Vice President, Strategy

Company description

Zenith is one of Publicis Groupe’s largest media agencies, spanning 95 markets globally with US offices in New York, Burbank, Chicago, Atlanta and Detroit. For more than 30 years, we have been at the forefront of media, helping to evolve and reshape the industry. We are highly regarded as a true agency partner by many high-profile brands for our expertise across numerous categories and wide range of capabilities that are unparalleled in the industry.

Clients hire us for our track record of excellence in strategic planning, investment, and measurement. We also have specialist offerings, including content, commerce, multicultural and future-proofed data capabilities.

Zenith is seeking an exceptionally talented Vice President, Planning to lead Media Strategy and Planning for a high-profile, fast-paced account. This role serves as the senior planning lead for assigned lines of business and oversees the development, execution, and stewardship of integrated, audience-led media plans. The VP will translate business and marketing objectives into clear annual and tactical planning strategies, applying strong media fundamentals, data, insights, and reach and frequency principles to guide channel mix, investment, flighting, and campaign sufficiency.

This person must be both a strategic leader and a hands-on contributor who can direct teams, produce high-priority work, manage multiple concurrent work streams, and build trusted relationships with senior clients and internal and external partners. The ideal candidate is highly organized, adaptable, collaborative, and able to lead with clarity in a complex, changing environment while balancing client, agency, and team needs.

This position reports directly to the SVP, Planning.

• Serve as the senior Media Strategy and Planning lead for assigned lines of business, with accountability for the quality, accuracy, timeliness, and business impact of all planning outputs.
• Lead both upfront annual planning and tactical campaign planning, translating business priorities, marketing objectives, audience opportunities, and performance learnings into actionable media strategies and plans.
• Develop audience-led, data-informed recommendations grounded in consumer behavior, category and competitive dynamics, business objectives, market conditions, and prior campaign performance.
• Apply strong media fundamentals and planning principles, including reach and frequency, campaign sufficiency, channel contribution, audience duplication, investment allocation, flighting, phasing, scenario planning, and optimization.
• Define how, when, and where paid media should show up across channels, ensuring annual strategies translate into cohesive, executable tactical plans.
• Oversee the full planning lifecycle from brief interpretation and audience definition through channel architecture, implementation, optimization, measurement, and post-campaign learning.
• Serve as a trusted senior client partner by anticipating needs, providing clear and proactive counsel, navigating complex or sensitive discussions, and connecting media decisions to business implications.
• Lead high-stakes client presentations and serve as the senior content owner for major strategic recommendations, planning deliverables, and executive discussions.
• Build strong relationships across client, agency, inter-agency, investment, audience, analytics, measurement, creative, and external partner teams to drive alignment and integrated delivery.
• Manage multiple lines of business and concurrent work streams, balancing changing priorities, quick-turn requests, deadlines, team capacity, and stakeholder expectations.
• Ensure your team is implementing clear work streams, owners, timelines, decision points, and quality-control standards; identify risks early and resolve workload, resourcing, or delivery issues proactively.
• Operate effectively as both a senior strategic leader and a hands-on contributor, directing team output while independently developing high-priority strategies, plans, presentations, and recommendations when needed.
• Maintain deep knowledge of the client’s business, consumers, competitive…