Strategy Director

psLondon ltd. Angel Wharf 53 Eagle Wharf Road London N1 7ER 020 7375 6450 pslondon.co.uk

Strategy Director

Job Overview

We are looking for another brilliant mind to join our lovely psLondon Strategy & Creative Agency team, based primarily in London N1 (3 days in the office, 2 days at home) as Strategy Director or Head of Strategy.

Duties & Responsibilities

Reporting directly to our Strategy Partner/MD and working very closely with our small team of Senior Strategists, you will become another fundamental part of the brains of the operation, focused on gathering deep market knowledge of each sector we’re working in, and properly understanding our target audiences and what makes them tick. You’ll be delivering strategic client work, including facilitating workshops, writing and presenting research, developing brand and campaign strategies, and putting integrity into our creative briefs through crafting brilliant propositions. All this is focused on solving our client’s problems, so how you approach broad intellectual challenges will be an important part of your success. You won’t be afraid of interrogating work to test its rigour and will be instrumental in pushing our thinking to keep our work fresh, impactful and exciting. You’ll also explore and research new territory as we gain clients in different market spaces or help our existing clients to reposition. Your role in the new business side of things will mean using your talent for spotting opportunities and writing the proposals to sell them in. You’ll be confident in pitches, regularly forming part of the presentation team that showcases the very best of psLondon. Our work in Higher Education is respected and it’s our biggest client sector, so it would be handy if you have experience of this sector, but if you don’t we can teach you. And if you enjoy writing thought‑leadership and opinion pieces that help to boost the profile of the psLondon brand – even better! You’ll have access to a bunch of research tools to gather insight, turning this into useful, meaningful knowledge for our clients and the wider team. In return you’ll become part of our small, friendly and highly effective agency. Our size means you’ll have the opportunity to get involved in a whole variety of projects, keeping your work varied and interesting. We offer a competitive salary and invest in your development, providing training budget and supporting you in finding interesting events to keep you brimming with inspiration. Our team are absolutely lovely (even if we do say so ourselves), so you’ll be joining a warm and welcoming environment.

Skillset & Experience

• At least seven year’s experience of marketing strategy, insight and planning from either an Agency or Client perspective, ideally both.
• Thinks critically and strategically to set direction and guide innovation in our work.
• Organisationally and operationally savvy.
• Effectively collaborates on pitch teams, able to develop and deliver dynamic presentations that demonstrate the value of our thinking and outputs.
• Strong understanding of brand building and positioning as well as knowledge of tracking and monitoring brands in the market.
• Knowledge of current and emerging digital, AI etc and their likely effectiveness.
• Likely to have a deep understanding of global digital and branding trends, and able to bring a broader perspective to our work.
• Ability to communicate complex ideas to primary client contacts, both verbally and in writing to an exceptionally high standard.
• Ability to generate and review vast amounts of research, synthesize and draw relevant conclusions.
• Demonstrates ability to be both strategic and tactical.
• Proficiency leading research efforts and working with a primary research agency, as well as developing our own research studies.
• Ability to craft and present a compelling narrative or story.
• Contributes to knowledge sharing by writing thought pieces or attending conferences.
• Comfortable leading and developing a team, as well as being part of the wider agency team.

Qualifications

• Bachelor level degree in marketing, business planning or similar.
• Marketing & planning short courses an advantage.

Likely clients/projects

We have a strong reputation in Higher Education, working with many UK Universities to help them tell their brand story, build student recruitment strategies and execute campaigns. We are retained by a number of universities to provide ongoing strategic advice and this role will be involved in that (although we have a huge amount of existing knowledge if you’ve not worked in HE before). We are also strong in Public Sector, B2B and Charities, so work includes brand development, messaging and campaign development in those sectors too.