Global Strategy Director

PUBLICIS MEDIA; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension

Life Assurance

Private Medical cover

Reflection Days

Shared Parental Leave

Job summary

Starcom, part of Publicis Media, seeks a senior strategist to lead global Mars Petcare transformation across our multi-market network. You will partner with client and agency teams to drive strategic capability, ensuring consistent visibility and impactful storytelling across Pet Nutrition, Royal Canin, MVH and Champion.

Role emphasizes governance, training, and building scalable frameworks that apply locally, with international travel as needed and a strong focus on data-led, measurable

Qualifications

• Deep working fluency in Ehrenberg-Bass / How Brands Grow principles and applying them to evaluate strategic recommendations.
• Excellent relationship-building skills across a matrixed global structure.
• Demonstrable media planning and strategy with international exposure.
• Strong analytical skills and proficiency with media planning tools.

Responsibilities

• Support global Mars Petcare transformation by upskilling client and agency teams on frameworks, tools and processes.
• Provide leadership with visibility into network work, enabling effective consultation across four businesses (Pet Nutrition, Royal Canin, MVH, Champion).
• Build and maintain relationships with divisional leads, sharing context and stories from the business.

Skills

Ehrenberg-Bass principles

Relationship building

Media planning & strategy

Analytical skills

Storytelling

Multi-market exposure

Tools

PowerPoint

Job description

Company Description

With a history that dates back over 80 years, Starcom is a global communications planning and media leader. We are an agency still grounded in our founding principle that people are at the centre of all we do. Each day, we apply this belief to harness the transformative power of data and technology to inspire and move people and business forward. With more than 7,000 employees in over 100 offices around the world, we are the flagship Publicis Media agency that uses our ‘Power of One’ business model, with teams that span multiple disciplines across clients such as Aldi, P&G, Primark, Samsung, Stellantis, and Visa.

We place a huge focus on our People, and have driven flagship D&I and L&D programmes within Publicis Media; our goal is to help every individual reach their fullest potential, and we encourage everyone to make 'Brave Plays' in how they approach their work and their own career development. As a result, we have an exceptionally energised and committed talent base, all of us proud of our welcoming and supportive culture, as evidenced by our recognition as one of Campaign’s Best Places to Work for five years in a row, Media Week's Agency of the Year 2025 and one of the Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2025.

What will you be doing?

We are looking for a talented individual to join the team and our bespoke agency for a globally recognized company known for its iconic brands across Snacking, Petcare and Food & Nutrition across our network and around the globe. This is a unique opportunity to partner with iconic brands on their marketing transformation journey. You will help enable the client to future-proof their business, whilst also being part of a Power of One model that integrates media, production, data & tech, social, influencer and commerce to create end-to-end PESO experiences. The global team will consist of individuals from over 70+ markets, all operating with the same vision: To build a better today, for tomorrow.

Responsibilities

• Support the wider capability transformation agenda, upskilling client and agency teams on strategic frameworks, tools and processWork with the Global Mars Petcare and Divisional Clients as they build out their transformation capabilities within Mars
• Provide Global Mars and Petcare leadership with consistent, structured visibility into work happening across the network, equipping them to consult effectively with each of the four businesses (Pet Nutrition, Royal Canin, MVH and Champion)
• Build and maintain strong working relationships with divisional client and strategy leads, acting as the primary channel through which global extracts visibility, context and stories from the business.
• Drive best practice across the network by developing and/or delivering training and guidance to regional teams — codifying what’s working in one division so it can be applied elsewhere.
• Proactively surface and build a growing bank of case studies from work happening across the four businesses, either writing first drafts or directing others to.
• Assist the Global Strategy Lead where necessary on strategic initiatives from the Client CMO’s office.
• Ensure divisional processes are followed correctly and consistently, flagging and helping resolve deviations.
• Act as the connective link between the Global Petcare strategy team and the four divisional businesses maintaining live oversight of strategic work happening across the network.
• Evaluate divisional strategy and outputs against Ehrenberg-Bass / How Brands Grow / Mars’ Laws of Growth principles, providing a rigorous quality check and constructive challenge and potentially assist teams as they write their strategies
• Navigate complex, matrixed stakeholder relationships across global and divisional teams with diplomacy and discretion

Qualifications

• Deep working fluency in Ehrenberg-Bass / How Brands Grow principles, with the ability to apply them to evaluate and challenge strategic recommendations.
• Excellent relationship-building skills, able to build trust and credibility across a matrixed, multi-division global structure without formal authority over the teams involved.
• Demonstrable media planning and strategy, with international exposure
• Strong history with analytical skills and proficiency in media planning tools
• Practiced at building global approach frameworks that allow for local nuance
• Passionate about multi-media channel planning based on data-led insights. Familiarity with Marketing Mix Modelling and other predictive or analytic methodologies
• Strong written and verbal storytelling ability, with experience turning business activity into clear, compelling case studies.
• Strong strategic judgement, able to assess the quality and rigour of strategy developed by others without necessarily authoring it directly.
• Comfortable operating in a governance and oversight capacity — process adherence, quality control and capability-building rather than day-to-day delivery.
• Experience designing or delivering training, or producing written guidance, for regional or divisional teams.
• Politically astute, with sound judgement navigating senior stakeholder relationships and sensitive situations.
• An assured presenter and communicator, confident representing global perspectives to senior leadership and divisional teams alike.
• Naturally curious, with strong analytical and lateral-thinking skills, able to ask difficult questions constructively.
• Simple, effective use of PowerPoint for structured reporting, guidance documents and leadership updates.
• Fluency in English; additional languages a plus.
• May need to travel internationally on occasion.

Additional Information

Starcom offers a wide range of benefits to support our employees. Full details are shared when you join, but highlights include core benefits such as Pension, Life Assurance, and Private Medical cover, alongside enhanced policies like Reflection Days and Shared Parental Leave. You’ll also have access to a range of additional initiatives, including: Please check out the Publicis Career Page which showcases our Inclusive Benefits and our EAG’s (Employee Action Groups). Publicis Groupe works primarily from the office or our clients' office four days per week.

Starcom is proud to be an equal opportunities employer. We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, and do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion or belief, disability, age, citizenship, relationship status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected characteristic. We are committed to providing a fair, accessible, and inclusive recruitment process. If you have any access needs - for example, related to disability, neurodivergence, or a health condition - please let us know. We’ll work with you to ensure the process works for you. Sharing this information will never impact your application. Guided by our values, we listen with empathy, uplift each other, take responsibility, and embrace change - building a culture where everyone feels seen, respected, and genuinely included.