Strategy Director

Critical Mass•New York, NY

7d•Onsite

About The Position

Critical Mass are looking for an experienced Strategy Director to come and join the team in New York working on an exciting automotive brand. As Director, Integrated Strategy, your role will be to bring our client’s brand to life across the full communications ecosystem. You will help set the strategic direction for communicating effectively to existing and new audiences. You will play a key role in identifying growth audiences, in identifying the right messaging angles through thoughtful insights from qual and quant research and then brief the channel teams with the strategic engagement vision. You will work across all our client’s agency partners, from media to creative to social to experiential, coordinating the effective planning and implementation of your vision and our client’s brand ecosystem strategy. You bring leadership and expertise for complex communications projects as well as digital experience strategy projects. You’re a doer, self-starter and team player but also a natural leader who understands how to guide a strategy team through projects from definition to delivery, across multiple interagency partners. You also know how to persuade senior clients to take the risks they’ve asked for but are a little afraid of. You are very comfortable with data, emerging technology, and thinking across and connecting brand ecosystems. You can effectively articulate insights and strategies to multi-disciplinary teams comprising of creatives, technologists, media planners and more. You live and breathe your clients’ businesses, know their competitors, customers, and key industry trends as well as (if not better than) they do. You are not afraid of a blank page or starting without a well-defined plan. We expect you to have expertise in three or four of the following areas, while being willing to dive into all of them: Communications planning, media strategy, performance marketing, digital experience strategy, social campaigns, integrated campaigns.

Requirements

Extensive experience in customer experience and/or communications strategy within a digital or user experience agency, working directly with clients in campaign or communications planning.
Experience working in integrated agency teams (IATs).
Previous experience working on automotive clients and an in-depth understanding of the automotive marketing industry.
Excellent leadership and facilitation experience within larger teams.
Strong presentation and storytelling skills, particularly for distilling complex ideas into simple, intuitive takeaways.
Experience designing connected brand ecosystems with a keen understanding of content strategy, marketing, and distribution.
Experience in writing inspiring creative briefs rooted in true insights.
Creativity with research approaches.
A passion for digital and staying up to date on technology and trends.
Experience in developing proposals and presentations for clients.
A commitment to teamwork, collaboration, and learning.
An astute attention to detail and a results-oriented state-of-mind.
The ability to be flexible and multi-task.

Responsibilities

Ensure overall quality and integration of Strategy work on all major client strategy projects.
Own the audience understanding and journey mapping, both today and as it evolves through data-informed feedback.
Apply that audience-first thinking to always-on communications and specific comms campaign as well as to marketing innovation sprints.
Inspire creative teams, tech solution developers, media planners to create innovative, never done before, yet effective consumer activations.
Reinforce to clients the value of a strategic approach to their brand ecosystem.
Continuously stay on top of the opportunities and challenges that AI brings to consumer marketing and apply that knowledge strategically to your projects.
Stay plugged into shifts in general culture and our consumer, to provide thought leadership to our clients and proactively identify new opportunities for the brand to pursue.
Regularly contribute to POVs and be tapped as a thought leader for the agency and client.
Collaborate with other agency partners and clients.
Synthesize and communicate the results of research to clients and project teams to provide insight and perspective on the client’s strategic direction.
Apply measurement insights to optimize ongoing and overall strategy development.
Focus on leading a single account, but occasionally supporting special projects, new business pitches, and initiatives within the Strategy department.
Provide excellent team management and guidance on all strategic and CX work.
Be a doer, team player and leader, mentor and growth-mindset promoter.
Facilitate onsite workshops with clients and partner agencies.