Senior Strategist

The Role

We’re looking for a Senior Strategist who can make sense of complicated things.

Someone who is naturally curious, asks good questions, sees connections others miss and can turn a lot of information into a clear point of view about what we should do next.

This is not a research role. It’s not a reporting role. And it’s not a role for someone who believes strategy ends when the brief is written.

Our strategists help connect the entire picture, the business problem; the audience, the category, the culture, the brand, the creative idea, the channels we use and the results we see.

The job is to turn all of that into direction.

What You’ll Do

You’ll work across clients and disciplines to help answer some deceptively simple questions:

What are we actually trying to solve?

Who are we trying to move?

What do we know about them that matters?

What choice are we making because of it?

How should that choice influence the work?

And how will we know if it worked?

That means you will:

• Lead research and discovery across consumers, culture, categories and competitive environments.
• Turn data, research and observations into insights people can actually use.
• Define audiences based on behaviors, motivations and opportunities,  not just demographics.
• Frame business and communications problems clearly before teams jump to solutions.
• Develop strategic positioning, communications strategies, briefs and planning frameworks.
• Partner closely with Creative, Media, Analytics, Digital and Account teams to connect strategy to execution.
• Help teams understand not only what we’re recommending, but why.
• Facilitate workshops and working sessions that move teams toward decisions.
• Present strategic thinking to clients clearly, confidently and without hiding behind marketing language.
• Stay connected to the work after the strategy is approved.
• Use performance data to understand what we’re learning, what it means and what we should do differently.
• Help identify opportunities to deepen client relationships and solve bigger business problems.
• Raise the quality of strategic thinking around you.

How We Think About Strategy

We don’t believe strategy is a department people visit at the beginning of a project.

Strategy should create the connective tissue between the work.

Business → Audience → Insight → Strategy → Creative → Media → Performance → Learning

The Senior Strategist helps make sure those things don’t become separate conversations.

Sometimes that means leading.

Sometimes it means challenging.

Sometimes it means simplifying.

And sometimes it means being the person in the room willing to say, “I don’t think we’ve answered the real question yet.”

What Good Looks Like

You create clarity where there wasn’t any.

You can walk into a pile of research, analytics, client input, competitive activity and internal opinions and find the thing that actually matters.

You make choices.

You understand that a strategy that tries to accommodate everything isn’t a strategy.

You connect dots.

You can move comfortably between audience insights, creative ideas, media behavior and business performance without pretending to be the specialist in every discipline.

You communicate simply.

You can explain sophisticated thinking without making it sound sophisticated.

You have a point of view.

You aren’t afraid to challenge an assumption, but you know the difference between having an opinion and having an argument.

You are accountable.

You don’t throw a strategy over the wall and move on. You want to know what happened and what we learned.

And you make the people around you better.

What We’re Looking For

We’re less interested in checking boxes than finding the right kind of thinker.

But you’ll probably have:

• Significant experience in brand, communications, advertising or integrated marketing strategy.
• Experience developing insights, briefs and strategic recommendations.
• Strong research and analytical instincts — both quantitative and qualitative.
• The ability to synthesize large amounts of information quickly.
• Experience working across creative, media, digital and analytics teams.
• Confidence presenting and facilitating conversations with senior clients.
• Strong writing and storytelling skills.
• Comfort working with imperfect information and figuring out what needs to be known next.
• A healthy curiosity about people, businesses, culture, technology and why things work.
• Experience mentoring or developing less-experienced strategists.

Agency experience is valuable. Intellectual curiosity is mandatory.

The Standard

The best strategic work should make the next decision easier. It should be clear enough that people understand it. Connected enough that people know what it means for their work. And accountable enough that we can eventually determine whether we were right.

A good Senior Strategist doesn’t just bring information into the room. They help the room decide what to do with it.