Director, Brand Storytelling

Sia Experience•New York, NY

23h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Brand Storytelling sets client brand narratives, content strategies, and messaging strategies grounded in audience research, data analysis, and insights. The role establishes a high creative standard and leads storytelling work from new-business pitches through the life of client accounts. It guides how narratives are brought to life across touchpoints by authoring or co-authoring briefs and evaluating agency deliverables to ensure content is engaging and supports clients’ business goals. The role is deeply social-first, using social listening, creative performance analysis, community sentiment, and audience and creator response as ongoing inputs to strategy. The Director leads a mixed team of full-time creative strategists and freelance subject-matter experts, recruiting and evaluating talent as needed. The position works cross-functionally with creative, social, media, and community teams to set a clear vision, guide execution, encourage strong ideas, and course-correct when work is not landing or supporting the central vision. Ready Set Rocket, a Sia company, partners with ambitious brands to address business challenges through integrated marketing, digital experience, customer strategy, creative, media, data, and technology. Sia describes its rewards as supporting how employees work, live, and grow, and emphasizes a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture. The position is hybrid and based in New York City. Consultants may need to work onsite at client locations depending on engagement needs; between engagements, they are expected to work from a Sia office or approved coworking location at least three days per week. Candidates should live within reasonable commuting distance of a Sia office or approved coworking location. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States throughout employment; visa sponsorship is not available.

Requirements

At least 8 years of experience in storytelling, content strategy, or social-first brand strategy.
At least 3 years at director level or equivalent, managing people and ideally freelance talent.
Direct experience leading storytelling for new-business pitches and building a story quickly under pressure.
Track record of turning audience research and insight into brand, social, and content strategy.
Experience recruiting, briefing, and managing freelance subject-matter experts or contractors, including evaluating quality and fit for a client or category.
Personal experience authoring creative, social, and media briefs.
Collaborative leadership style and evidence of bringing out strong work from cross-functional teams.
Current, fluent point of view on paid, organic, social, community, content, and brand, and how to use them to capture attention, drive engagement, and build long-term trust and equity.
Hands-on social-first experience with community growth and creator content, and a habit of working from social listening.
BA (as listed in the qualifications).
Legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of application and throughout employment; employment visa sponsorship is not available now or in the future.
Reside within a reasonable commuting distance of a Sia office or approved coworking location.

Nice To Haves

New-business or pitch leadership experience at an agency.
A career spanning more than one of brand strategy, creative, social, and research/insights.
Experience managing freelance talent is identified as ideal in addition to the stated people-management background.

Responsibilities

Establish brand narratives and content strategies for client accounts and new-business pitches, grounded in audience research, insights, and relevant creative inspiration.
Maintain the strategic throughline for each account, including its central idea, conversation, tone, and integrated content ecosystem architecture.
Develop messaging and social strategy frameworks by persona based on audience segmentation, ensuring strategies are relevant and compelling to target audiences.
Author or co-author creative, media, and social briefs that align departments around the same strategic throughline.
Orchestrate and curate work across strategy, creative, media, social, and community, translating the narrative into department-specific direction and providing an arbiter for taste.
Give critical feedback during deliverable development to ensure work meets or exceeds strategic goals and engages target audiences.
Ensure the content ecosystem is brought to life across paid, organic, earned, and owned channels, taking channel context and audience response into account.
Build and lead a team of full-time staff and freelance subject-matter experts.
Define needed freelance expertise, source and vet candidates, and brief, manage, and evaluate freelancers for quality and fit.
Set direction clearly while allowing creative, social, and freelance collaborators room to bring their own craft to the work.
Apply current knowledge of paid, organic, community, content, creative, and brand to storytelling strategy.
Use creative performance analysis and social listening to track audience feedback, comments and conversations, brand sentiment, and creator and cultural trends; feed findings into account strategy.
Maintain a diverse cultural reference set and use research capabilities as needed to establish and align teams on a high creative standard.
Partner with social and community leads on community growth and guide or brief creator content directly when needed.