Strategy Director

Tombras; Knoxville (TN); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Tombras in Knoxville is seeking a Strategy Director to lead brand strategy, drive transformative thinking, and build strong client relationships. You will couple analytical rigor with creative thinking and emotional intelligence to move brands forward and deliver measurable business results.

You will set the initial direction, collaborate with senior clients, and guide teams through research, strategy, and execution to ensure the work resonates in the real world.

Qualifications

• Brand strategy leadership and ability to set direction for a brand.
• Experience driving strategy with high-level client relationships.
• Ability to win buy-in from clients and internal teams through clear storytelling.

Responsibilities

• Set the strategy and direction on a brand to transform audience perception.
• Foster high-level client relationships and act as entrepreneurial engine for the brand.
• Lead the team in creating compelling briefs, briefs that are actionable and inspiring.
• Lead research, segmentation, and insight development to inform brand plans.
• Develop and present effectiveness models and narratives to executives and clients.
• Create and steward brand platforms and POVs, ensuring they drive business results.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Client relationship management

Creative collaboration

Emotional intelligence

Presentation leadership

Job description

Tombras, a 600+ person, full-service, national advertising agency with a digital mindset, is seeking a Strategy Director to join our team in Knoxville.

You’ll be joining one of the top independent agencies in North America. Connecting Data & Creativity for Business Results® is working for our clients and creating a flywheel affect fueling both client and agency growth. You’ll be a part of a highly creative agency that has been recognized by AdAge, Adweek, Communication Arts, Fast Company, Forbes and Fortune. Tombras was recently named 2025 AdAge Agency of the year and 2024 AdAge Independent Agency of the Year.

Where you'll be working:

Knoxville. Relocation assistance may be provided.

At its core, the job of a strategist is not to write great briefs, it is to ensure there is a great strategy. The strategist is responsible for finding the truth, sharply defining the problem, inspiring great creative work, and helping make that work unforgettable. Strategists at Tombras combine analytical rigor with creative thinking and emotional intelligence to move brands and people forward.

You will be expected to put the first brave thought or POV on the table. To be close to the creative work, and to make the work better. If your creative team isn’t ‘getting it’, or the work isn’t happening, you need to adapt. Our clients have their own styles and situations and we need to understand and respond to those. And of course we need to work with each other. All this requires adaptability and great social skills. So be authentic to yourself but also empathetic to your wider team too. You will need only half your intellect but all of your emotional intelligence to be a great strategist.

A Brand Strategy Director is primarily responsible for setting the strategy and direction on a brand. The kind of transformational thinking that takes a brand on a journey that changes how an audience sees it entirely.

Beyond the core skills of interrogation, distillation and inspiration, they must also be accountable for fostering high level relationships with clients, for being the entrepreneurial engine for the brand, and for proving the effectiveness of the work. But as important as the work, is the fact they are also responsible for the people on the team that help deliver the work. They should be creating the conditions for everyone to thrive. The director should make the work better but they should make the team, and ultimately the agency, better, too.

Strategic vision refers to the ability to create big ideas that transform the way people see a company. We get to the truth of who a company really is and what they offer, and we make them feel human. In order to do that, you need to know how to translate the marketing jargon and brand onions. Cut through the frameworks and get to the plain-spoken truths that are creatively inspiring and make sense to real people. Define the problem, define the strategy, define the idea. Strategy is not only building a compelling narrative, but bringing a distinct perspective on the task, the market, the consumer and the work. Give the brand a POV and then build a strategy for how that POV will solve business problems.

