Marketing and New Business Director

About Bicycle

Bicycle was founded by four people in 2021 because they believed that a better type of agency was not only possible but needed.

We are 100% independent, with no external investment whatsoever and proudly offer a full-service media and creative solution with fully global capabilities. We’re built on the power of ‘And’: creative & media, brand & performance, art & science, data & creativity, man & machine.

From the outset we believed that our industry had become beset with silos and legacy driven behaviour and have purposely evolved the agency to operate across brand and performance media, creative strategy and creative production - all of which are delivered under our proposition of ‘the power of And’.

Profitable since day one, we are now 60 strong and one of the fastest-growing agencies in the world. Our clients include Papa John’s, Livescore, Carwow, Virgin, OFX, Sarson’s, Mischon de Reya, Warner Hotels, CVH Spirits, Tate & Lyle, Royal British Legion, Branston Pickle, Movember, Moju, Zooplus, Abellio and Estrid.

We are continuing to grow and are proud to have been awarded B-Corp and London Living Wage status and shortlisted for The Drum’s Best Places to Work. We have also been accredited with the People First Promise badge in recognition of our commitment to our people and their mental well-being.

We were named one of Campaign’s 2025 Agencies to Watch and recently shortlisted for Campaign’s Start-up of the Year Award. 

We also received an excellent score of 8/9 in Campaign’s 2025 School Reports, which ranks agencies based on their growth, income, client wins, diversity credentials and quality of work.

Development is core to our growth and is evidenced by us being accredited IPA CPD Gold status in 2023, 2024 and 2025. We are home to smart people who want to create incredible work on interesting brands.

Our Mission

To leave the industry better than we found it. To create famous and impactful work that you want to tell your mum about. To make a living and have fun doing it.

Purpose of the Marketing and New Business Director Role

As the Marketing and New Business Director, your primary purpose is to lead the agency’s growth strategy by building awareness, generating demand for our point of difference, and converting opportunities into long-term client partnerships. You’ll be responsible for shaping and projecting the agency’s brand, ensuring it resonates clearly in the market and stands well apart from our competitors. Through a mix of strategic storytelling, targeted outreach, and compelling credentials, you will ensure the agency is consistently positioned as a top choice for ambitious and challenger brands looking for bold, creative, and independent thinking.

Working at the intersection of marketing, strategy, and commercial development, you will oversee all new business efforts from lead generation and pipeline nurturing to pitch leadership and relationship building. You’ll also be responsible for driving the agency’s external visibility through PR, awards, events, and thought leadership initiatives. Internally, you’ll collaborate closely with senior leadership and client teams to craft powerful narratives and ensure all external-facing materials reflect the agency’s values, capabilities, and aspirations. Ultimately, your role is to fuel the agency’s growth while strengthening its reputation and reach in a fast-moving, competitive industry.

Core Competencies for the role

Stakeholder Management

As a senior leader and an ambassador of the agency, you are expected to demonstrate exceptional stakeholder management skills. This includes building and maintaining strong, trust-based relationships with a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders such as agency leadership, department heads, high-relevant prospective clients, existing partners, and industry collaborators. The role requires a strategic and nuanced approach to communication, ensuring that stakeholder expectations are aligned with business objectives, and that interactions consistently reflect the agency’s values and ambitions. Internally, you must be able to galvanise teams around new business opportunities and marketing initiatives, influence decision making across disciplines, and foster collaboration to deliver compelling, joined-up pitches.

Externally, you must act as a credible, confident ambassador nurturing long-term relationships, identifying mutual value, and positioning the agency for sustained growth. Navigating complex stakeholder landscapes with clarity, diplomacy, and commercial awareness is key to success in this role.

Technical Skills

You will be expected to bring a high level of technical proficiency across marketing, digital platforms, and business development tools to drive the agency’s growth strategy. This includes a strong command of CRM systems (such as HubSpot or Salesforce), data and lead tracking, pitch and proposal platforms, and campaign performance analytics.

You will have an astute understanding of the industry’s new business landscape (creative and media). Demonstrate a network depth/ black book that keeps the agency fully engaged with the wider industry and new business practice.

You’ll need to have strong fluency in media and to shape and oversee integrated campaigns that elevate the agency’s profile. Competence in presentation software (such as Keynote, PowerPoint, Google Slides) and creative asset collaboration tools is essential to delivering compelling new business materials.

You should also be comfortable using internal project management systems such as Notion to collaborate pitch activity across teams. Critically, you will combine these tools with strategic insight leveraging data to inform decision-making, identify opportunities, and continuously refine outreach and conversion tactics.

