WPP Media | (MFG) Senior Vice President - Client Partner, Japan

Tokyo, Japan

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For more information, visit WPP.com.

About the Position

Role Title: VP/ SVP - Client Partner

Team: Marketing & Business Development

Location: Tokyo, Japan

About WPP Media

WPP Media, part of WPP, is a leading media agency driven by performance, data, analytics, and creative technology. We excel in multichannel audience planning and strategic media expertise. Our clients include Google, Dell, Uber, Airbnb, Mazda, and Hitachi. Our mission: to make advertising more valuable.

The Opportunity

We are seeking a highly experienced, strategic, and operationally excellent Client Partner to lead our relationship with Google in Japan, a top-tier client across WPP Media. WPP Media manages the digital mandate for Google in Japan.

This role sits at the intersection of senior client partnership, planning craft, execution excellence, and operational leadership. You will lead a cross-functional team and be accountable for flawless delivery, clear governance, strong strategic POVs, and executive-level influence-ensuring Google and MFG stakeholders have full visibility, confidence, and industry-leading work.

Key Responsibilities

Trusted Strategic Advisor (Senior Stakeholders)

• Build and maintain trusted relationships with senior Google stakeholders (CMMs / PA Leads and their -1s), providing insights and recommendations that directly map to Google’s business priorities.
• Translate business goals and market realities into media priorities, opportunities, and clear actions.
• Challenge the status quo constructively: improve briefs, strategy, plans, and operations with better, actionable alternatives.

Strategic Planning & Industry-Leading Thinking

• Lead strategic planning across initiatives, ensuring every campaign solves a defined business problem and is designed with measurable outcomes.
• Deliver “outside-in” POVs: bring best practices, competitive intelligence, and emerging platform/consumer trends into actionable recommendations and next steps.
• Drive test-and-learn frameworks and ensure learnings are documented and scaled.
• Incorporate AI and automation to elevate output quality, speed, and decision-making where appropriate.

Operational Excellence: “Run the House Like a Machine”

• Own day-to-day operational leadership with a no-surprises standard: smooth operations, disciplined execution, and proactive issue management.
• Establish and maintain governance mechanisms (e.g., operating cadence, RACI, QA gates, escalation paths, decision logs) to ensure clarity and accountability.
• Maintain full visibility across all initiatives (what’s working, what’s at risk, what’s next), surfacing risks early with mitigation options and decision asks.
• Prioritize and triage workload to ensure focus on the highest-impact work and avoid wasted effort, rework, and last-minute fire drills.

Execution Quality & QA (Zero Dropped Balls)

• Ensure flawless execution through rigorous QA processes, clear ownership, and adherence to Google’s quality standards.
• Drive continuous process improvement without being asked-simplify complexity, increase consistency, and improve speed and precision.

Financial, Scope, and Resource Management

• Manage client budgets effectively while ensuring profitability, ROI, and strong stewardship.
• Lead quarterly resourcing discussions with MFG Regional, feeding into fee/FTE allocations and ensuring the right talent is deployed to the right priorities.
• Own scope control and change management: align deliverables to priorities, secure decisions early, and reduce rework through strong briefing and QA.

Connector Across Google, MFG, and WPP

• Navigate seamlessly across Google local, regional, and global stakeholders, and across the wider WPP network.
• Bring the best of regional/global practices into Japan at consistent quality; export Japan successes as repeatable playbooks where applicable.
• Activate the full WPP ecosystem (not just media) when needed to solve broader business challenges (e.g., data/measurement, creative technology, commerce, analytics).

Executive Influence & Stakeholder Leadership

• Lead Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) and executive readouts with clear narratives: performance, implications, trade-offs, decisions required, and next steps.
• Influence MFG regional/global teams so Japan priorities shape decisions; engage WPP leadership to secure the right investment and talent.
• Ensure compelling storytelling and executive-ready communication (written and verbal).

Team Leadership & Talent Development

• Lead, coach, and motivate a high-performing team; earn trust through clear direction, high standards, and effective collaboration.
• Identify capability and resourcing gaps early; raise talent concerns with concrete proposals (training, role changes, hiring, partner support).
• Retain and grow top talent, create growth opportunities, and manage performance issues thoughtfully and promptly.
• Build a high-performance culture grounded in accountability, learning, and quality.

Key Deliverables

• Industry-leading media strategy and planning frameworks that connect Google business priorities to measurable media outcomes.
• Operational governance that provides full visibility, disciplined execution, and proactive risk management.
• QBRs and “outside-in” engagements with Google Japan, and with Regional/Global stakeholders as applicable.
• Best-of-network activation: case studies, bespoke events, and scalable playbooks that bring the best of WPP to Google in Japan (and export Japan learnings where relevant).

Role Requirements

• 15+ years of experience in media planning, buying, and strategy, with a strong focus on digital.
• Experience leading large, complex clients; technology sector experience strongly preferred.
• Proven senior stakeholder management and cross-functional leadership experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in marketing/advertising or related field; Master’s preferred.

What You Can Expect From WPP Media

WPP Media’s mission is to make advertising more valuable to the world. We do this by employing the world’s best talent to solve some of the toughest challenges of today’s digital marketing space. It is important that we hire people whose values reflect those of our own: genuine, results-focused, daring, and insightful.

As a WPP Media employee, we promise you a workplace that invests in your career, cares for you, and is fun and engaging. We believe these factors create a workplace where you can be yourself and do amazing work.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation.

WPP Media does not accept unsolicited resumes from employment, recruitment, staffing, or related agencies. WPP Media will not pay a placement fee for any unsolicited resumes received and has no obligation to compensate any third-party recruiter/agency in the absence of a valid written agreement between the parties for the sourcing of a given scope or role.

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