Research and analysis

• Know how to set up research and segmentation on new clients
• Bring innovation to how we research
• Consider the impact of research
• How can it be used offensively? Can it create more opportunities for great work? Briefs & thinking
• You should be writing the best briefs in the building
• The kind of thinking and work that is would generate enviable and unforgettable work (And helping others write these kinds of briefs, too)
• Highly original, directional, and transformational thinking being brought to the table
• The kind of thinking that changes how real people see a brand when they think of it
• The right brief and strategy for the right audience and task: know when to write half a page and when to write a 15 slide deck
• An ability to solve significant problems quickly
• Be comfortable working through problems with senior clients in real time
• Change the direction of a brief, conversation or whole way of seeing a problem
• Anticipate a client’s concerns before they come to us
• You are (along with the GAD) the entrepreneurial engine for the brand - seeking opportunities for the agency’s remit to grow

Effectiveness and measurement

• Able to set up effectiveness models and consult clients and partners on objectives and methodologies - from business-level measures to brand health to ad tracking
• Able to write gold standard effectiveness papers and the ability to help others find their form in structure and storytelling, too

Strategy is at least in part, a creative act. Do you increase the odds of great creative work being made and sold? Can you inspire, spot and nurture great ideas? The evidence of this skill is that creatives want to work with you and clients value your opinion on the work. Importantly, and increasingly, our clients need enduring ‘brand platforms’ - the idea behind the idea. Strategists at Tombras should help author and define these brand platforms. They should set the initial direction, even if the idea ends up in a different place. Who owns or came up with an idea is not important. The important thing is that the idea sees the light of day. Believe in an idea and make others believe in it, too, even if it didn’t come from you. Less is more. A smart idea is usually one that’s obvious in hindsight.

Ideas and platforms

• Create ideas and platforms across a wide range of brands and categories
• Lead these companies into transformative business and brand ideas
• Help spread that transformation throughout a business
• Help the idea/platform to continue to evolve and strengthen over time

Work

• Enable the best possible work to be developed, bought and taken through a business, in turn enabling platforms and ideas to grow internally and externally
• Create successful work across a range of brands and categories for the agency
• When a client asks for a framework, know that it can still be done elegantly and in language a real person could understand
• Leverage and build key relationships within the business and the agency and be seen as someone who is invaluable to both

Culture

• Create the conditions for your brands to affect culture, not just reflect it
• Help the agency unlock new ways to create cultural impact and make the case for why and how that creates more effective work

It’s no good having the right answer if you can’t persuade someone to believe in it - whether that be a client, or a colleague. It’s not enough to be right. You want people to want you to be right. To achieve this, we need to build great relationships - and they are built through honing our communication and interpersonal skills. Learn to exhibit humility. Be trusted by colleagues and clients alike for your thinking, your point of view, and the knowledge underpinning your intuition.

Decks and Presenting

• You should be comfortable commanding a room’s attention and taking them on a journey
• SDs should be confident but humble leaders in tough strategic debates with Creative Directors, Group Account Directors and key senior clients

Clients

• Accountable for fostering strong high-level relationships with clients
• Influence to change a client’s business
• Be able to influence a client’s behavior and thinking - bring the whole room with you
• Be a valued partner who can help lead them into the future
• Have the confidence and maturity to debate with CMOs

Colleagues

• Act as a partner to the creative directors and GADs - respected, trusted and sought out
• Influence your team, the department, the agency
• Be seen as an inspiring presence within the dept - helping us all be better planners
• Help create conditions for others to be at their best
• Listen to the quiet voices and help them make their voices heard
• Be comfortable running medium and large pitches

Why you'll want to work at Tombras:

• Family - It comes first, on every list. Tombras has been family-run since day 1, we strive to facilitate a family-oriented environment rooted in supporting one another.
• Dog-friendly offices
• Flexible PTO
• Generous parental leave for primary and non-primary caregivers
• Medical (PPO or High Deductible option) for employee + dependents
• A company culture of promotions from within and an atmosphere allowing for varied and rapid career development.

Tombras is proud to be an equal opportunity employer dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.

Tombras is an E-Verify employer and participates in the E-Verify program.

This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change or new ones may be assigned at any time with or without notice. Job may require traveling overnight, driving long distances as required and sitting for extended periods of time with occasional walking and standing and occasionally lifting or carrying articles weighing less than 10 pounds.

Remote employees must be based in the United States.