Senior Research and Insights Executive

The Role

You will be the day-to-day insight lead for a core client, owning the measurement & evaluation workstream and turning audience, cultural and performance data into clear recommendations that shape strategy, creative and activation. The role combines hands-on analysis with proactive client management and close collaboration across Play’s Strategy, Creative, Client Services and Activation teams. Working with the head of the measurement department, you’ll design and deliver quantitative and qualitative research (surveys, simple communities or depth interviews), plus desk research, social listening, market intelligence and media/performance analysis - translating findings into stories that inform briefs, creative territories, channel choices and evaluation frameworks.

What You’ll Do

• Insight and measurement: Build learning agendas and M&E frameworks tied to brand and campaign KPIs; deliver regular reporting and “so what” recommendations for optimisation and post-campaign effectiveness. Plan and analyse quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews/mini groups; synthesise desk research and cultural trends into sharp POVs and brief inputs. Translate social, search and content signals into audience and cultural insights that guide creative and channel choices.
• Data tools and analytics: Use HMN’s Converged / Converged.AI to connect audience intelligence with planning and activation, ensuring privacy first cross-platform planning and transparent reporting. Run social listening and conversation analysis (e.g., Talkwalker or Meltwater) to size spaces, track sentiment/themes, identify creators/communities and monitor brand/campaign health. Build profiles using audience data sources (e.g., YouGov, GWI), enriching segmentation with attitudes, interests, media habits and fandom cues.
• Partner with Strategy: Co-create audience definitions, comms tasks and test and learn roadmaps; shape measurement plans aligned to the Intelligence → Design → Activate → Measure cadence. Develop evidence-based brief inputs (problem definition, audience tensions, passion points, role for brand) and contribute to integrated Playbooks and pitch narratives.
• Partner with Creative and Activation: Provide concise insight packs for ideation (audiences, trends, formats, creators) and pressure test ideas against data-backed hypotheses. Set up live dashboards and weekly readouts during flight to inform agile optimisation across social, influencer, content and experiential.
• Client leadership: Be the primary day-to-day contact for insight/M&E: run WIPs, manage timelines and scopes, brief partners/suppliers and ensure outputs are accurate, timely and commercially sound. Present findings simply and persuasively to client stakeholders, capturing decisions and next steps.

About You

You’re a data curious storyteller who loves culture and cares about effectiveness. You can move from a spreadsheet to a deck to a room of stakeholders with confidence, and you’re comfortable owning the plan as well as the detail. Loving sport and embedding culture in your work are big ticks but not essential, as long as you’re willing to immerse yourself in our world.

Must Have Experience:

• Agency side experience in insight, strategy or analytics with hands-on delivery of research, reporting and client communication (typically 2–4+ years).
• Proven ability to distil complex data into clear narratives and recommendations for strategy, creative and activation teams.
• Competent in Excel/Sheets, PowerPoint/Keynote and data visualisation basics; comfortable with survey platforms and/or qual moderation prep.
• Strong stakeholder management: run WIPs, manage suppliers, hit deadlines, and maintain high QA standards.
• Up to date on the social, sports and culture landscape and platform changes.
• Demonstrable analytical skills and comfort with data.
• Excellent time management across multiple projects.

Desirable:

• Hands-on with YouGov datasets (e.g., Profiles) and audience profiling tools.
• Experience in Talkwalker or Meltwater for social listening; ability to build queries, tag themes and create automated dashboards.
• Sponsorship evaluation work.
• Creator/influencer discovery and measurement basics.

Ways of working and values: Curious, collaborative and positively challenging, you ask better questions to get to better work. Inclusive and culturally aware; you’re motivated by the belief that brands should participate credibly in culture, not just advertise in it.

What you’ll get – the chance to shape culturally resonant work for household name brands within an integrated village model that connects media, creative and experience end to end.