Positions: Associate Director, Strategy

Location: London, England, United Kingdom

Location: London, England, United Kingdom Agency: Initiative - United Kingdom Ref#: 20779 Type of Contract: Regular

About Us Initiative unlocks business growth for the world's most ambitious brands. We believe in the power of media to reshape our industry and orchestrate a brand's entire consumer experience, by balancing both what unites people and what makes them different.

When brands unite people in culture, they build Fame, and when brands connect individuals to their unique journeys, they build customer Flow.

Media responsibility is at the forefront of everything we do, whether it's creating media plans that reflect the diversity of our communities, promote brand safety, and foster sustainability.

Our agency celebrates diversity in an inclusive environment where all of our 6,000+ strong talent across 90+ markets feel seen, heard, and valued. Our vision is to create not only a better media company, but also a better media industry, and maybe even a better world.

ROLE OVERVIEW: As an Associate Director of Strategy you are responsible for the development of strategic recommendations that solve client challenges. You will work across key accounts & clients (depending on the Brief ask/rating & the skillset need) and should strive to produce outstanding communications strategies, as recognized through awards, client satisfaction scores and tangible examples of innovation.

You will help to strategise, produce and make sense of the key cultural, consumer and market intelligence required to design the best possible holistic communications plan to deliver on that task.

You have a passion for people, brands and ideas and an insatiable curiosity for culture in every sense. You believe that brands can & should have meaning in the world, and are driven by the desire to understand the changing world and people's subsequent shifting motivations and behaviors.

You are responsible for creating the strategic recommendations for your key clients & fostering best-in-class work with local Initiative offices in local markets. You are also responsible for engaging with the client in an advisory capacity in conjunction with the wider strategy & client advice, insights and specialist (e.g digital) teams. It is not your responsibility to manage the client relationship & you will - by Brief - work closely with the Client Lead to deliver brilliant strategic thinking for the client team. In your capacity as Associate Director you should be leading strategic workshops and inspiration sessions both internally and externally, as well as supporting sessions with other specialist focus (e.g digital).

Creative thinking and sound presentation skills are critical in delivering success in this role.

You should produce work that drives re-appraisal of communications and what media can do in the world, and your work should be seen as one of the key levers working to drive the agency forward.

You are a champion of the Initiative Infinity planning process and have the flexibility to employ and adapt the Initiative toolset to tackle a broad range of client needs. In doing so you will work closely with the research function to consider all consumer, category and culture trends, helping the wider Team to think about new ways to connect to people in culture & working real-time alongside the Analytics, Communications Design and Client teams to deliver better, smarter and more innovative work. Your work is consistently held to your own high design and detail standards - consistently recognisable by colleagues and clients as world-class Initiative strategic product.

You will also take an active role in global pitch projects, applying your analytical thinking, strategic craft and creativity to new business opportunities alongside day-to-day client work.

ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES: Client

• Demonstrate understanding of the clients' key business and challenges
• Be considered a valuable contributor during client meetings, providing, for example, research &/or deep understanding of how consumers are interacting with culture (their behaviors & motivations/mindsets)
• Deliver innovative thinking that inspires leading edge solutions and award-winning breakthrough work - contributing the creation of best in class work as standard (both internally & externally - and through close support of local market Initiative offices)
• Arming the client team with knowledge & expertise to speak confidently about the strategic direction where required
• Measurable client & strategy business KPIs

Internal

• Identify, develop & oversee the delivery of unique and innovative strategies to deliver the client's desired results
• Demonstrate a good understanding of consumers & their behaviors
• Clearly demonstrate how the strategy delivers on the business need and focus on results and measurement
• Be an Infinity Planning Expert & champion its usage amongst the team and client base
• Bring fresh thinking & inspiration into the Strategic Process to help the teams springboard to better Strategic thinking
• Adoption, promotion & facilitation of the Cultural Analytical Process/Tools to help teams find new insights that unlock growth
• Deliver executable, relevant, on brand platforms with the potential for fame/award entry
• Write cohesive communications architectures that deliver on the platform and give guidance for how the brand will play in culture
• Train, guide & assist the Strategists in development and packaging of ideas
• Positively collaborate with SBU and independent creative partners, contributing to their/our client work
• Use qualitative and quantitative communications channel & cultural tool research to develop applicable insights into the consumer connection with the brand
• Partner with Analytics to develop new tools, inputting into the development of new & cutting edge proprietary planning, research and reporting models for Initiative
• Lead ideation team sessions in conjunction with the Communications Design team and relevant SBUs to generate creative & compelling communications ideas
• Actively collect, collate and foster best-in-class case studies of award-winning and award-worthy work from around the network.

Commercial

• Contribute to Agency & Client revenue opportunities through Strategic output
• Maintain effective relationships with key strategic partners (vendors, academic institutions, creative consultancies), keeping up to date on their offer & using that information to help the Strategy Team unlock new growth opportunities for the client &/or the agency
• 50% Client
• 40% Internal
• 10% Commercial

Key Performance Indicators (KPI's):

• Client
  • Positive client relationships; understands clients' business and challenges
  • Aids in elevating Initiative's profile with key clients - particular our new wins
  • Award winning work delivered as a result of close collaboration with local markets identified as opportunity areas.
  • Deliver innovative thinking that enable award-winning &/or breakthrough work, helping to orchestrate, identify & write and win awards submissions
  • Measurable client & strategy business KPIs met
• Internal
  • Inclusion of Strategy management in client business
  • Lead team member providing quality control/best practice in the presentation of ideas
  • Able to translate the client's business goals into Strategic Communications Tasks
  • Able to deliver a strategy with insight, audience & targeting info with first thoughts & a POV on the potential strategic platform and communications architecture
  • Day-to-day active working knowledge of the Infinity Planning Process including training wider teams on process, usage on how to speak to the Initiative product with confidence in front of clients.
  • Positive feedback on ability to collaborate with other agencies, partners, teams & SBUs
  • Able to brief the global CD/ CAM team & local market teams with executable, on brand platforms that inspire
  • Collaborates with all teams to steward campaign strategic rigor
  • Proactively seeks to understand campaign results in real-time to feed learnings back into the Loop
  • Lives Initiative behaviors whilst also demonstrating solid time and management skills
• Commercial
  • A key contributor to Agency & Client revenue opportunities by improving the teams' Strategic output
  • Contributor to client KPI delivery & Agency revenue opportunities through the improvement of the Strategy Teams' strategic output (the provision of best in class thinking & future-focused insight/idea generation)

QUALIFICATIONS & COMPETENCIES

• Experience in an integrated planning role within media, creative, innovation or communications discipline (digital, content, invention, social, activation)
• Ability to think differently: creative & adaptive, entrepreneurial, independently minded; deeply immersed in cultural understanding and driven by a desire to know more the world / to better understand people's motivations & behaviors in the shifting landscape

Employee Transparency At IPG Mediabrands, we celebrate differences and believe this makes us stronger. IPG Mediabrands are equal-opportunity employers committed to championing an inclusive culture that provides a sense of belonging for all our employees. We do not discriminate against any applicant based on age, disability, race, colour, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, belief, marital status or any other characteristic protected by law . click apply for full job details