Social Lead, Media Management and Delivery

Job Specification: Partner, Global Social Lead

Reports to: Global Digital Lead

The Role

The Global Social Lead is a senior client and capability-focused role that sits at the intersection of our channels, content, and solutions functions within WPP. This role will have direct responsibility for evolving our clients' social growth plans — spanning paid social, organic community, creator and influencer partnerships, social commerce, and the rapidly emerging landscape of AI-driven content and conversational social experiences — blending deep platform expertise with carefully articulated development plans that advance client maturity and deliver against growth objectives.

The role will be pivotal to thinking laterally across problems where social is both a media channel and a cultural signal layer that informs the wider marketing ecosystem.

The successful candidate will work horizontally across social platforms (Meta, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Snap, Pinterest, X, Reddit, emerging and local platforms) and vertically in integrating supporting capabilities from analytics, creative and content production, consumer and data strategy, and the broader worlds of commerce, influencer marketing, and community management. The role will partner with strategists, activation teams, and the wider agency and WPP functions to bring an integrated social view to our clients, aligning plans back into the overarching direction of the business.

You will be a senior member of the leadership team and expected to inspire, guide, and develop social knowledge across the business to fully leverage team skills whilst also setting the foundation of decisioning and strategy for our choices in social investment. As a member of the client management team, the role will actively contribute to developing long-term strategy in line with other leadership leads.

The Ideal Candidate

As a leader, you will be responsible for inspiring and directing our clients in close partnership with the client lead. You will have a strong background in leading global social accounts and managing stakeholders at the most senior level, up to C-level where required. You will have a proven track record in managing, leading, inspiring, and integrating fast-paced, dynamic social and content teams — both across the agency and within the client.

You will have worked with inter-agency solutions and clients that operate across borders and who are looking to accelerate their social maturity across services, measurement, creative, and strategy.

You will be expected to demonstrate social expertise covering paid social, organic community, creator and influencer marketing, social commerce, and the emerging field of AI-generated content and conversational experiences. You should have a working knowledge of adjacent disciplines (search, programmatic, CRM, PR) from an integration point of view, and be able to inspire a team to build upon the strategic model you have developed. You will be expected to fluently engage on topics such as creator economy dynamics, platform-native creative, first-party data activation, attribution, brand safety, community management, and measurement models as they evolve within the social and marketing ecosystem.

The ideal candidate will have the passion to power client growth, the tenacity to push ideas, and the agility to manage adoption from global to local.

Role Responsibilities

• Leading clients through an advancing social agenda with a broad understanding of the whole media and cultural ecosystem
• Creating and developing a sophisticated and leading global social team operating model across paid, organic, creator, and commerce
• Integrating all WPP capabilities, solutions, and social disciplines linked to growth
• Leading growth for clients and crafting compelling narratives that connect client ambitions to practical social solutions and strategy
• Leading direct and indirect agency teams in global social growth plans across global, regional, and local markets
• Supporting performance and client growth through the WPP framework of thinking
• Driving the evolution of social strategy in response to creator economy shifts, platform algorithm changes, AI-generated content, and evolving consumer behaviours
• Implementing ways of working that enhance our practice — including results, decision-making, team structures, and group initiative deployment
• Setting client and team KPIs, including social-specific performance benchmarks and maturity roadmaps

Key Requirements

• Substantial and demonstrable success in managing and leading the global social agenda for major brands
• Deep expertise across paid social and organic community, with strong working knowledge of creator/influencer marketing, social commerce, and emerging AI-driven content formats
• Track record of senior client management up to and including C-level where required
• Proven success in stakeholder management and ability to build relationships with all agency leads
• Proven track record of managing and inspiring large, distributed social capability teams across multiple markets
• Proven track record in understanding and operating in media ecosystems beyond social
• Strong technology understanding (social platforms, publishing and listening tools, creator platforms, AdTech and MarTech stacks) as well as attribution models, cross-channel planning and buying, and social automation/AI tooling
• Experience building and scaling social measurement frameworks including brand lift, incrementality, MMM integration, and first-party data strategies