Senior Strategy Partner

Havas Group; Greater London; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading media agency in Greater London is seeking a Senior Strategy Partner to drive strategic direction and enhance client transformation initiatives. The ideal candidate will have over 8 years of experience in the marketing industry, demonstrating excellence in data-driven decision-making and lateral thinking. Responsibilities include guiding digital transformation strategies and fostering a culture of innovation. This role offers an opportunity to shape the agency’s future while working with notable brands.

Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years' experience in the marketing industry.
• Ability to work at pace on demanding client projects.
• Experience with challenger/ disrupted brands preferred.

Responsibilities

• Drive the strategic direction of Arena and enhance output quality.
• Be the ‘first person consult’ for clients and internal peers.
• Set the Digital and Data ambitions for the agency.
• Develop digital transformation road maps for key clients.
• Foster a culture of digital and data innovation.
• Lead new business pitches alongside creative teams.

Skills

Excellence in using data

Lateral thinking

Problem-solving

Storytelling

Sound marketing knowledge

Brevity in communication

Understanding of media ecosystem

Knowledge of measurement and effectiveness

Active implementation of strategies

Job description

Overview

Description

Senior Strategy Partner, Arena

About the role :

Are you adept at providing unrivalled strategic council and leadership for our clients’ businesses?

Are you restless and driven to create and drive innovative ideas which move businesses, people and the world?

Are you able to boil complexities of digital transformation into simple idea and actionable constructs?

Are you an insightful, energetic and curious lateral thinker?

Do you love what you do and have a desire to shift the industry for the better?

Are you excited about coaching and mentoring the next generation of strategic leaders?

Arena is part of Havas.

Arena is in search of a maverick player to join our department.

Arena is on an upward trajectory, working with market leading brands with lots of momentum. We believe that strategy should be the engine of growth, central to the organisation and the ‘first person consult’ for our people and our clients.

We are an agency in its ascendancy. Three years ago, we were borne out of the coming together of two small agencies and the culture first clients from the Havas Media Network. The thinking behind our proposition was borne from two truths. Clients can find small, creative culture-first media agencies who don’t have the tools and tech of the big networks. Conversely, the larger agencies don’t have the creative, cultural edge of the smaller indies. Put simply, the plan was to bring two aspects together. It’s worked. We’ve doubled in billings for the last two years in a row. In 2024 we converted £9.88 of every £10 we pitched for. We have brought in clients like SEGA, Red Bull, Penguin, Pokémon and Dr Martens to sit alongside the likes of UKTV, Puma and Bumble.

We are now looking to the next phase of growth. Our philosophy is the best time to transform is when you are at the top of your game, so we are looking for a strategy lead to help us on this journey.

Our Philosophy

We are a different flavour of Media Agency. We exist to catapult brands with a challenger mindset into the stratosphere. We work with brands who want to create, disrupt, innovate and challenge the status quo in their categories, be that as the market leader, new entrant or thought leader, working as their agents of change for growth.

Where are we going?

As demonstrated by our growth we are leading in the creative media space, but we want to push further. We see the future through the lens of connecting the best of what media agencies do with the best of what the Havas Village has to offer. Connecting Audience Propensity to P / O / E Activation to Optimising Sales through site / app / shoppable ad formats to CRM / Retargeting and back to Lifetime Value that pushes back into Audience Propensity. To det us there it will take a Village with the media agency working as the connective thread throughout. This role is the driver, and the heart of that connectivity.

In this role, you will :

Be responsible for driving the direction of Arena both as a brand and the strategic quality of output for Arena.

You will report directly into the Group Head of Strategy for the Havas Media Network with a dotted line into the Head of Arena.