You will be driving the agency’s overall go-to-market proposition. Working with the senior management to ensure that we are constantly distinctive and relevant within the evolving industry

You will have experience developing and managing a marketing and content programme to maximise the proposition and maintain a suite of ‘on brand’ and ‘on strategy’ outbound communication tactics ranging from emails to building bespoke events

Creating and managing outbound high relevant prospecting programmes for future clients.

You will have a significant breath of experience in creating, running and developing an agency pitch process. You will know what great looks like in terms of pitch work and will command a consistent POV on the quality of the work relative to the client’s requirements.

Financial Management

You are responsible for overseeing the financial planning and budget management of all marketing and new business initiatives, ensuring spend is aligned with strategic priorities and delivers measurable ROI. This includes setting, monitoring, and reporting on budgets for campaigns, events, pitch development, sponsorships, and external partnerships.

The role requires a commercially astute approach to decision-making, balancing creativity and ambition with cost-efficiency and budget discipline. You are expected to track performance against spend, manage supplier relationships and contract negotiations, and work closely with the finance team and senior teams to forecast and allocate resources effectively.

A deep understanding of how marketing and business development activities impact the broader commercial goals of the agency is essential, as is the ability to adjust plans based on probabilities and outcomes.

People Influencing & Leadership

You will be expected to be a strong leader with an influential voice within the agency capable of inspiring teams, building alignment, and driving cross-functional collaboration to deliver impactful marketing and growth initiatives.

This role requires you to have the ability to lead with vision and clarity, inspiring and energising teams around strategic goals while fostering a culture of creativity. You should be adept at influencing both internally and externally navigating senior stakeholder relationships with empathy and commercial awareness and bringing people along through your clear storytelling and compelling strategic knowledge. Whether leading new business pitches, mentoring team members, or representing the agency in industry forums, you will be expected to lead by example, model high standards, and create a positive environment where new business is valued across the business.

Agency Development

At Bicycle London, as the Marketing and New Business Director you’ll not only be responsible for driving external visibility and growth but also play a vital role in strengthening the agency from within.

As a senior leader, you will be expected to actively contribute to the internal culture by championing initiatives that reflect the agency’s values, energy, and inclusive spirit. This includes participating in or supporting internal events, employee resource groups such as ED&I, the social committee, and other activities that foster community, collaboration, and belonging. By promoting a vibrant and unified internal culture, you will help ensure that the agency’s external narrative is rooted in authenticity. Your visibility, engagement, and leadership in internal initiatives sets the tone for others, reinforcing a strong sense of agency identity and pride which will ultimately enhance Bicycle London’s reputation from the inside out.

Business Development

Business Development is core to your role, and you are responsible for identifying, shaping, and converting opportunities that fuel the agency’s growth. Fully understanding and committing to the agency’s biggest difference (it’s culture) in such a way that you constantly and passionately operate as an ambassador for the agency and ensure that all our communications underpin this difference. It is crucial that this is an intrinsic part of your overall network building capability.

You will work with the wider agency to ensure a ‘new business is everybody’s business’ ethos to new business and marketing. This includes ensuring that key individuals do their own bit in building their own industry profiles and driving outbound support for the agency proposition.

Beyond pitching, you will play a key role in raising the agency’s profile through thought leadership, partnerships, and visibility initiatives, ensuring Bicycle London is consistently seen as a standout, forward-thinking agency in the industry.

Effective Communication

You will be expected to be an exceptional communicator with the ability to articulate the agency’s vision, culture, and proposition with clarity, confidence, and impact. This role requires a high level of verbal and written communication skill, whether crafting compelling pitches, presenting to senior clients, briefing internal teams, or representing the agency externally.

You should be adept at tailoring messages for different audiences, translating complex ideas into simple, persuasive language, and bringing energy and conviction to every interaction.

You should also have strong listening skills and emotional intelligence. These are equally important as they will enable you to understand stakeholder needs, read the room, and build trust across all levels. Effective communication in this role isn’t just about what’s said, but how it’s delivered and aligned with our tone of voice and culture.

About you:

-8+ years’ experience of driving marketing and inbound sales programmes, some of which must have been within the agency space.

-Proficient in using key marketing platforms namely - LinkedIn and Hubspot

-You must be well connected, outgoing, highly passionate and engaging. Being capable of exciting others in the world of building our agency’s reputation.

-An active learner, always learning on the job, not afraid to ask questions or learn from your mistakes

-Experience of good ‘upwards management’ to senior team members is also preferable (this must include experience of working with at the board level). We are an owner run business, we actively encourage our team to have a point of view

Remuneration & Benefits

Salary £75,000 + MBO Bonus

Time off

-26 days annual holiday

-3 extra days off between the Christmas period (27th December – 1st January) however, you’re expected to be on standby in the unlikely event that your clients require assistance.

-2 days off for volunteering at our 3 chosen charities XO Bikes, Breast Cancer Now, and Demelza.

-2-week working abroad allowance.

-After two complete years’ you will accrue one extra day’s holiday up to a maximum of 30 days as a Service Award

Culture

-Dog friendly office

-Loaded Breakfast bar and Drinks Bar

-Monthly Culture Days to learn about and celebrate our cultural differences.

-Monthly Massages and Manicures/ Pedicures.

-Socials organised by the Culture Club.

-Subsidised 5 a side football

On successful completion of probationary period

-Death in Service at 4 x times salary

-Discretionary annual performance-based bonus scheme of up to 8.33% of salary

-Opt-in Private Healthcare

Development

-Audible membership.

-After probation you will be enrolled on to Bicycle’s Academy, the Pedal to Success programme to support your personal development and career progression.

-Momentum Fund to explore your passions and hobbies.

-Snacks and Learn Sessions

Other

-Auto Enrolment Pension Scheme (after 3 months service)

-Access to Mental Health First Aiders

-Annual away day (UK strategy day and/ or international team bonding)

-Brompton bikes available for getting to and from meetings around town.

-Cycle to Work Scheme (Traditional).

-Carwow Salary Sacrifice Car Scheme

-Cycle to Work Scheme with XO Bikes. (Recycled & refurbished donated bikes where all profits go towards training & hiring prison leavers).

-Employee Assistance Programme

-Financial incentive for successful new business leads.

-Salary Sacrifice Childcare Vouchers

Our Values

Drive

Drive is what propels us towards our business goals.

People with drive move things forward.

They help us reach our targets and explore new possibilities.

Nobody comes here to sit still.

We encourage all staff to ask ’where next?’

And everyone has their turn at the front of the peloton.

Drive gets us up the biggest hills and helps us overcome our biggest business challenges.

And allows us to enjoy the ride on the other side.

Pushing through the pedals is hard work but the view at the top is wonderful.

Balance

Balance keeps us safe and upright and fixed on our targets.

With balance we move forward quickly and safely.

Without balance we crash.

Cultural balance. We attract people from all walks and encourage diversity in all aspects of our work. This balance is crucial to keeping our work and our outlook fresh, relevant and exciting to us and our clients.

Work life balance. We never work so hard we hit the wall. We are at our brilliant best when we are happy and rested and have the space to do our thing.

When we work with balance it’s hard to knock us off course.

Freedom

Drive and balance mean nothing without freedom.

We have clear business goals but there’s more than one road to success.

Everyone at Bicycle has freedom.

Freedom to challenge management and clients and colleagues.

Freedom to explore new ways of doing things.

Freedom to express themselves through their work.

Whether you stand on your pedals or sit firmly in the saddle, you have the freedom to move your career forward in a way that suits you.

Culture

Culture is our prize possession, and evolved from start-up to scale up, with a team of the best diverse talent in the industry and built on one strategic imperative “to consistently provide our people with the best environment to do the best work of their lives”.

This principle is underpinned by our three organisational values, Momentum, Balance and Freedom, which are disseminated throughout to encourage every single employee to bring their true selves to work.

We pursue differences! Evidently, our team comes from all walks of life and giving them that sense of belonging - in a safe working environment - genuinely enables us to collectively deliver the best work we can for our clients.

Diversity

Our success relies on the diverse perspectives of our workforce and aside from simply being the right thing to do, we believe that fostering an inclusive culture where all talent can thrive makes our company stronger and helps drive invention in the work we do for our clients. We also believe it enables a greater idea exchange that fuels innovation and best reflects diverse consumer experiences. Bicycle is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing a space where everyone can bring their whole self to work. We actively promote and welcome applications from individuals who identify with groups currently underrepresented in the advertising industry.

We strive for everyone to feel like they belong by removing any potential discrimination in the way that candidates and our employees are treated, including:

-people with disabilities (visible and non-visible).

-people of different sexual orientations.

-transgendered and transsexual people.

-people of different races.

-people on the grounds of their sex.

-those of faith and of no faith.

-in relation to their age.

-in relation to their social class or medical condition.

-women who are pregnant or have recently given birth.

Accessibility

Please inform our HR or hiring team if you require support prior to or during your interview and we will endeavour to support you to ensure you have every possible chance of success.