Strategist

You connect things.  You connect insight to idea. Obscure culture into specific opportunity. Data points into brand action. Disparate signals into a path forward. You lead.  You are the “hub” of all strategic activity within the agency, partnering closely with creative, account, media, social, and innovation teams. You inspire, guide, and lobby for the right idea – for the brand, for the business, for the humans. You work high and low. You must execute high-level brand strategy and day-to-day planning. You must have foresight and be in the weeds. You must love writing a clear, succinct product brief, then jumping to an overarching brand challenge, all before your second cup of coffee. You push the thinking. You see past the noise to find the more human idea. You ask better questions. You get messy and deep into a creative idea to make it come to life. You persuade internal teams and the client to make the brave idea happen. You love great advertising. But you push for the business idea that makes for great advertising. You’re a person of action.  You’re not interested in sitting in your own head, deciphering cultural radio static. You understand a large worldview, but you can quickly get to the practical. You operate in real time, quick, lean, and collaborative. You’re responsible for generating a product that is thoughtful, yet wholly relatable. The Strategist is the scout of strategy, learning fast, bringing raw talent, and supporting team members.You take lead on initial research audits, turning observations into insights, and you understand basic strategy tools. You bring passion. And you scout for specialties to grow in your career.The Strategist position must understand and contribute to the art and science of strategy. You must be rigorous, collaborative, action-rich, and always practical with your work.You support day-to-day deliverables and the occasional initiation of first drafts. You need to demonstrate strong writing and curation skills and must find proactive ways to contribute across the spectrum for clients.You must also exhibit a desire to learn about other departments in the agency, how work gets done, and how the industry works.

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for the consumer relevance of the brand communication strategy
• Represents the client in all advertising communications through consumer research and dialogue with primary research specialists, account managers, and creatives.
• Leads and participates in strategy development initiatives for clients and new business.
• Uses discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance.
• Presents research/strategy findings in client and new business meetings.
• Works with the account manager to effectively craft creative briefs and brief creative staff.
• Collects research project input and prepares project/tabulation specifications.
• Monitors and interprets cultural and social trends relevant to client business.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree from a four-year college or equivalent industry experience required.
• 2+ years work experience, including fieldwork or internships in advertising either in creative work or qualitative research and/or training or equivalent combination of education and experience required.
• Excellent communication ability
• Ability to read, analyze and interpret information from a variety of sources, such as trade journals, research reports, white papers, and cross-tabulated survey data.
• Ability to draft reports, presentations, white papers, and general business correspondence. 
• Ability to effectively support the presentation of results to customers, clients, and other employees of the organization.
• Excellent reasoning ability: Ability to define problems, collect information, establish facts and draw valid conclusions based upon information furnished in written, oral or diagram form. 
• Ability to deal with problems involving several concrete variables in standardized situations.