Senior Creative Strategist

Summary

Join DEPT®'s Creative & Media team in Rotterdam or Amsterdam as a Senior Creative Strategist. You will craft human-first creative strategies, deeply understanding client needs and translating them into solvable problems. Collaborate with creatives to enhance their work and remove barriers to creativity. Understand client businesses and develop culturally informed strategies. Conduct research, write powerful briefs, and support the strategy team. The ideal candidate works autonomously yet collaboratively, thrives in debate, and leads by example. DEPT® offers flexible work arrangements, health benefits, and professional development opportunities.

Requirements

• Work autonomously, together. We want you to feel autonomous – that your work is yours. At the same time, we expect you to enrich your work with other people’s perspectives
• Be comfortable in a debate. We’re not order takers. We disagree a lot. With everyone. Not because it’s fun, but because it’s necessary for better work
• Lead . Not in a ‘look at me’ kind of way. More, set the tone. Motivate with your actions. Push the boundaries. That kinda way
• Own your idiosyncrasies. I mean, we all have them. Just look at the weirdo writing this job description. Bring ‘em with you. We want your voice
• And there are of course the classic strategist qualities. We assume that you’re curious, imaginative, empathetic, that you communicate well, all that stuff
• A short cover letter that tells us a little about you, your background, and what you want to achieve. It doesn’t need to be super formal. Relax. No one scary will read it. Please write it in your voice
• If you have a portfolio, please include it . It’s helpful to know what your role in the work was. And if you’re not currently a strategist, feel free to include some samples of interesting work from other fields

Responsibilities

• Deeply understand human beings. Real ones. The ones we’re making the work for. You’re good at finding what they need. At identifying real problems to solve for them. You find humanity in data. And ultimately, you define a genuine role that brands can play in their lives
• Make the creative more creative. Strategy doesn’t just assist; it’s also the striker making the goal in tandem. That means you’re deep in the work, in partnership with creatives. You make the work more creative. And you remove the barriers to creativity. Simple, but bizarrely difficult
• Understand our client’s business. Not better than our clients do. That’s crazy and an insult to our clients. But understand how they make money and their business strategy, that we must do. Through that understanding, we set clear objectives and ensure the work plays a meaningful role in our clients’ success
• Get into culture. We don’t expect you to be a world-famous Tik Tokker (although we would welcome it). We do expect that you develop strategy informed by culture, so that we inform culture in turn
• That’s the core of it. Beyond that, we expect you to be a reasonably good researcher (conducting it and designing it), to show off craft that makes others jealous, to support the rest of the strategy team, to play well with other disciplines beyond comms (like media, tech, and design), be comfortable in workshops, write powerful briefs, and perhaps let’s stop the list here while it’s only mildly absurd

Benefits

• The choice to work where you are most productive: whether that is in one of our offices, or abroad for 13 weeks a year. Rather work from home? No problem! We’ll provide you with the best of class materials, such as a high-quality laptop, monitor, work phone and the necessary furniture
• Everything to focus on your health: from free bootcamp to yoga lessons, mindfulness sessions, mental health services, serious discounts on sport memberships, healthy lunches at the office, and above all: a safe work environment
• Great fringe benefits; use of OV-bikes, an NS Business Card and many other goodies
• The opportunity for possibility. We want to enable you to do what you do best and help you develop your skills further with training, development and certifications
• Global annual DEPT® Cares Month in which employees come together and donate their skills to support local charities