Agency relationships & Capability Manager

Job Family Group: Marketing Group Job Description: About the Role As the Agency Relationships & Capability Manager within the Global Marketing organisation, you will play a pivotal role in driving consistency across Castrol's global agency model, media strategy execution, and marketing capability agenda. You will lead key creative and media agency partnerships, ensuring global standards, procedures, and ways of working are effectively embedded across global, regional, and local marketing teams. By optimising agency relationships, governance, and operating models, you will help deliver high-quality, customer-centric content and media activities that support business growth and marketing effectiveness. In addition, you will be responsible for defining and implementing a global Marketing Capability Framework, creating learning pathways and capability-building programmes that equip marketers with the knowledge, skills, behaviours, and tools required to excel in a rapidly evolving marketing landscape. This is a critical marketing leadership role with a strong focus on relationship management, agency governance, capability development, and marketing transformation. Reporting to the Head of Masterbrand, Adjacencies & Sponsorship, you will work closely with global, regional, and country marketing teams, as well as external agency and capability partners. What You Will Deliver / Be Accountable For Agency & Media Leadership • Act as the central strategic lead for Castrol's global creative and media ecosystem, serving as the primary day-to-day contact between the WPP Centre of Excellence and Castrol marketing teams. • Drive the agreed agency transformation agenda, improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of creative and media delivery while enabling integrated ways of working across strategy, creative, production, and activation. • Handle and strengthen key agency relationships, ensuring alignment with business objectives and marketing priorities. • Be an escalation point for market-related agency issues, providing guidance and resolution where required. • Increase visibility and consistency across local market media activities and facilitate the sharing of standards and findings globally. • Observe offshore and global operating centre resources to ensure high-quality campaign activation, optimisation, reporting, and continuous improvement. • Serve as the media subject matter authority for global Brand & Communications activities, providing leadership and guidance on media investment strategies that drive measurable business outcomes. • Collaborate closely with Marketing Effectiveness teams and market partners to demonstrate media performance and business impact. • Lead regular media audits in partnership with external consulting agencies, finding opportunities to optimise investment, governance, and performance. • Champion brand safety and advertising compliance, working with agencies, consultants, and industry partners to proactively handle risk. • Stay ahead of emerging media trends, technologies, and innovations, finding opportunities for piloting and scaling new approaches across the organisation. Marketing Capability & Learning • Define and lead Castrol's global Marketing Capability Strategy, establishing a clear framework for marketing excellence. • Develop and implement a strategic capability engine that accelerates growth, modernises marketing practices, and establishes consistent global standards. • Design capability pathways and learning journeys that support marketers at different stages of their professional development. • Identify, select, and handle external learning and capability development partners and vendors. • Ensure the development and delivery of engaging, relevant learning content that supports capability building across the global marketing community. • Encourage continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and capability development across all marketing teams. • Define and govern the marketing technology stack required to support capability building and enable effective ways of working across marketing functions. What You Will Need To Be Successful • Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, or a related field. An additional business qualification or MBA or equivalent experience would be advantageous. • Significant experience within marketing, agency, consultancy, or client-side environments, ideally within a complex multinational matrix organisation. • Consistent track record of leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing senior partners across multiple markets and geographies. • Strong expertise in agency management, media strategy, and marketing operations. • Deep understanding of marketing technology ecosystems, including Digital Asset Management (DAM), workflow platforms, Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO), and related MarTech solutions. • Demonstrated experience employing marketing effectiveness methodologies, including Marketing Mix Modelling and Media Mix Modelling. • Strong commercial competence with the ability to translate performance data into compelling business recommendations. • Excellent communication, influencing, partner engagement, and relationship management skills. • Experience handling offshore agency models and marketing automation providers is highly desirable. • Enthusiasm for innovation and a strong interest in the evolving media, technology, and digital marketing landscape. • Experience working effectively across diverse cultures and international markets. Skills & Competencies • Content Strategy & Creative Development • Media Planning, Investment & Effectiveness • Digital Media & Innovation • Marketing Capability Development • Learning & Development Strategy • Marketing Technology & MarTech Solutions • Stakeholder Management & Influencing • Vendor & Partner Management • Project & Programme Management • Knowledge Management & Documentation • Negotiation & Conflict Resolution • Cr…