Director of Brand Strategy in City of London

OLIXIR is a next‑generation healthcare agency, created by uniting FCB Health London and McCann Health London as part of Omnicom Health’s evolving European structure. By bringing our teams together and combining our strengths, we’re building something entirely new: a more agile, more connected, and more ambitious partner for healthcare brands. OLIXIR blends award‑winning creative excellence with deep scientific expertise, strategic thinking that drives meaningful brand growth, and fully integrated production at scale. We’re also unlocking new innovation opportunities, powered by AI and future‑focused ways of working.

You’ll find the same trusted teams, the same high standards, and the same passion for creating work that makes a real difference to patients and healthcare professionals, alongside new possibilities to grow, innovate, and shape what’s next. OLIXIR is built for the future of healthcare communications - and this is just the beginning.

Working closely with the Group Strategy Director and the leadership team, the Strategy Director is responsible for the strategic output of the agency and inspiring leadership of planning activities for allocated brands and campaigns. At its core, the role of the Strategy Director is about understanding people’s behaviour and beliefs in order to define brands’ problems and objectives with the aim of providing our clients with a competitive advantage in the market.

• Providing insightful leadership over direction of planning research to understand or deepen knowledge on markets, competitive environments and target audiences of our clients’ brands.
• Overseeing or conducting market research and developing research briefs, observing research, and conducting analysis/developing research findings into actionable next steps.
• Research and acquire knowledge quickly in scientifically complex therapy areas where required, to support the wider Planning team as needed.
• Leading strategic development through boiling down information, insights, and research findings into a brand/comms strategy that is simple yet powerful, and aligned with what the clients’ brands really need.
• Provide direction over end-to-end projects from unpicking the brief through to workshop moderation, strategic development, analytics and reporting.
• Build and enhance the strategy planning process, championing consistency of use of procedures across all parts of the agency to ensure a collective understanding of the tools and processes used with the strategy planning process.
• Promote and develop a cohesive, cross-discipline approach to the pursuit of new business and appropriate pitch protocols reflective of best/most appropriate working practices.
• Working closely with Planning Directors and Group Strategy Director, develop strategic relationships with clients; establish reputation as a leading strategic partner authority building multi-layered client relationships and growing global brands.
• Adept at building strong relationships with pivotal senior clients of the department and management of planning staff, working closely with cross-functional teams where appropriate on brand programmes.
• Identify and drive new business opportunities, overseeing and guiding the planning team as well as the wider agency on the growth element from a strategy perspective.
• Lead strategically and creative-led meetings both internally and with clients to drive discussions from a strategy perspective.
• Lead on all aspects of ‘off-the-shelf’ workshops and develop bespoke workshops.
• Overseeing and/or coaching through creative briefs with Planning and Creative teams, and briefing Creative teams in an informative and inspirational way.
• Appraising creative work based on suitability of idea, strategic realisation, and resonance with customer.
• Support a culture of diversity and inclusion; drive a culture of high performance across the team; through effective line management and leadership, ensure high quality selection, training, development and performance management of all line reports.
• Represent the planning department to the wider Olixir operating companies and stakeholders, as well as industry and client communities.
• A proven track record in planning within ‘top tier’ marketing communication agencies including significant experience of planning for health brands.
• Understanding of consumer health planning in addition to prescription brand (rx) planning.
• Proven case histories and definable business results, creative or effectiveness awards, testimonials from clients.
• Cross medium creative awareness and understanding of new technologies.
• Must know what it takes to win pitches and build trust and respect of the Planning team and wider agency departments.

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