We are seeking a Vice President, Brand Strategy Director based in Seattle, Portland or Los Angeles for the global Microsoft account.
Assembly Media Inc. is a subsidiary of Daniel J. Edelman Holdings, Inc. Built to thrive amid the full complexity of today’s modern marketing, Edelman is the world’s largest independent communications agency. We help some of the world’s most famous companies evolve, promote, and protect their brands.
At Assembly, we help Microsoft bring to life its mission: to help every person on the planet achieve more. We are experts in the products and offerings and tasked with helping them think beyond the product roadmap to find the best way to bring their unique stories to broad audiences. Our work is designed to capture the attention of the American media landscape, and the ability to uncover a cultural tension is at the heart of our briefs.
Our growing team of strategists are the minds that uncovered the insights that led to some of 2020’s most talked about campaigns, from realizing that a popular ice cream truck jingle had racist roots then writing a new one with RZA from Wu-Tang Clan, to discovering that U.S. fathers don’t have access to paid paternity leave then starting a national movement towards a federal paid leave policy. Now we need a VP, Brand Strategy Director with a finely tuned cultural radar to help discover more of those cultural tensions that make the creative team reach for their pencils.
We know you’re thinking, “isn’t Edelman a PR company” Sure, public relations is part of who we are, but in recent years we’ve grown our surrounding departments and evolved into a next generation kind of agency that sits at the intersection of public relations and advertising. We like to call our job, “planning at the speed of PR” because we generate attention-grabbing ideas while moving much faster than a traditional agency (think weeks, not months). So, if you’re quick on your feet, and ready to see your strategy become the kind of reality that ends up on the front page of Reddit, the pages of NYTimes, in Shaq’s Twitter feed, and in the award shows, we do that on a regular basis. And for what it’s worth, in person we’re WAY more humble.
The VP, Brand Strategy Director needs to be a self-starter, a creative problem solver for our clients that can craft a strategy and make it sing, from initial brief to execution. We move fast, so we need someone who can work quickly and collaboratively, at times taking minimal information and filling in the gaps with insight and structure. From initial insight to final decks, we need someone who can craft a strategy into a persuasive story that inspires creative teams and excites clients. We like to nerd out and get our hands dirty and expect you to bring your full strategic arsenal to do the same.
As a VP, Brand Strategy Director, we will need you to lead the day-to-day strategy on key brands and excel at the following responsibilities:
- Provide strategic guidance to clients across product, masterbrand and purpose initiatives.
- Help clients see human problems behind their business challenges and set the path for how communications can solve the challenge(s) and drive brand growth.
- Create a strategy and creative brief that not only solves the business challenge but leads to ideas that capture media and consumers attention. In the process you are in charge of guiding research teams and junior support and turning observations and data into actionable strategy.
- Consult and keep the work on brief and up to standards, as the creative and other teams build out the creative work, ensuring things like measurement and channel plans ladder back to the strategy.
- Understand and decipher campaign results and find ways to optimize and continue to build campaigns and equity even after launch.
- Guide client in yearly planning and goal setting, working with a team to deliver a strategic framework, narrative, and beyond to set the year up for success.
- Collaborate with agency team members from creative, account, production, PR, strategy, planning and analytics to produce smart, powerful work.
- Manage multiple projects simultaneously.
- At the end of the day, you are a problem solver, that can make meaning from mess and guide internal teams and clients to effective solutions. Sometimes this means being creative and innovative in how you problem solve (i.e. bringing forward a new research technique or a bespoke process.)
Basic Qualifications:
- 8+ years of experience working as a highly creative (and effective) strategist
- Minimum of 3-4 years (ideally 4-6 years) working specifically as an Account Planner
Preferred Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited university or college
- Experience working at a top tier PR, marketing, digital or advertising agency
- A diverse array of experience across multiple brand categories
- A deep understanding of how brands work, and what it takes to drive people to action, and ultimately generate cultural attention and change
- A portfolio of brilliant insights leading to effective consumer-facing campaigns
- Enthusiasm for driving creative ideas that push boundaries and shape culture
- Client-side experience and/or experience working with clients in an interagency dynamic
- A finger on the pulse of media, news, and trending topics
- Passionate about gaming, gamers and entertainment
- Experience with DE&I and multicultural initiatives
Ideal Personality Traits:
- Curious: About what makes people “tick”; has a keen interest in discovering insights into human behavior and going beyond what people say they think/do.
- Leader: Can command attention and respect of direct reports, peers and clients.
- Passionate: For breakthrough, media-agnostic ideas and effective brand-building.
- Interested: In pop culture and media and how the two are interconnected.
- Inventive: Wants to think, try and do new things
- Collaborative: Works just as well with others as on their own.
- Organized: Can multi-task, provide clear direction and keep everything on track.
- Adventurous: Willing to get out there and talk to real people; not content to observe from behind a desk