Vice President, Strategy

Vice President, Planning

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 workstreams, 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.

Responsibilities

• 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 workstreams, balancing changing priorities, quick-turn requests, deadlines, team capacity, and stakeholder expectations.
• Ensure your team is implementing clear workstreams, 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 landscape, media marketplace, and evolving technologies, and translate relevant developments into planning implications.
• Ensure teams adopt best-in-class tools, techniques, systems, and planning standards to deliver recommendations aligned with client objectives and expected business outcomes.
• Lead, motivate, and develop direct and indirect reports by setting clear expectations, delegating effectively, reviewing work, providing actionable feedback, and supporting career growth.
• Foster an inclusive, accountable, and collaborative team culture that values curiosity, rigor, ownership, continuous learning, and high-quality work.
• Participate in cross-department initiatives, agency capability development, and new business efforts as needed.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Advertising, Communications, Business, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in media strategy and planning, including substantial experience within an agency environment.
• 6+ years of people-management experience, with demonstrated success leading large, multi-level teams and developing high-performing talent.
• Proven experience leading media strategy and planning across multiple brands, lines of business, or complex workstreams simultaneously.
• Required experience leading both upfront annual planning and tactical campaign planning from brief development through implementation, optimization, and measurement.
• Strong media foundation across traditional and digital channels, with the ability to translate business and audience objectives into integrated channel, investment, and activation recommendations.
• Advanced understanding of reach and frequency, campaign sufficiency, audience duplication, channel contribution, media weight, flighting, scenario planning, investment allocation, and optimization.
• Demonstrated ability to use audience, competitive, planning, measurement, and performance data to develop clear, actionable, and data-informed recommendations.
• Proven success presenting to and influencing senior clients, managing varied stakeholder needs, and building trusted long-term relationships.
• Excellent leadership, collaboration, facilitation, and relationship-building skills across internal teams, external partners, and agency networks.
• Exceptional organizational and project-management skills, with demonstrated ability to prioritize, delegate, multitask, and maintain quality in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to provide clear strategic direction while remaining a hands-on contributor who can independently produce polished plans, presentations, and recommendations.
• Strong written, verbal, analytical, and presentation skills, including the ability to simplify complex media concepts for varied audiences.
• Sound judgment, diplomacy, and adaptability when managing complex decisions, sensitive client conversations, changing business conditions, and competing priorities.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office and relevant audience, competitive, planning, reach and frequency, optimization, measurement, and media stewardship tools; ability to translate tool outputs into actionable insights.
• Experience managing budgets, resources, timelines, and planning quality across a portfolio of work.
• QSR, retail, or another high-velocity, multi-brand category experience is strongly preferred.
• Curious, accountable, collaborative, and solutions-oriented, with a strong commitment to the client's business and the growth of the team.