National Media Strategy Director

New Client Strategic Leadership & Solution Sales

The mandate is simple: build opportunity, shape the right solution and win the client.

About Smash Brand Group

Founded in 2003, Smash Brand Group is an independent, fully accredited Australian media and growth agency with more than 20 years’ experience helping ambitious businesses make their marketing investment work harder.

Our team brings experience from client-side roles, tier-one agencies and media owners, giving us a view of the market from every angle. But what really differentiates Smash is the agency model we have built around that expertise: a model designed around what a growing business actually needs, rather than the traditional structure of an agency.

Smarter media economics. We plan, negotiate, buy, optimise and report on core TV, radio, outdoor and publishing media without adding a management-fee layer. Clients still access experienced strategy, negotiation and buying capability through an accredited independent agency, without the additional layers and overhead commonly associated with larger agency models.

Growth capability that flexes around the opportunity. Our Growth Acceleration Services extend the relationship beyond media when a client has a broader growth problem to solve. We bring in the right specialist capability when it is needed, including performance, creative, analytics and specialist growth expertise, while one Smash team remains accountable for bringing everything together. That gives us the breadth to solve opportunities that sit outside the traditional remit of a media agency without asking the client to manage multiple partners.

A client success model built to compound. The Growth Loop™ is our proprietary year-round client success programme. Rather than allowing knowledge to disappear between campaigns, it keeps us close to our clients’ businesses through continuous learning, optimisation and practical action. Knowledge compounds, opportunities are identified earlier and every campaign can start smarter than the last.

Senior people stay close to the work. Our leadership team brings experience from major agencies, media owners and client-side roles and remains directly connected to client relationships. That means less hierarchy, faster decisions and direct access to experienced people when it matters.

Underneath it all is a straightforward philosophy: no agency theatre, no unnecessary complexity and no hiding behind activity. We communicate clearly, work as an extension of our clients’ teams and stay accountable to the impact we create.

We have strong client retention and happy clients ranging from established national household-name brands and franchises to e-commerce businesses, member associations and ambitious challenger brands across a diverse range of sectors.

About the role

The National Media Strategy Director is SBG’s strategic relationship lead for all potential new clients. It is neither a media planning role nor a traditional business development role. It is a senior, front-of-house agency role for an accomplished media professional who knows that the best new-business conversations start with understanding the client, not selling the agency.

You will get beneath the brief to understand each prospective client’s business, commercial objectives, growth ambitions, current approach and challenges, identify where their marketing investment or capability could work harder, and bring together the right SBG expertise to solve the opportunity.

Your job is not to sell everything we do. It is to recommend the right solution for the client and build the confidence to choose SBG.

You will work as one sales team with our Inbound Marketing and Inside Sales functions. Marketing builds demand and creates inbound opportunities. Inside Sales develops target accounts, engages and qualifies prospective clients, creates qualified conversations and supports you throughout every active opportunity. You bring senior commercial judgement, media expertise and strategic leadership to develop those opportunities, lead the client conversation and convert the right ones into long-term partnerships. You will also bring opportunities of your own: your network, your relationships and the referrals that follow good work are part of how this role wins.

This is not a role where leads are handed across a line, and it is not a high-volume cold-prospecting role either. You will work closely with Inside Sales on priority accounts, meeting preparation, follow-up and re-engagement, and share what you are learning from the market so targeting, messaging and qualification keep improving. You will be comfortable navigating complex, high-value sales cycles involving business owners, CEOs, senior marketing leaders, multiple stakeholders and significant media investment.

Whatever its source, once an opportunity reaches the senior client conversation, you lead it and you own the outcome: discovery, solution development, investment recommendation, proposal, negotiation and close, supported by our media specialists and a senior-led Client Services Team who help shape the solution and fulfil every commitment you make. You step into an active pipeline from day one.

