Line management experience

• Proficient with modern collaborative tools (e.g., Google Workspace, project management boards)

35 hours a week, Monday to Friday

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting…