Associate Account Executive
Purple Group | Chicago, IL
Full-Time
$50,000–70,000 per year + bonus, based on experience
COVER LETTER AND RESUME REQUIRED
CHICAGO-BASED POSITION
About Purple Group
Founded in 2001, Purple Group is an award-winning independent advertising, marketing, and PR agency with consulting roots. We help our clients create Marketing for a Better World, combining strategic rigor, creative excellence, and deep cultural intelligence to build work that resonates across audiences and drives meaningful impact.
As an independent agency, we value collaboration, curiosity, entrepreneurial thinking, and genuinely good people. Our teams work closely across disciplines, giving employees broad exposure, meaningful responsibility, and the opportunity to contribute to work that matters.
The Opportunity
Purple Group is seeking an Associate Account Executive with 1–2 years of experience in an advertising or integrated marketing agency.
This is an opportunity for an early-career agency account management professional who enjoys working with clients, collaborating with creative teams, and keeping multiple projects moving in an advertising agency environment.
You should understand how work moves through an advertising agency—from a client request and project brief through creative development, review, revisions, approvals, production, and final delivery. You don't need to have managed every stage independently, but you should have hands-on experience supporting this process and understand the pace, collaboration, and attention to detail required to deliver great agency work.
Strong project-management and workflow skills are essential, but this is not a traditional corporate or standalone Project Manager position. We're looking for someone building a career in advertising agency account management who is also highly organized, proactive, and skilled at managing the details behind the work.
What You'll Do
Client Service & Account Support
- Support the day-to-day management of advertising and integrated marketing initiatives.
- Participate in client calls and meetings and help capture decisions, action items, and next steps.
- Prepare client-facing presentations, agendas, status reports, meeting recaps, and other communications.
- Build strong working relationships with clients, agency partners, and internal teams.
- Help translate client requests and feedback into clear direction and next steps for internal teams.
- Help conduct research related to brands, competitors, audiences, culture, and industry trends.
- Help ensure deliverables are accurate, polished, and delivered on time.
Project Workflow & Coordination
- Help manage projects from kickoff and briefing through creative development, client review, revisions, approvals, production, and final delivery.
- Maintain project timelines, schedules, deliverable lists, status reports, and documentation across multiple concurrent projects.
- Capture project workstreams in Asana and coordinate workflow among account, strategy, creative, production, media, digital, PR, and external partners.
- Route creative work for internal and client review and help manage feedback and approval processes.
- Track project status and proactively flag potential timeline, scope, resource, or workflow concerns.
- Proficiency in managing project workflows in Asana or similar platforms.
- Help ensure feedback, revisions, and next steps are clearly communicated and followed through.
- Support project scoping, estimate tracking, budget organization, and invoicing workflows.
Required Qualifications
- 1–2 years of professional experience working at an advertising or integrated marketing agency.
- Understanding of advertising creative process and workflows, including briefing, creative development, internal and client review, revisions, approvals, production, and delivery.
- Experience supporting client accounts, integrated marketing campaigns, advertising campaigns, or creative projects.
- Ability to support multiple client accounts simultaneously.
- Experience communicating directly with clients and working with internal creative or cross-functional teams.
- Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects, priorities, timelines, and stakeholders simultaneously.
- Exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail.
- Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills.
- Proactive orientation, strong follow-through, accountability, and the ability to anticipate what needs to happen next.
- Resourceful, collaborative, and solutions-oriented.
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment where priorities can shift.
- Proficiency in managing project workflows in Asana or similar platforms.
- Proficiency with PowerPoint or Google Slides and Excel.
Bonus Points
- Experience working on integrated multicultural advertising or marketing campaigns
- Bilingual with fluency in English and Spanish
Important Note About This Role
This position requires prior experience working within an advertising or integrated marketing agency environment.
Candidates whose experience is primarily in corporate project management, operations, IT project management, construction project management, event management, or PR/media relations without hands-on experience supporting advertising or creative development are unlikely to be a fit for this particular position.
We are looking for someone who wants to continue building a career in advertising agency account management and who brings strong project coordination and workflow skills to that path.
Compensation & Benefits
- Salary Range: $50,000 - 70,000 per year, based on experience
- Bonus opportunity
- Group health plan
- Health, dental, vision, and life insurance
- Transit benefit program
- Paid time off
- IRA
- Anniversary holiday
- Hybrid work environment for eligible employees
To Apply: Please submit both a resume and cover letter explaining your relevant integrated advertising agency experience and why you're interested in building your career in advertising agency account management with Purple Group.
Pay: $50,000.00 - $70,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Application Question(s):
- Will you require employer sponsorship in the future to work in the U.S.?
Education:
Experience:
- Advertising or Integrated marketing agency environment: 1 year (Required)
Language:
Ability to Commute:
- Chicago, IL 60605 (Required)
Work Location: In person
