ROAST
Head of Digital Strategy & Planning
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ROAST
ROAST is a multi-award-winning independent performance media agency, founded in 2015. We proudly work with brands like Rightmove, AJ Bell, and LEON, with one clear goal: to deliver better return on advertising spend (ROAS) than anyone else.
How do we do it? By combining both media intelligence and data science, along with constant experimentation, we create solutions that will drive the biggest impact.
But none of this works without exceptional people – which is why we put talent first, always. Training, progression, and opportunities to learn are baked into how we work. We want our people to feel happy, supported, and inspired.
Exceptional company culture isn’t an add-on at ROAST – it’s the engine. It powers everything: creativity, collaboration, retention, results. We’re proud of the culture we’ve built, because it’s authentic and intentional. Rooted in shared values, not just surface perks.
ROAST have created a place where people belong, grow, and do their best work – together.
The Role | Head of Digital Strategy & Planning
The Head of Digital Strategy & Planning is a senior leadership role at a digital-first agency that has grown well beyond digital in recent years. The role exists to turn client business problems into clear growth and investment choices, then bring the agency’s capabilities together around one commercial strategy.
This role combines senior strategic leadership, commercial ownership, new business leadership and building the planning function. The successful candidate will be a digitally led planning leader who also brings solid experience in ATL channels and a clear understanding of the role every channel plays within the wider media ecosystem, across both brand and performance objectives.
Data and discoverability sit at the heart of the role: how audiences find, evaluate and choose brands and how audience data, first-party data and measurement evidence decide where the next pound should go. Beyond client work, this role will shape how ROAST operates: how briefs are written, how disciplines work together, and where planning sits in the account and new business process. ROAST clients are global, across both B2B and B2C sectors.
Key Responsibilities:
Commercial Diagnosis & Integrated Strategy:
- Lead the commercial diagnosis on major briefs and pitches, identifying the real growth problem before channel recommendations are made
- Own integrated digital strategy and planning across paid media, programmatic, organic, CRM, data, measurement and creative inputs, extending into ATL channels including TV/CTV, OOH, audio and press where the brief requires
- Define the role of each channel through the customer journey, including where we create demand, capture it, convert it and learn from it
- Ensure planning is channel-agnostic, audience-first and outcome-focused, challenging channel assumptions rather than simply validating them
- Build investment logic that explains where the next pound should go, where not to invest, and what evidence would cause us to change that decision
Data & Discoverability:
- Put audience, customer and first-party data at the start of the planning process, using insight to shape audience definition, targeting and messaging
- Lead ROAST’s thinking on discoverability: how brands are found across search, social search, marketplaces and AI assistants / generative search, planning paid and organic visibility together
- Partner with Paid Search, Organic and Content teams so demand capture and discoverability are planned as one system rather than as separate channels
- Use search and social demand data to connect brand and ATL activity to measurable digital outcomes
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Measurement & Effectiveness:
- Partner with the Head of Data & Measurement to bring incrementality, marginal return, econometrics and commercial outcomes into the planning process
- Ensure every plan has a clear measurement framework, test-and-learn agenda and KPIs across brand and performance, so all plans are commercially accountable
- Build clear ways to show the contribution of brand and ATL activity to performance outcomes
Client Leadership:
- Lead senior client strategy on ROAST’s most important accounts, acting as a trusted strategic partner to client leadership
- Help client leads open bigger commercial conversations, moving ROAST’s top relationships from execution into commercial growth decisions
- Identify organic growth opportunities across existing clients and lead the agency response to them
- Bring in external ATL specialists or partners when integrated briefs require them, while retaining strategic ownership of the client recommendation
New Business Leadership:
- Lead the strategic response on major new business pitches, tenders and proactive opportunities, ensuring Planning is involved from the start
- Shape a clear, audience-led commercial argument for every major pitch, with each discipline playing a defined role within it
- Support agency leadership in converting opportunities into long-term client relationships and improving pitch conversion
Commercial Accountability:
- Own a 2027 direct Planning revenue target
- Materially influence significant wider agency revenue through new business and organic client growth
