Strategy Director

About Wavemaker

We believe there always is a better way to grow. We positively provoke growth for our clients by reshaping consumer decision-making and experiences through media, content and technology. The Wavemaker Way is globally consistent. Fueled by the world’s most powerful consumer data, we understand where and how marketing can intervene decisively to help brands win more sales.

Our name is our mission and our method. To make waves, you need to be provocative, even fearless. We do our best work for brave brands and people who want to be challenged to go further and faster. We know it’s not easy, but if it’s in you, we will get it out of you.

Our 7,600 people across 90 markets provoke growth for some of the world’s leading brands and businesses. Our attitude of Positive Provocation is enabled by:

• deep knowledge we have of our clients’ business
• confidence to challenge what’s gone before
• the support to go further than we thought possible

We are a part of GroupM, WPP’s global media investment management company. Discover more on wavemakerglobal.com, Twitter and LinkedIn 

Strategy Practise

At Wavemaker we are determined to positively provoking growth for our clients and our people. The Strategy department has a key role in realizing that mission, being responsible for driving communication strategy and strategic thinking across our client’s businesses. As the marcom landscape becomes more complex, with ecommerce as its main disrupter, clients are more open to an elevated level of marcom strategy service. That is why we created a future forward strategy practice that includes besides comms strategy also a strategy & planning insight team (SPI), a commerce strategy team and a media innovation & consumer technology practice.

Reporting to:

• Chief Strategy Officer
• Client Lead

Role Context:

As the Strategy Director, you will be the lead strategist on multiple consumer brands. The brands involved for this role, are brands with a strong reputation and position in the market and are looking to adopt more future proof marcom approaches. You will be the driving force, working closely with the media planning, data science and the insights & analytics teams to deliver the highest quality strategy product. This includes provocative thinking and maintaining consistency across the work for the brands involved. To do so, partnering with the Client Lead and the Planning and Activation Directors is critically important.

You will focus on comms strategy but also driving a consistent and qualitative translation into day-to-day media planning and an effective deployment of expertise like data science, e-commerce and content in the strategy product. You will take care of consistent usage of the Wavemaker OS.

Beyond working on the assigned brands, you will be part of the strategy practice, work on new business pitches and lead thought leadership projects for internal and external marketing usage of the agency.

Core Responsibilities:

Identifying Insights

• In-depth analysis of market and brand to define powerful insights that drive the strategic recommendation.
• Partner with the Data Science team to define through a strategic lens the growth audiences.
• Identify, and articulate compelling insights on these audiences including their consumer decision journey pain points that give the foundation for a comms platform and architecture.
• Propose and contribute to primary and secondary research, in collaboration with the Strategy and Planning Insights team.
• Contribute, embrace and integrate thought leadership on major developments in the landscape.

Strategic Development

• Leading comms strategy resulting in annual planning, strategy for big launches and campaigns, that solve business and communication problems for clients.
• Contributing to high level strategic projects like Masterbrand strategies and Planning integration for media and e-commerce media.
• Within the development of comms strategies, deployment of our “Transform” framework for creation of growth platforms and comms architectures that are transferable to comms and media plans are key.
• Connecting audience, commerce and data led business strategies.
• Contribute to pitches beyond the assigned client scope, on ad hoc basis.
• Owning both the quality as well as look and feel of strategy deliverables.
• Leading brainstorm and ideation sessions to drive the development of engagement ideas, in workstreams that include other agencies and media partners.

Quality consistency of media planning

• Beyond your focus on comms strategy, you will be also driving a consistent and qualitative translation into day-to-day media planning and an effective intersection of other expertise like data science, commerce and content to uplift the quality of the complete media planning product. 
• You will also drive creative ideas including content and partnership ideas throughout media planning outputs.

Client adoption of Wavemaker methodologies and tools

• Customize strategic, planning and data frameworks and tools as part of the OS, for presentation to clients and drive client adoption.

Driving usage of the Wavemaker OS

• The Wavemaker OS is still pretty new and there is an impressive development roadmap in place. You will foster and drive consistent usage this OS, including facilitating and overseeing accurate usage for strategy and planning work (at least annual planning and big campaigns).

Collaboration

• Develop effective and inspiring working relationships with Wavemaker team members, including, media planning, data sciences, activation, content and commerce teams.
• Partnering with the Client Lead and the Directors, this collaboration is critically important.
• Build respectful, collaborative working relationships with senior clients and outside agency partners.

Leadership

• Foster an environment which encourages intelligent risk-taking, innovation, and creativity.
• Monitor quality control on daily workflow.
• Think of new solutions to your work/client challenges.
• Assist in the execution of agency training initiatives.
• Assist in the development of case studies and award submissions.
• Create and contribute to an environment where ‘Innovation as usual’ thrives in everyday work.

Required skills / experience:

• 7-10 years of media/communications planning experience, with a focus on strategy beyond media planning.
• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience in Business or Economics with a concentration in strategy, design thinking or marketing
• Demonstrates excellent strategic thinking, with strong developed analytical and conceptual skills.
• Experience in CPG categories among other consumer categories.
• Conversant with qualitative and quantitative research techniques, all major desktop research tools and big data analytical offering.
• Independent, efficient and prospers in a fast-paced environment.
• Demonstrate genuine curiosity and interest in our clients & their business.
• Good client relationship skills, including experience interacting & presenting to senior-level clients.
• Good verbal and written communication skills.
• Experience of working in and across multiple communications disciplines, including data science, activation, and content.

GroupM and all its affiliates embrace and celebrate diversity, inclusivity, and equal opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We are a worldwide media agency network that represents global clients. The more inclusive we are, the more great work we can create together.

The base salary for this position at the time of this posting may range from $100,000 to $230,000. Individual compensation varies based on job-related factors, including business needs, experience, level of responsibility and qualifications. We offer a competitive benefits package, please visit https://www.wpp.com/people/wellbeing/benefits-at-wpp-in-the-us for more details.