Senior Media Director, Media Strategy

Job description

**ROLE: SENIOR MEDIA DIRECTOR (Financial Institution Experience)** **TEAM: MEDIA** **LOCATION: TORONTO (HYBRID 2X/WEEK)** **COMPANY OVERVIEW** At **Salt Media**, we're on a mission to earn the world's attention. As the media division of Salt XC, we're building a different kind of agency where media, commerce, creative, data and technology work as a single connected team. Our people combine strategic thinking with AI-powered tools, automation and advanced analytics to help some of North America's most recognized brands solve complex business challenges and drive measurable growth. We move quickly, challenge convention, and believe the best ideas come from curious people who are empowered to experiment. If you're looking to do career-defining work alongside smart, ambitious teammates in an environment that's shaping the future of media, we'd love to meet you. **ROLE OVERVIEW** As a **Senior Media Director,** you’ll set the strategic direction for how media investment is planned, bought, and optimized across CPG clients in North America. Operating at the intersection of media strategy and team leadership, you’ll ensure every plan is grounded in strong channel logic, sound investment principles, and a clear line to business outcomes. You’ll own cross-channel strategy and plan alignment across your portfolio, setting the optimization roadmap and reporting rhythm that keeps campaigns performing against KPIs. You’ll lead a team of media managers and directors — training them on tools and platforms, mentoring their growth, and ensuring the team’s segmentation and audience strategies stay sharp as channels evolve. You bring a senior media point of view that Account leads and clients rely on, and a team looks up to. You move fluidly between investment strategy and hands-on problem-solving, and you know how to translate performance data into a clear learning agenda for the whole team. **CORE RESPONSIBILITIES** **Media Planning & Buying** - Lead plan development and investment approach across your portfolio, ensuring every plan is grounded in strong strategic rationale. - Set standards for I/O accuracy, spec compliance, and buy execution across the team. - Own the relationship and day-to-day investment approach with key media platforms and partners, escalating and resolving issues as they arise. - Partner with Account leadership to align media investment with broader account strategy and business objectives. **Integrated Media Strategy** - Own cross-channel strategy and plan alignment for your portfolio, ensuring full-funnel thinking connects to brand and business objectives. - Translate client briefs into integrated, cross-channel investment approaches that scale across accounts. - Guide Account and Creative partners on how channel strategy supports the broader campaign narrative. **Measurement, Analytics & Reporting** - Lead post-campaign reporting and the learning agenda across your portfolio, ensuring insights translate into sharper future plans. - Build stakeholder trust in the measurement approach, aligning on what success looks like (e.g., brand-building vs. performance KPIs) before campaigns launch. - Guide the team on complex channel plans and measurement matrices, including test-and-learn frameworks. **Media Tools & Platform Fluency** - Train and support the team on platform and tool use, ensuring consistent, fluent execution across the portfolio. - Maintain platform reliability and troubleshoot tool-related issues that affect delivery. - Stay current on new platform capabilities and flag opportunities to apply them across accounts. **Performance Optimization & Testing** - Set the optimization roadmap for your portfolio and drive its implementation across the team. - Ensure consistent delivery against KPIs, stepping in to course-correct underperforming campaigns. - Champion a test-and-learn mindset, ensuring findings are documented and applied across future plans. **Channel & Audience Expertise** - Build segmentation strategies and platform-specific audience logic that sharpen targeting across your portfolio. - Guide the team on applying audience insights and platform data to refine channel-specific approaches. - Stay ahead of shifts in channel and audience behavior, bringing new thinking to the team and to clients. **Leadership, Management & Administration** - Manage and develop direct reports across the media team; own performance conversations, goal-setting, and career development planning. - Build team capability and bench strength through deliberate coaching, structured feedback, and stretch assignments. - Model the leadership behaviors and professional standards that define Salt Media’s team culture. - Contribute to team-wide planning processes, hiring decisions, and operational improvements in partnership with departmental leadership. - Champion a culture of accountability, clarity, and continuous improvement within your media team. **EXPERIENCE & SKILLS** - 8–12 years of experience in media planning, buying, or investment strategy, including 5+ years in a senior media leadership role within a media or integrated agency. - Financial Institution Experience - Proven track record leading cross-channel media strategy and investment across a portfolio of clients or campaigns. - Demonstrated people management experience, including direct report oversight, performance management, and career development. - Deep fluency across media platforms, tools, and measurement systems, with the ability to train and elevate a team’s capability. - Strong analytical acumen, with experience translating performance data into a clear learning agenda and optimization roadmap. - Excellent communicator and confident senior presenter; able to align Account, Creative, and client stakeholders around a media point of view. - Strategically minded, with the ability to connect media investment to measurable business outcomes. - Highly organized, decisive, and calm under pressure; able to lead a team through ambiguity while maintaining clarity of direction. **PERKS & BENEFITS THAT SET US APART** We don’t just talk about balance, growth, and culture, we build for it: - **Work-Life Flexibility:** Hybrid setup, up to 28 paid days off and winter holiday shutdowns. - **Comprehensive Coverage:** Health, dental, and vision plans, plus Salt Bucks to spend on what matters to you - wellness, RRSPs, or extra time off. - **Growth-Driven Culture:** Dedicated Salt Days, learning access, and formal leadership development. - **Celebration-First Mentality:** Legendary team trips, seasonal socials, and Salt Swag that reps your squad. - **Real Rewards:** Referral and new business bonuses, phone reimbursement to support your everyday work, exclusive lifestyle perks, and personalized wellness options. - **Culture of Belonging:** DEI programs, active ERGs, and a workplace where every voice counts. **WHAT WE STAND FOR** - **Salt of the Earth:** We lead with humility, honesty, and heart — always. - **Do What’s Right:** No shortcuts. We choose integrity over ease, every time. - **Earn Your Salt:** We roll up our sleeves, chase results, and celebrate the journey. - **Make Things Better:**We’re solution-seekers, always pushing for smarter ways forward. - **Seek Different Perspectives:** Diversity fuels our thinking. Inclusion drives our impact. *The anticipated annual base salary range for this position is $140,000–$150,000. Individual compensation within this range is determined based on job-related factors such as experience, skills, level of responsibility, internal equity, and business needs. This range represents the expected base salary for this role and does not include other elements of SALT’s total rewards program.* *Salt XC is committed to Equal Employment Opportunity and to attracting and retaining the most qualified employees regardless of race, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age or disability.*