What you will do

• Understand, diagnose and solve. Lead every qualified new-business conversation with curiosity and commercial judgement. Understand the client’s business, objectives, current marketing approach, challenges and growth opportunities before recommending a solution. Look beyond the initial brief where appropriate, identify where investment or capability could work harder, and help the client see a clear path forward.
• Progress opportunities and win new business. Build trust through the quality of your thinking, lead complex, high-value sales cycles and convert the right opportunities into long-term client partnerships.
• Lead the ROI conversation. Guide prospective clients through recommended investment, media scope, value and expected return.
• Shape the right solution with our media specialists. Translate a deep understanding of the client’s objectives, constraints and opportunities into a clear solution brief, bring together the capabilities that genuinely add value, then review, refine and present the recommendation with confidence.
• Craft compelling proposals and presentations that speak directly to each client’s business objectives and demonstrate SBG’s differentiated value.
• Deliver a seamless onboarding experience. Work alongside the client account owner in our Client Services Team until each new client’s first campaign is live, smashing expectations from day one, then hand full responsibility to the account owner and move to your next opportunity.
• Manage your pipeline. Progress multiple opportunities at different stages concurrently, keeping an accurate pipeline and forecast in HubSpot.
• Work as one team with Inside Sales and Inbound Marketing. Partner with Inside Sales on priority opportunities and strategic accounts, prepare jointly for qualified meetings, draw on their support for follow-up and re-engagement throughout active deals, give clear feedback on every opportunity and share client and market intelligence that sharpens targeting, qualification and messaging.
• Generate your own opportunities. Build senior relationships across prospective clients, media partners and the industry, earn referrals and maintain a visible market presence that creates new-business opportunities alongside those developed with Inside Sales.

What you will bring

• A track record of personally leading and winning complex, high-value new business in a media, advertising, publisher or integrated agency environment, including multi-stage sales cycles involving senior decision-makers, multiple stakeholders and significant media investment: leading discovery, pitches and recommendations, handling objections, negotiating commercial terms and converting opportunities into long-term clients.
• At least five to eight years in media, advertising, publisher-side or an integrated agency environment.
• A genuinely consultative approach to selling: strong listening and questioning skills, curiosity about how a client’s business works, and the judgement to recommend what the client actually needs rather than simply what SBG can sell.
• Exceptional listening, presentation, negotiation and relationship-building skills, with the credibility to lead commercially sophisticated conversations with business owners, CEOs and senior marketing leaders.
• Deep understanding of ATL, traditional and digital media and how they contribute to growth for mid-market, multi-site and challenger businesses.
• Strong commercial judgement: investment recommendations, forecasting, pricing discipline and gross profit protection.
• A record of meeting new client win targets through solution selling, and motivation from realistic stretch targets.
• A natural networker with senior relationships across marketing, business and media, who generates opportunities through relationships, referrals and market presence.
• Highly organised, proactive and accountable, able to progress multiple opportunities at once while maintaining a high-quality prospective client experience.
• Adaptable and collaborative in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment.
• Hands-on with HubSpot, advanced PowerPoint (M365) and Notion, and comfortable using Claude for Business for rapid research and synthesis.

What we offer

• Highly competitive base salary earning potential of $250k+ per annum. Base salary of $130,000 to $140,000 plus superannuation, and an uncapped new-client incentive paid on every client you win.
• An established Inbound Marketing engine, dedicated Inside Sales support before, during and after every qualified conversation, and an active qualified pipeline, with close collaboration on target accounts and new-business opportunities, so the majority of your time goes into high-value strategic and commercial selling rather than high-volume cold prospecting.
• A senior-led Client Services Team fulfilling every commitment you make, and the buying strength of long-standing media-partner relationships.
• A proposition that is easy to believe in: no added management-fee layer on core media, capability that expands and contracts with each client’s needs, one accountable team, and The Growth Loop™ compounding learning year-round.
• A close-knit, collaborative team with flexibility for life’s important moments.
• A paid volunteer day and birthday leave, plus ongoing industry training and an annual education allowance.
• Savings and discounts on thousands of everyday items, and wellbeing resources through our benefits platform.

How to Apply

To apply, please submit:

1. Your Resume: Highlighting your career progression, new-business performance and examples of personally leading and winning significant client opportunities, particularly where you shaped integrated solutions across multiple services or disciplines.
2. A Short Pitch (150–200 words max): Tell us about one major new-business win you personally led. We want to understand how you diagnosed the client’s broader commercial challenge, identified opportunities beyond the initial brief, brought together multiple capabilities or service lines into one integrated solution, and what ultimately gave the client confidence to choose you.