Senior Strategy Consultant - Tech and Media in London

Jones Knowles Ritchie is a branding business, founded in 1990 and proudly independent ever since. We started out in the world of packaging, but now we're worldwide—from three founders to more than 350 of us across the UK, USA and China. Together, we build and deliver brands across the entire consumer experience. We're here to inspire brands and people to be their true selves. We are looking for a Senior Strategist to join us, reporting into our Strategy Director.

Our strategy team's purpose is to use cultural, category and business insight to unlock distinctiveness for the brands we work with and inspire confidence in the ideas that bring it to life.

Requirements

• Own the strategy on every project you lead, using rigorous insight and a clear point of view to unlock what makes a brand distinctive.
• Build trusted relationships with clients, from brand teams to senior leadership, through a deep understanding of their brand and business challenges.
• Bring provocation and a distinct point of view to drive brand growth and broaden the creative opportunity.
• Own the strategy workstream from start to finish, collaborating with Account Management and multidisciplinary creative teams to turn business and brand challenges into sharp, inspiring briefs and steer projects to successful outcomes.
• Work across corporate branding, CPG, and design-led projects, bringing the same rigour to both while adapting the process, pace and outputs to each project's needs.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Ownership
  • Lead assigned strategy workstreams independently, from initial immersion through delivery, owning the approach, timings and quality of all strategic output.
  • Work with the Strategy Director and Group Strategy Director on key accounts, contributing to account-level thinking and leading defined workstreams within larger programmes.
  • Act as the go-to strategic partner for Account and Creative teams, identifying and resolving risks to project success early.
  • Carry the strategic thread through creative development, making confident day-to-day judgements and knowing when to involve the Strategy Director or Group Strategy Director.
• Brand Strategy and Creative Planning
  • Identify what makes a brand distinctive and where the greatest opportunity lies to build, sharpen or protect its distinctive assets.
  • Define the brand challenge or opportunity in a concise, insight-led way that sparks distinctive creative work.
  • Understand how a brand appears across every touchpoint and how JKR can shape each one.
  • Select, adapt and build strategic tools and frameworks to suit the client, project and creative need.
  • Guide Account and Creative teams to evaluate work against the brief and its potential to build distinctiveness.
  • Design, facilitate and moderate workshops and creative programmes.
• Working Across Corporate and CPG
  • For corporate projects, lead stakeholder interviews and research, develop succinct strategic arguments and support Strategy Directors on positioning, purpose and architecture.
  • For CPG and design-led projects, lead packaging strategy, distinctive asset assessment, shopper and retail experience, and activation briefs.
  • Apply the same standard of rigour to both while adapting the process, pace, stakeholder approach and output, from board-level narratives and architecture recommendations to design briefs and asset guidance.
• Brand Business and Consumer Insight
  • Work proactively with the Account lead to understand the brand context and business issues.
  • Bring insight-based provocation that reveals growth opportunities, drawing conclusions from design, consumer and cultural trends, commercial data and academic thinking.
  • Use visual semiotics and cultural codes to map the category, distinguish codes to own from codes to break, and define the brand's current and future needs.
  • Articulate the brand's positioning, personality, tone of voice and design behaviour against the competitive set, looking beyond category and culture for new opportunities.
• Brand and Commercial Acumen
  • Understand clients' commercial objectives and identify where branding can work harder across the media mix and competitive set.
  • Distinguish a campaign idea from a brand idea and explain how each affects the brand's touchpoints.
  • Use relevant case studies to challenge and shape thinking, and confidently push back when creative work does not deliver against the brief.
  • Write fluently and persuasively across formats, from strategic narratives to creative briefs.
  • Bring fresh observations and stimulus to senior clients, Creative and Account teams.
• Leadership
  • Build strong relationships and strategic capability outside the Strategy team, and mentor junior strategists.

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Lively Shoreditch studio location
• Hybrid working policy, minimum 2 days pw in the studio
• Bupa Healthcare, including dental option
• Income protection & life insurance
• Classpass credits
• Group personal pension
• 25 days holiday + time given at Christmas and New Year Summer Fridays x 2
• Birthday day off

After probation:

• Season ticket loan
• Cycle to work scheme
• Enhanced parental leave policies
• Referral scheme for new hires
• 2 weeks work from anywhere, by agreement with line manager

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression.