Digital Media Planning Manager, Media - Boots

Closing Date: Tuesday 23rd Dec
Location: Manchester
Contract: Permanent
Recruitment Partner: Frankie McCallister-Lyas

Boots UK Performance Media are an award‑winning in‑house team responsible for driving omni‑channel growth for our Retail business through best‑in‑class online advertising strategy and activation. We’ve built one of the UK’s most successful, innovative brand‑side teams through bringing together industry leading talent with the very best tech & AI solutions.

As our Digital Media Planning Manager, you will lead, plan and construct the key strategic responses for the Performance Media in‑house Agency – fusing together integrated Campaigns, key trade moments such as Valentines or Black Friday or new performance‑led growth opportunities. You’ll act as the catalyst for bringing together agency partners, in‑house Specialists and media partners to produce best in class strategy which drives growth, mixing your commercial acumen with Digital Media planning knowledge.

This role is a key part of our Performance Media leadership team and will lead a team of two as well as resource at our external digital agency. We’re looking for strong leadership capability, great communication and channel knowledge but above all, someone who truly values the people they lead.

• You’ll lead performance‑first, digital media planning team made up of 1 x Executive and 1 x Specialist to proactively deliver best in class, data‑led strategies to drive growth.
• Own the process of brief receipt, right through to the hand‑off to activation teams, driving plan optimisation through surfacing key‑insight and post‑campaign measurement
• Establish and maintain strong partnerships with agency consultants, platform partners and internal activation teams to ensure strategic responses are as robust as possible.
• Adopt and embed the performance media principles of Data, Measurement, Creative and Technology as the fundamental pillars of planning – combining strong audience planning with technical platform knowledge to craft innovative strategic responses.
• Pioneer new media types through robust testing proposals which clearly define an ROI‑led scaling strategy, working alongside media partners and activation teams.
• Utilising AI tooling, weave new technology into our Media planning and strategy for Performance‑first Digital Media.
• Lead the team’s ownership of the promotions and offers into performance channels plan, ensuring all key promotions land in channel and are well represented throughout.
• Utilising your 60% channel knowledge, independently and/or collaboratively, construct digital media led brief responses for demand generative and demand harvesting layers of the funnel.
• Regularly present and communicate performance‑first digital media plans and strategies, clearly articulating an ROI‑first narrative.

• Strong cross‑channel agency experience in Digital Media, particularly performance led media, with a minimum of 60% knowledge in each channel and an ability to confidently, independently construct data‑led strategies with meet the brief objective.
• An ability to think strategically – from a zoomed out understanding of consumer behaviour, right down to the intricacies of programmatic media buying, possessing an ability to confidently talk with Affiliates, PPC, Paid Social, Display & Video channel specialists & our Tech & AI team.
• An understanding of demand generation vs demand harvesting strategies, full‑funnel advertising and the role that Performance plays within the funnel