Brand Strategy Director

Summary

Join PRECISIONeffect as a Director, Brand Strategy and lead the development of strategies for assigned clients. You will represent the voice of the customer, utilize various research methodologies, and develop key strategic deliverables. Collaborate with internal and external teams to ensure strategic consistency across campaigns. Manage and develop strategists, fostering a collaborative work environment. This role requires extensive experience in agency strategy, healthcare marketing, and client management, along with strong communication and leadership skills. The ideal candidate will possess a deep understanding of brand positioning and planning, and a proven ability to win new business.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree
• 8+ years of agency and strategy experience or equivalent with significant experience managing strategy in a client-facing role on large scale projects
• Extensive experience positioning brands to succeed in their respective markets
• Experience in healthcare and/or highly regulated markets
• 2-3 years of experiencing direct reports
• Strong communication, interpersonal and management skills are required
• Comprehensive understanding of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)
• General understanding of Internet use
• May require travel domestically and/or internationally including overnight stays

Responsibilities

• Develop a deep understanding of the nuances of each client’s market and business
• Identify gaps in knowledge and propose and sell-in solutions for addressing gaps
• Own and manage landscape audits (utilizing additional strategy team members as appropriate) and coordinate with other disciplines as necessary on additional audits
• Ensure team’s work is grounded in market understanding
• Review and contribute to landscape audits with behavioural trends, owned vs. ownability analysis, and perceptual and positioning market maps
• Ensure team is providing actionable insight to clients above and beyond scoped work, including POV on current market activities
• Meet regularly with clients (alongside account team) to assess new opportunities
• Identify gaps in knowledge and propose and sell-in solutions for addressing gaps
• Lead scoping, implementation, and delivery of major research initiatives
• Develop strong relationships with client MR team to ensure that proposed research initiatives are being designed to deliver what the agency team needs to produce optimal work
• Ensure team’s work is grounded in voice of customer
• Provide strategic guidance to internal teams and to clients on major accounts
• Lead development of all brand foundational elements (brand vision, positioning & value prop, personality, brand narrative, etc) and the tools used to guide their development (creative briefs, personas, etc.)
• Develop and lead workshops and brand planning sessions that facilitate problem-solving and development of actionable initiatives and content
• Lead development of behaviour mapping through target profiling and development of buyer personas and journey workshops; and partner with account and engagement team on content and omnichannel analysis to development OCE strategy
• Lead strategic imperative development and internal brainstorm session for brand planning
• Lead development of situational analysis context and set-up slides for major agency presentations
• Craft and present stimulating creative briefs and foundational elements (brand vision, positioning, message platforms, and value propositions) and lead strategic review at internals
• Participate in the development of the analytical plan and the evaluation and optimization of campaigns
• Ensure strategy is followed through to creative, brand plan and tactics
• Proactively collaborate with agency team members and clients (current and prospective) to ensure strategic viewpoints are included at relevant meetings
• Foster wecentric working environment on brand teams
• Manage team workflow and ensure quality on strategic workstreams, including working with project management to align on timing and reviews, preparing for presentations, ensuring dry runs happen, making time for editorial reviews and following-up on client feedback and requests
• Review key presentations and conducts audits of and reports on team progress
• Act as a chief facilitator in major client meetings, workshops, and internal reviews
• Co-lead internal account updates and debriefs
• Develop trusted senior-level relationships with clients that foster ongoing dialogue and debate
• Seek ways to expand the relationship with the client from both a trust and opportunity standpoint
• Help support standardization across accounts to provide for seamless transitions and onboarding (eg, background documents, presentations, guides, workshops, etc)
• Mentor, provide regular feedback, and review annually strategists on team to encourage growth and development
• Mentor junior staff on team
• Help support standardization in how strategy operates within the agency and across brand teams
• Participate in assessing and optimizing existing strategic processes and help to drive consistent use
• Continually assess and propose new research methodologies that enable the agency to offer clients innovative and new ways to access and assess their customers
• Contribute cases, capabilities and learnings in weekly department staff meetings
• Represent the agency’s thinking and innovation in the trade press, on speaking panels and at networking events
• Support convergence across Precision Value & Health by identifying opportunities for other teams (Scientia, Value, Xtract) on in-line work and participating in cross-agency opportunities
• Collaborate with other disciplines and other precision teams proactively and respectfully
• Opportunistically identify and pursue new business and inline growth opportunities by presenting new ideas to clients
• Participate actively on business development initiatives and bring unique and daring insights to help secure business
• Share agency experience and cases with confidence with in-line and prospective clients
• Support convergence across Precision Value & Health by identifying opportunities for other teams (Scientia, Value, Xtract) on in-line work and participating in cross-agency opportunities
• Continuously strive to hone presentation style and agency responses to typical questions

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in the healthcare sector and/or marketing highly regulated brands
• Extensive experience positioning brands to succeed in their respective markets
• 2+ years of experience managing direct reports
• Strong communication, interpersonal and management skills are required
• Leadership
• Collaboration
• Client Management
• Planning & Scoping
• Qualitative Interviewing
• Rigorous Analysis
• Problem Solving
• Workshop Facilitation
• Simplification
• Story Telling
• Strong Presentation Skills
• Attention to Detail
• Ability to synthesize and simplify complex information and communicate it to a variety of internal and external audiences
• Flexible and collaborative approach to problem solving
• Versed in the fundamentals of brand positioning and brand planning
• Demonstrated ability to help clients evolve their thinking based on the agency’s POV backed by evidence and insights
• A track record of winning new business