Strategy Director

Creative Recruitment; Greater London; On-site; GBP 75,000 - 105,000; Full time

Job summary

Creative Recruitment is seeking a strategist with FMCG design strategy background to lead branding work on iconic brands and challengers. You will shape direction, set the problem, and ensure the output is intellectually rigorous and creatively powerful.

You’ll guide from framing to delivery, build messaging systems, and mentor junior strategists while driving growth and thought leadership across the global Strategy team.

Qualifications

• Brand strategy leadership across complex projects.
• Ability to distill complexity into clear, powerful ideas.
• Strong storytelling to land strategy with clients.

Responsibilities

• Build brand strategies that connect commercial reality with cultural relevance.
• Lead brand strategy end to end, from framing the problem to final delivery.
• Define brand positioning, architecture, and portfolio strategy with clarity and authority.
• Craft messaging systems that make strategy land, from positioning to message houses and brand lines.
• Hold senior client relationships, leading strategic conversations with confidence and credibility.
• Shape and direct research, from design through to insight generation and implications.
• Partner closely with Design and Client teams to ensure ideas are executed with intent.
• Drive business growth through new business, organic opportunities, and thought leadership.
• Contribute to the strategic voice of the agency, raising the quality and consistency of our output.
• Mentor and develop Strategists, building capability and confidence across the team.

Skills

Brand strategy

Leadership

Storytelling

Design literacy

Digital fluency

Job description

MUST COME FROM FMCG DESIGN STRATEGY BACKGROUND

You will own the thinking, shape the work, and elevate the ambition of teams and clients alike. You will lead from the front, setting direction, making decisions, and ensuring strategy is both intellectually rigorous and creatively powerful.

You’ll play a central role across the global Strategy team - working on iconic brands and ambitious challengers.

Your focus is clear: to make brands more meaningful, more unmistakable, and more effective.

What you’ll do

• Build brand strategies that connect commercial reality with cultural relevance.
• Lead brand strategy end to end, from framing the problem through to final delivery.
• Define brand positioning, architecture, and portfolio strategy with clarity and authority.
• Craft messaging systems that make strategy land, from positioning to message houses and brand lines.
• Hold senior client relationships, leading strategic conversations with confidence and credibility.
• Shape and direct research, from design through to insight generation and implications.
• Partner closely with Design and Client teams to ensure ideas are executed with intent.
• Drive business growth through new business, organic opportunities, and thought leadership - nurturing and leveraging your network.
• Contribute to the strategic voice of the agency, raising the quality and consistency of our output.
• Mentor and develop Strategists, building capability and confidence across the team.

What we’re looking for:

• You are a strategist who leads through action, not just tenure. You bring clarity, perspective, and conviction to the work.
• Significant experience in Brand Strategy within a brand-led agency.
• Proven ability to lead complex projects and deliver high quality strategic outputs.
• Strong authorship in storytelling, able to distil complexity into simple, powerful ideas.
• Design literacy and a deep understanding of how brands exist in the world.
• Digital fluency and an active engagement with how technology and AI are shaping brands, creativity, business, and culture.
• A sharp understanding of consumer behaviour, culture, and commercial dynamics.
• Confidence operating at senior client level, including C-suite conversations.
• A mindset that balances rigour and instinct, logic and imagination.