Business transformation for Arena and our clients :

• Be ‘first person consult’ to both clients, Head of Arena, and amongst strategic peers. The go to for strategic advice on the big business challenges and digital transformation journey.
• Setting the Digital and Data ambition for the agency. This includes digital brand, performance and commerce and creating a connected story that is easy for our clients and people to understand and believe in.
• Develop sophisticated digital and data transformation road maps for key clients (incl. unified measurement and reporting). Take the complexity out and make it simple for senior clients to buy.
• There should be a heavy emphasis on how we use clients’ first party data, or if they can’t access it, how we overcome that with data we can access, to accelerate their growth.
• Lead the monthly Transformation Dinners with Gate One for key clients.
• Foster a culture of digital and data innovation that leads to award winning work by building long term audience-led strategies for clients and with media owners.
• Lead the charge on Converged in the agency. Drive adoption and embed it in the core of the way we think and plan. Work with the CSA team to build stronger relationships between planners and analysts. Teach teams to extract the audience intelligence that gives us competitive advantage.
• Work with CSA to envisage, create and sell new tools that will drive client growth through better audience insight, better measurement, better optimisation etc.
• Work with the MPs / CPs to uncover new (commercial) opportunities.
• Inspire the planners across the agency to think more progressively than ‘comms planning’ i.e. think about the entire customer journey.
• Work in tandem with the CSA and group digital strategists. Prioritise opportunities and direct them to the most productive opportunities.
• Live our meaningfully daring philosophy to drive growth for clients and the Arena business.

New Business :

• Hold the pen on the story, across any format and produce a clear bounce off point for creative teams to work from.
• Be a key player in winning new business, championing data and connectivity at the heart of every pitch.

Industry :

• Craft daring thought leadership - support with leadership agency pieces and create your own individual pieces to be published in trade and wider press.
• Elevate the agency’s profile through playing a critical role in bold thought leadership through events (internally and externally), case studies, articles, and award-winning work.
• Champion media owner relationships and obtain first-mover advantages in leveraging smart media owner data e.g. Amazon Market Cloud (AMC), MIQ TV Intelligence, Dunhumby Retail data, to drive greater connectivity and performance for our clients.
• Speak on industry panels, judge at awards and craft the award narratives.

Team

• Foster a culture of curiosity and inspire the Arena team, working with the SLT of Arena and Strategy, driving engine force of both Arena and the wider agency.
• Work closely with the Strategy Partner we already have in place. She is more creatively driven. This role is the ying to her yang and together they give us cultural advantage (with creative thinking) and operational advantage (with stronger performance, data and digital thinking).
• Work with the Data and Analytics specialists to connect the culture first work we to tangible business outcomes.
• Work with MPs / CPs to feed digital / data strategy into the client business plans.

Village :

• Connect and collaborate with specialist departments in the Havas Media Network and specialist agencies in the Havas Village to create bespoke solutions for client.
• Work with Arena MD to connect with key Havas Village agencies – DMPG, Helia, Inviqa, Gate One – to create a connected process that we can take to existing clients and use in pitches to win new clients.

Team / Reporting Lines

• Reporting into the Group Head of Strategy with a dotted line into the Arena MD and overseeing the Arena Strategy Partner.

Core skills :

• Excellence in using, applying and understanding data to digitally transform businesses
• Lateral thinking and against the grain mentality
• Problem solver for a diverse range of businesses
• Storytelling and sell- The ability to develop a compelling narrative and sell ideas
• Sound marketing knowledge – from both the advertising and media world
• Brevity - the ability to boil down a problem and solution into a distinctive strategic bounce off point
• Knowledge of the wider comms ecosystem including media, partnerships and sponsorship
• As well as understanding of measurement and effectiveness foundations
• A doer, not just a thinker – making sure your strategies are both well evidenced and activated

Musts :

• Minimum 8 years’ experience, across marketing industry.
• Ability to work at pace on clients, which demand speed and quality.
• Preferable : Experience challenger / disrupted brands and or entertainment marketingExperience – creative / media / client

Contract Type : Permanent

Here at Havas across the group we pride ourselves on being committed to offering equal opportunities to all potential employees and have zero tolerance for discrimination. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applicants irrespective of age, sex, race, ethnicity, disability and other factors that have no bearing on an individual’s ability to perform their job.

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