Brand Strategy Director (3-month Fixed Term Contract)

50 Sport; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working with flexible working

23 days holiday (+1 per year)

Private health insurance

Employee Assistance Programme

Wellness Day

Birthday off

Agency Christmas close down

Paid 4-week sabbatical after 5 years

Training and development budget

Enhanced family leave policies

Referral awards

Onsite gym

Regular company socials

Job summary

50 Sport in the United Kingdom is seeking a Brand Strategy Director to join the Strategy & Performance team. The role shapes our strategic offering and leads how we work with clients, with an initial 3-month FTC and potential extension to full-time.

You will work across major global brands and properties, turning complex challenges into clear strategic directions that teams can act on, with a focus on sport, entertainment and culture.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in brand strategy, strategic planning, consultancy or similar role
• Excellent presentation and storytelling skills and ability to persuade
• Experience influencing senior client stakeholders and shaping strategic decisions beyond marketing/communications
• Experience working across international markets and with major sports partnerships

Responsibilities

• Lead clients beyond the immediate brief, understanding the wider business and brand challenges
• Develop brand positioning, propositions, platforms, territories and strategic frameworks
• Identify the role of sport, entertainment, culture and partnerships in client growth
• Lead strategic workshops and client conversations to uncover challenges and develop solutions
• Present strategic recommendations to senior client stakeholders and defend the thinking behind them
• Collaborate across account, creative, insights, social, content, production and commercial teams

Skills

Brand strategy

Strategic planning

Consultancy

Stakeholder management

Workshop facilitation

Presentations

Storytelling

Cross-functional collaboration

International markets

Brand transformation

Job description

50 Sport is The Sports Entertainment Agency.

We build and grow social communities, deliver entertainment-led creative campaigns, and drive sponsorship value; connecting fans, brands, and rights holders worldwide. Uniting sport, entertainment, and culture through industry-leading creativity, social media, strategy and performance for clients including Qatar Airways, Ferrari F1 Team, FIFA, Prime Video Sport, DHL, and Jim Beam.

About the role:

This is an exciting opportunity to join our Strategy & Performance team as a Brand Strategy Director, helping us shape and lead our strategic offering and the value we bring to our clients. You'll play a senior role in shaping how we think, how we work with clients and how we bring strategy into the wider agency. This role is for an initial 3-month FTC with the possibility to extend to full-time.

We're looking for someone who can operate beyond the immediate brief, someone who wants to understand the wider business and brand challenge, identify what needs to change, and determine the strategic role that communications can play in getting there.

You'll work across major global brands, sports properties and entertainment platforms, developing integrated strategies. This could mean defining a brand's strategic direction, changing perceptions or shifting how a brand is understood, developing a new proposition, shaping a partnership strategy, building an audience framework, determining the role of different communications channels, or creating a broader strategic narrative that brings products, content, social, partnerships and experiences together. You'll be comfortable taking a complex client challenge and turning it into a clear strategic direction that teams can understand, act on and build from.

Above all, you'll bring relentless curiosity, commercial thinking and a passion for understanding how brands can create meaningful connections with audiences through sport, entertainment and culture.

You'll be joining a team that believes strategy should make every decision smarter, challenging assumptions, finding the insight that changes the brief, turning ambiguity into clear direction and connecting audience behaviour to commercial opportunity.

Job Requirements

Key responsibilities of the role:

• Lead clients beyond the immediate brief, understanding the wider business, commercial, brand and audience challenge, identifying the real strategic problem to solve and reframing briefs where necessary
• Develop brand positioning, propositions, platforms, territories and strategic frameworks that address the client's broader objectives
• Understand the role that sport, entertainment, culture, partnerships and talent can play in helping brands achieve their wider business and brand ambitions
• Identify the right blend of communications channels and disciplines to address a client challenge
• Develop integrated brand and communications strategies that connect brand, audience, products, content, social, partnerships, experiences and channels
• Turn complex information, research and multiple stakeholder perspectives into clear, compelling strategic points of view and actionable recommendations
• Bring together business, brand, audience and cultural understanding to identify distinctive and credible opportunities for the client
• Lead strategic workshops, working sessions and client conversations to uncover challenges, align stakeholders and develop solutions
• Present strategic recommendations confidently to senior client stakeholders and defend the thinking behind them
• Work collaboratively across account, creative, insights, social, content, production and commercial teams to ensure strategic thinking is reflected throughout the work
• Lead or play a senior strategic role in pitches and new business opportunities, developing strategic responses that demonstrate a strong understanding of the client's business and the opportunity for sport, entertainment and culture
• Stay curious about changes in business, culture, technology, sport, entertainment, media and audience behaviour, bringing relevant thinking into our work
• Build trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders, becoming a strategic partner who can influence thinking beyond the immediate scope of work

About you:

• 8+ years' experience in brand strategy, strategic planning, consultancy or a similar role, ideally within an agency environment
• Commercially astute, with the ability to understand the business problem behind a communications challenge
• Proven ability to take a complex or ambiguous client challenge and turn it into a clear strategic direction
• Strong understanding of how different communications channels and disciplines can work together to achieve different objectives
• Able to connect business objectives, brand, audience and culture into a coherent strategic point of view
• Strong presentation and storytelling skills, with the ability to make complex strategic thinking clear and persuasive
• An excellent strategic writer who can make complex thinking clear, compelling and actionable
• Comfortable facilitating workshops and bringing different stakeholders together around a common challenge
• Naturally curious and interested in what is happening across sport, entertainment, culture, business and technology
• Motivated by collaboration and able to work effectively across multiple agency disciplines
• Able to balance strategic depth with pace, pragmatism and delivery
• Proven ability to lead complex strategic engagements from problem definition through to strategic direction and delivery
• Experience influencing senior client stakeholders and shaping strategic decisions beyond the marketing or communications brief
• Someone who challenges constructively, asks the difficult questions and isn't afraid to reframe the problem when there is a better question to solve
• You naturally look beyond the brief, bringing the outside world of culture, audiences, competitors, platforms and trends, into the room
• Passionate about the role that sport, entertainment and culture can play in building brands and driving business growth
• Experience working across international markets
• Experience in brand transformation or repositioning
• Experience across both B2C and B2B audiences
• Experience working with major sports partnerships

Company benefits

• Hybrid working with flexible working hours
• 23 days holiday (+ additional 1 day for each year of service capped at 5)
• Private health insurance
• Employee Assistance Programme
• 1 x paid Wellness Day
• Your birthday off
• Agency Christmas close down
• Paid 4-week sabbatical after 5 years' service
• Training and development budget
• Enhanced family leave policies
• Referral awards
• Onsite gym
• Regular company socials

We recognise the importance and power of diversity within our business and, as such, we ensure that our people processes are fair, transparent and promote equality of opportunity for all candidates.

We do not discriminate based upon the grounds of gender, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, marital status, age, race, colour, ethnic background, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, religion, religious or similar belief. Every individual will be treated with respect. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know.