Ogilvy Social Lab, part of WPP, is setting global benchmarks in digital marketing and is driven by offering our expertise to both local and international clients through a multi-market footprint.
We have enabled 'borderless ways of working', operating as connected teams and providing Creative, Content, Media and Intelligence capabilities to Ogilvy agencies and clients in more than 20 countries.
Join our globally connected team and work on challenging projects that transcend borders. Embrace a career that takes you to new horizons and make a global impact!
About WPP
WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. For more information, visit WPP.com.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Senior Digital Strategist: CRM/WhatsApp Specialist to join our Africa Operating Unit to coordinate the integrated delivery of ground-breaking work.
As a Senior Digital Strategist, you will help define how CRM, 1st party data, and conversational platforms show up strategically for our client's brands represented across Africa. This will be a role that sits at the strategic heart of our Africa-level campaigns.
Owned channels, CRM, and WhatsApp sit at the forefront of our client's business. You will play a pivotal role in translating our client’s business challenges and objectives into fully integrated direct-to-consumer strategies, elevating consumer engagement, loyalty, and brand advocacy
What You’ll Do
- Be the voice of CRM and direct-to-consumer strategy for our client's brands you represent for continental Africa, supporting the leadership team, end-to-end teams and client services in delivering groundbreaking and effective consumer engagement strategy.
- Elevate our client's consumer engagement and loyalty by developing and executing advanced CRM strategies, leveraging owned platforms and WhatsApp as core direct-to-consumer channels.
- Drive strategies powered by strategic first-party data collection, advanced audience planning, and the use of Open Intelligence (AI tool).
- Design highly personalised customer journeys, implementing innovative conversational marketing and loyalty programs that foster long-term brand advocacy.
- Partner with integrators, media partners, and broader capability teams to proactively identify digital engagement opportunities and ensure seamless CRM integration across all brand touchpoints.
- Assemble strategy into presentation materials and be comfortable presenting complex CRM, data, and communication flows to senior level clients.
- Conduct on-site and remote workshops for category clients to optimise their CRM, loyalty, and conversational marketing strategies.
- Flex in your strategic approach, covering the following core competencies:
- CRM & Lifecycle Strategy
- Conversational Marketing (specifically WhatsApp ecosystem & chatbots)
- First-Party Data & Audience Strategy
- Loyalty & Advocacy Program Design
- Work with the end-to-end, data, and insights teams to utilise data analytics to optimise performance, measure conversion metrics, and add a strategic, data-driven layer to monthly reports for key clients.
- Inform CRM KPIs and define measurement and attribution solutions for clients.
- Work with client services and creative teams to inspire and guide ideation, ensuring creative assets and conversational copy are optimised for direct-to-consumer platforms and in line with approved strategy.
- Work with the broader digital and social team across the continent to ensure CRM strategies are implementable, unearth additional insights, and optimise customer journeys in real-time.
- Demonstrate what ‘good’ looks like for CRM and conversational strategy, ensuring we have a solid range of strategy frameworks and learning to drive our work and defining best practices and best-in-class case studies.
Experience Requirements:
- 5+ years of proven strategy experience in a digital agency, CRM/direct marketing agency, or working internally for a well-known platform or brand.
- Deep, proven specialisation in designing and executing CRM strategies, loyalty programs, and conversational marketing (specifically utilising WhatsApp Business Platform/APIs).
- Experience with first-party data strategies, audience segmentation, and leveraging data/insights tools (experience with Open Intelligence or equivalent enterprise CDPs/DMPs is a plus).
- Experience working for top drawer brands and with senior stakeholders or in a senior client-facing role.
- Strong experience working alongside other teams (creative, media, tech) delivering fully integrated marketing solutions.
- A passion for CRM, conversational commerce, and emerging direct-to-consumer technology trends.
- Solid experience with quantitative performance metrics, CRM analytics, and data-driven optimisation.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of strategy experience in a digital agency, CRM/direct marketing agency, or in-house brand/platform role
- Deep specialisation in designing and executing CRM strategies, loyalty programs, and conversational marketing
- Experience implementing WhatsApp Business Platform/APIs and building WhatsApp-based chatbots/conversational flows
- Experience with first-party data strategies, audience segmentation, and leveraging data/insights tools
- Experience working with senior stakeholders and top-tier brands in client-facing roles
- Proven ability to work cross-functionally with creative, media, and tech teams to deliver integrated solutions
- Experience with Open Intelligence or equivalent enterprise CDPs/DMPs
- Solid experience with CRM analytics, quantitative performance metrics, and data-driven optimisation
What We Do
In 1948, David Ogilvy founded the agency that would become Ogilvy & Mather. Starting with no clients and a staff of two, he built his company into one of the eight largest advertising networks in the world with more than 500 offices and 20,000 staff across 169 cities. Ogilvy South Africa’s origins lie with a small hot shop in Cape Town, founded by Bob Rightford, Brian Searle-Tripp and Roger Makin in 1976. After merging with Ogilvy in 1984, Ogilvy & Mather RS-TM dominated the local creative scene during the first decade and over the next twenty years was recognized as a brand-focused agency that acted with integrity. During the 1990’s, Ogilvy South Africa soared creatively under the leadership of Robyn Putter (1950-2010), who eventually went on to become the global creative head of WPP. Today, Ogilvy South Africa is the leader in the industry, focused on building and transforming brands. Employing more than 900 staff across three offices, Ogilvy remains true to David’s vision; we still see ourselves as a company that does more than ads and have proven that by maintaining our humility and an almost divine discontent at our past successes, we can do more than stay relevant. For more than 50 years, Ogilvy South Africa has created iconic advertising for clients such as KFC, VW, SAB, BP, DStv and Mondelez amongst others, and we continue to live by our founders credo of existing to “Make brands matter”.
