Media Planning & Orchestration Manager

The Media Planning & Orchestration Manager is the functional engine driving the day-to-day coordination, execution, and optimisation of our media campaigns. Taking a channel-agnostic and customer-centric view, you will support the seamless delivery of campaigns across both Central (brand) and Retail (supplier) media networks. You will act as a primary operational contact for our media agency, helping to land clear briefs, track campaign-specific KPIs, and execute Test & Learn activities. By collaborating closely with Category and Marketing teams, you ensure plans are delivered efficiently, on time, and optimised for clear customer outcomes.

As a Partner in our unique employee-owned business, you will drive operational excellence and continuous improvement across all live media deployments.

In addition to your contractual pay, any time worked between 22:00 - 06:00 will attract Night Premium at a rate of £5.25 per hour. This will also apply to existing Partners who have enrolled onto Enhanced Hours Premium arrangements.

• Salary: £47,000.00 - £73,500.00 per annum dependant on skill and experience

• Contract type: This is a permanent position 

• Hours and location of the role:

  • 35 hours per week

  • Your home location will be our London, Pimlico Head Office

  • This is a hybrid working role. The expectation is a minimum of 2-3 days per week in the office as team collaboration is critical in this role - core days are Wednesday and Thursday

Key responsibilities:

• Coordinate the day-to-day briefing process with our media agency. Review agency proposals and plans to ensure they accurately reflect the campaign brief and align with the wider media strategy

• Lead the tracking and execution of Brand, Category and Retail media plans, ensuring a holistic, joined-up view of the live media plan

• Ensure that clear, pre-defined KPIs are embedded into every agency plan before launch, and monitor performance in-flight to suggest optimisations

• Coordinate the operational setup of campaign-specific Test & Learn plans, tracking variables and ensuring data is cleanly captured for analysis

• Act as the day-to-day liaison for Category and Marketing teams, providing visibility on media plans, answering queries on suitability, and gathering necessary campaign assets

• Facilitate the end-to-end Post-Campaign Evaluation (PCE) process with the agency, ensuring performance data and T&L insights are compiled and shared back with internal teams

• Take ownership of personal development, staying up to date on media innovation & trends and proactively collaborating with peers to improve media processes

Essential skills and/or experience you’ll need:

• Proven experience in a media planning role at account manager or director level, either agency-side or in-house

• Strong, proven experience in briefing media agencies and critically evaluating multi-channel media responses and plans (TV, OOH, print, radio, paid social, paid digital i.e. display & OLV, partnerships, or retail media)

• Direct experience tracking performance of multi-channel campaigns

• Hands-on experience working with media agencies, creative agencies and marketing teams to deliver multi-channel campaigns

• Experience working on brand marketing, category marketing, trade marketing, and retail media marketing campaigns

• Foundational understanding of setting campaign benchmarks, KPIs, and structured media tests, ensuring test results influence future campaigns

Desirable skills and/or experience you may have:

• Experience working in either a fast-paced agency or large matrix organisation (Retail preferable)

• Line management experience

• Proficient with modern collaborative tools (e.g., Google Workspace, project management boards)

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.