Director, Brand Storytelling

Sia•New York, NY

5h•$180,000 - $200,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Brand Storytelling sets brand narrative, content and messaging strategies for clients, building it on audience research, data analysis and insights, setting a high bar with creative reference and inspiration, and leading this workstream from pitch meeting through the life of the account. Day to day, they guide how that narrative is brought to life across touchpoints, authoring or co-authoring the briefs that carry it into each one and evaluating the resulting agency deliverables, ensuring the whole content ecosystem is magnetic, engaging and supports our clients’ overall business goals. This work is deeply social-first. Ongoing audience insights are fed continuously by social listening, creative performance analysis, and community sentiment, and what's actually landing with creators and audiences. This role will lead a team of full-time creative strategists and freelance subject-matter experts, recruiting and evaluating new talent as needed. It’s also highly collaborative and cross-functional, setting a clear vision and then collaborating to drive execution across creative, social, and media teams – both encouraging their new builds and ideas as well as correcting course when something isn't landing or laddering up to the central vision.

Requirements

8+ years in storytelling, content strategy, or social-first brand strategy, including at least [3+] years at a director level or equivalent, managing people and, ideally, freelance talent.
Direct experience leading storytelling for new business pitches, comfortable building a story fast and under pressure.
A track record of directly turning audience research and insight into brand, social and content strategy.
Experience recruiting, briefing, and managing freelance subject-matter experts or contractors, including evaluating their quality and fit for a specific client or category.
Personal experience authoring creative, social, and media briefs, not just reviewing them once someone else has written them.
A collaborative leadership style, with evidence of bringing out strong work from cross-functional teams.
A 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.
Real social-first instincts: hands-on experience with community growth and creator content, and a habit of working from social listening.
BA

Nice To Haves

New business or pitch leadership experience at an agency.
A career that spans more than one of brand strategy, creative, social, and research/insights.

Responsibilities

Establish brand narratives and develop content strategies for each account as well as new business pitches, grounded in audience research, insight and relevant creative inspiration
Build and maintain the throughline for each account as work develops: the central idea, conversation, tone, and integrated architecture for the content ecosystem, so all teams are aligning around the same strategic goals.
Based on audience segmentation strategies, develop messaging/social strategy frameworks by persona.
Ensure all strategies pass the “will this audience actually pay attention and care?” test.
Author or co-author briefs for creative, media, and social so every department starts from the same throughline.
As deliverables are developed, act as orchestrator and curator across strategy, creative, media, social, and community, translating the narrative into direction specific to each department and acting as an arbiter for taste.
Provide critical feedback during the development process to ensure the work delivers on or exceeds the strategic promise. Does it cut through the noise and will it engage target audiences?
Ensure the overall ecosystem vision is brought to life across paid, organic, earned, and owned with special attention to how audiences respond to channel context.
Build and lead a mixed team of full-time staff and freelance subject-matter experts.
Recruit, brief, and evaluate freelance SMEs directly: define the expertise a pitch or program needs, source and vet candidates, and assess quality and fit before and during an engagement.
Set direction without dictating execution, brief the vision clearly, then give creative, social, and SME collaborators real room to bring their own craft to it, staying a creative collaborator rather than the person handing down finished answers.
Bring a current, practitioner's read on how paid, organic, community, content, creative, and brand each earn attention differently and shape storytelling strategy.
Use creative performance analysis and social listening as ongoing inputs, tracking real-time audience feedback on what’s working and what’s not, insights from comments and conversations, brand sentiment, and creator/cultural trends and feeding what's found there back into the throughline.
Cultivate and maintain a sophisticated, diverse cultural reference set, supplemented with research capabilities as needed, to help establish and align on a high bar for our work.
Partner closely with social and community leads on community growth itself, and stay hands-on enough to guide or brief creator content directly as needed.