Director, Strategy & Insights
About The Position
The Director, Strategy & Insights is a senior strategic leader based in Los Angeles who turns audience, category, cultural, and performance intelligence into clear growth strategies for clients. The role leads integrated communications strategy, develops compelling insights, and partners with client leaders to connect media decisions to measurable business outcomes. The Director guides major client assignments from problem definition through strategic recommendation, bringing research, analytics, planning, and activation together around a distinctive consumer and business opportunity. The role requires shaping senior-client narratives, interrogating data, facilitating collaborative sessions, and coaching strategists to produce rigorous, actionable work. The position is part of EssenceMediacom, which combines performance, data, analytics, and creative technology capabilities with scaled multichannel audience planning and strategic media expertise. WPP Media describes itself as an AI-driven media operating unit that brings together media, data, and partnerships to deliver creative personalization at scale.
Requirements
- At least 8 years of experience in media strategy, communications planning, consumer insights, brand strategy, management consulting, or a related discipline, including leading complex client assignments.
- Demonstrated ability to connect consumer and cultural insight to media strategy and measurable business outcomes.
- Strong command of qualitative and quantitative research methods, with sound judgment in assessing evidence and synthesizing findings into an actionable point of view.
- Experience with syndicated and digital intelligence tools such as MRI-Simmons, YouGov, GWI, Comscore, Nielsen, Kantar, Pathmatics, social listening platforms, or comparable sources.
- Ability to partner with analytics teams on audience development, learning agendas, KPI design, experimentation, and campaign measurement.
- Exceptional storytelling and presentation skills, including the ability to make complex ideas clear and persuasive to senior executives.
- Proven success leading cross-functional teams and influencing stakeholders without formal authority.
- Collaborative, curious, and inclusive leadership style, with a record of coaching and developing high-performing talent.
- Strong organization and commercial judgment, with the ability to prioritize multiple workstreams and deliver high-quality work under deadlines.
- Proficiency in Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel.
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in marketing, communications, business, psychology, sociology, economics, data analytics, or a related field.
Nice To Haves
- Familiarity with data visualization, AI-enabled research, and collaborative planning tools.
Responsibilities
- Lead integrated media and communications strategy for key client businesses, translating marketing objectives into strategic choices, audience priorities, channel roles, and measurement frameworks.
- Synthesize research and data into a clear story about client growth opportunities, including consumer motivations, category dynamics, cultural context, competitive behavior, and media implications.
- Serve as a strategic partner to senior client stakeholders, bringing a proactive point of view and connecting recommendations to brand and business outcomes.
- Design and facilitate strategy workshops, briefings, and working sessions to align cross-functional teams around shared problems, insights, and strategic platforms.
- Partner with Communications Planning, Analytics, Research, Investment, Creative, Data, and Activation teams to make strategy actionable and consistent throughout plans.
- Develop audience frameworks and segmentation approaches using research, first-party data, platform intelligence, and syndicated tools.
- Establish learning agendas and measurement approaches with Analytics partners, defining hypotheses, KPIs, and optimization signals before activation.
- Combine qualitative and quantitative evidence to identify cultural, consumer, technology, and media shifts that create client opportunities.
- Lead strategic contributions to new business pitches, annual planning, major campaign development, and high-priority client presentations.
- Improve strategic output by creating frameworks, improving briefs, challenging assumptions, and setting standards for evidence and storytelling.
- Coach and develop strategists and managers through feedback, development plans, and opportunities to lead increasingly complex assignments.
- Contribute thought leadership, tools, case studies, and emerging best practices to the broader EssenceMediacom strategy community.
Benefits
- Competitive medical benefits
- Group retirement plans
- Vision insurance
- Dental insurance
- Significant paid time off
- Preferential partner discounts
- Employee mental health awareness days
- Employee resource groups
- In-office events showcasing team wins, sharing thought leadership, and celebrating holidays and milestone events
- Access to global WPP Media and WPP networks for pursuing interests, building networks, and learning
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