- Ensure Planning creates larger, more integrated scopes rather than becoming an isolated strategy cost centre
- Help improve pitch conversion, average client value, multi-service penetration and senior client access
Agency Operations & Ways of Working:
- Shape how ROAST operates, including how briefs move from client services to activation, how disciplines collaborate, and where Planning sits in the account and new business process
- Raise the quality of briefs going into activation teams so delivery starts from a clear strategic role rather than a list of requested channels
- Educate and influence the wider agency, from senior leadership to department heads, on the value of planning and how best to work with the function
- Work with the leadership team on how planning is scoped, resourced and priced so the craft is commercially healthy
- Contribute to the evolution of ROAST’s wider proposition, including how AI changes the planning and decision process
Building the Planning Function:
- Build and lead the planning function, defining roles, responsibilities, ways of working and development pathways
- Build a repeatable ROAST planning approach, including practical tools, templates, diagnostic methods and examples that teams can use without unnecessary process
- Develop the Planning Manager / Senior Planner so the function is not dependent on one senior individual
- Foster a collaborative, high-performance culture with clear standards of thinking, delivery and accountability
What Good Looks Like
- Clients can explain the strategic logic of their plan in one sentence before they talk about channels
- Major pitches have a clear, audience-led commercial argument, with every discipline playing a clear role within it
- Planning recommendations make explicit choices about where to invest, where not to invest and what evidence will change the plan
- ROAST’s top client relationships increasingly involve us in commercial growth decisions rather than execution conversations
- The craft is commercially healthy and visibly improving the quality of the wider ROAST business
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The Candidate
The Ideal Candidate Will:
- Be a strong digitally led planner with some ATL experience and an awareness of the roles all channels play within the wider media ecosystem
- Be as comfortable responding to a performance brief as a big brand brief
- Have a strong grasp of paid media and digital customer journeys, with enough breadth to work across Search, Social, Programmatic, Organic and CRM
- Be comfortable with data and research. You don’t need to be a data scientist, but you should be able to interrogate evidence and draw sensible commercial conclusions
- Understand how discoverability is changing across search, social and AI-driven platforms, and be curious about how AI, automation and first-party data are changing planning
- Have clear writing and presentation skills, with the ability to turn a lot of information into a simple recommendation
- Bring commercial curiosity and the confidence to ask why a client is doing something rather than simply taking the brief at face value
- Have a collaborative working style, able to challenge specialist teams without creating unnecessary friction
- Thrive in a fast-paced environment, keeping multiple client briefs and pitches moving at once
- Want to build a modern planning craft rather than reproduce the structures of a traditional media agency
Working at ROAST
Location: Soho, London W1
Holidays: 25 days, increasing with length of service, plus Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve off; optional company trips
Benefits:
- Additional 2 weeks ‘work from anywhere in the world’
- Access to Aviva Digicare+, providing health checks, Digital GP, MH consultations and more
- Life and Income Protection insurance
- Enhanced family-friendly packages
- Discounted wellbeing classes / membership and massages
- Active company social life organised by a staff committee
- Opportunity for involvement in CSR and charity initiatives
- Cycle, electric car and tech purchase savings
- Training, including supplier sessions (e.g. Google), industry bodies, internal and external trainers
- Opportunities to learn about other digital marketing disciplines
We are an equal opportunities employer. At ROAST, we take pride in creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment where everyone is welcome and their contributions are valued. When we recruit, hire, train, promote or engage in any other employment practice, we are committed to being an inclusive employer regardless of race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, socioeconomic status, medical condition or disability, or any other protected status. If you have a disability we would be happy to discuss reasonable adjustments to the job with you.
Please note that we will only accept applications from candidates who are legally entitled to work in the United Kingdom.
Please beware of scams online or from individuals claiming to represent us. A ROAST employee will never solicit candidates through a non-ROAST email address or phone number / WhatsApp. Please refuse any request that asks you to provide payment to participate in the hiring process.
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