Account Executive

Willamette Week (wweek.com), Portland’s most vital source for news and coverage of arts and entertainment, seeks a new Account Executive for our team. In this role, you will work with local and national businesses on advertising solutions across our platforms (weekly paper, magazines, wweek.com, social channels) in service of hitting monthly revenue goals for Willamette Week.You’re the ideal candidate, if you’re a creative thinker with a keen understanding of new platforms for marketing and advertising that extend beyond print — i.e., social, digital,native, and the like. It will be your responsibility to build strong partnerships with clients and to identify creative ways to leverage the WW voice on their behalf. It’s essential that you possess excellent communicators, and can share ideas, develop proposals, and articulate creative ideas — all while being highly organized.While this role has the support of a sales team and manager, a Willamette Week Account Executive operates fairly autonomously, handling a portfolio of accounts.The right person for this job must be extremely motivated — and entrepreneurial in spirit. WW offers an exciting and challenging environment that is best-suited to passionate self-starters who are not afraid to roll up their sleeves.Responsibilities: Manage and sell to a large portfolio of accounts — embodying a keen sense of sales priorities.Deeply understand the WW media calendar, platforms, and audience — and be able to clearly target sales opportunities based on those inputs.Develop strong relationships with key clients. Build genuine trust and rapport with them.Develop creative marketing solutions that help solve against key clients’ business goals. Build and present clear, thoughtful proposals.Identify and contact new prospects with creative approaches.Identify growth opportunities with existing accounts and initiate long-term planning to bring these opportunities to fruition.Actively contribute to the ad design/sponsored content process by having a strong point of view on strategic direction, vision, and business objectives that reflect the client’s voice.Keep up to date on digital tools and platforms — and how to best leverage them with social and digital advertising opportunities.Work daily within our CRM on booking ads, logging notes, managing accounts.Proof and audit all your clients’ ads to assure they are designed and placed correctly and on time.Requirements: 2 - 4 years experience in a client facing role (in publishing, ad agency or start-up)Savvy understanding and interest in digital platforms, and non-traditional advertising.Creative thinker with ability to pick up information quickly — and work fast.Strong organizational skills, and the ability to juggle multiple projects at once.Possess entrepreneurial, brave, curious, focused, solution-oriented, empathetic, fun, and optimistic personal qualities.A genuine love of Portland: You need to be more than willing to dive deeply into local culture to develop a keen understanding of — and appreciation for — our city.Job Type: Full-timeSalary: $45,000.00 to $75,000.00 /yearAdditional Compensation:CommissionWork Location:One locationPaid Training:Yes