Strategy Director

Walton Isaacson; New York (NY); On-site; USD 145,000 - 155,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

DEI commitment

Competitive salary

Collaborative culture

Job summary

Walton Isaacson in New York seeks a Strategy Director to lead insights, shape brand positioning, and guide campaigns end-to-end. You will author briefs, analyze trends, and partner with creative and account teams to ensure strategic alignment with client goals.

The role emphasizes storytelling, strong presentation skills, and leadership to foster diverse, innovative work across global brands.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in advertising, marketing with focus on strategic planning.
• Strong storytelling, research, and presentation skills.
• Ability to translate trends into actionable strategies.
• Experience managing client relationships and budgets.

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic oversight for campaigns and ensure on-brand work.
• Lead development of insights driving brand positioning and creative strategy.
• Author briefs and guide internal and external teams to execution.
• Present cultural and social trends to influence client decisions.
• Collaborate across strategy, creative, and account teams; mentor staff.

Skills

Strategy

Leadership

Research

Communication

Multicultural Marketing

Presentation

Client Management

Budget Management

Team Collaboration

Project Management

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Communications, Advertising, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, the Arts

Tools

MRI/Simmons

eMarketer

Mintel

Social Listening

Job description

Description

Walton Isaacson is an award-winning, independent agency that provides strategic and culture-defining creative solutions to some of the world's largest, most iconic brand marketers. WI is driven by its core mission of a world made better through the power of diversity and seeing opportunities in culture to help our clients break new ground. This innovative agency model marries award-winning, full-service advertising, digital & social capabilities across multiple disciplines, providing value and efficiency to our client partners. Additional marketing specializations include Media, Entertainment and Sports Marketing, Experiential, Original Programming and Branded Content and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion communications. WI has diverse cultural expertise across Black, Hispanic, LGBTQ and General Market consumer segments.

The Walton Isaacson Strategy team is a community of passionately curious storytellers with varied experiences and perspectives. Our goal is to encourage brands to represent themselves more authentically to help foster meaningful connections and brand experiences.

The Strategy Director is responsible for helping create, concept and complete strategies, programs and campaigns using consumer insights, trends, best practices, technologies, and innovations. This person must possess a true passion for building innovative experiences and content that engages consumers toward the client’s overall brand goals. This position requires strong presentation skills, strong verbal and written communication skills, and a passion for constant learning.

As Strategy Director, you will lead the development of key insights that will drive brand positioning and creative strategy for our client’s brands. Your strong experience as both a researcher and planner gives you the ability to identify, understand and analyze societal and cultural trends. You are responsible for distilling trends into simple ideas that translate to actionable marketing strategies. You have a strong understanding of the consumer journey and will partner with the Agency team to help identify the key touch points a brand needs to be present. You will author creative briefs, work with creative teams, and ultimately, ensure strategic alignment of creative and contact plan.

Responsibilities

• Strategic oversight for all client campaigns and projects, providing the creative team direction to ensure the marketing and creative work is on-strategy and on-brand.
• Develop strategies for selling ideas and provide rationale from research to support strategy.
• Write inspiring creative briefs and brief in-house teams or partner with agencies to develop the content/experience needed to bring channels to life.
• Research, analyze and present cultural and social trends that affect the marketplace both locally and globally for client’s brands.
• Lead and participate in brainstorming sessions with research, planning, and creative teams to develop brand strategies that drives rich creative thinking.
• Utilize research and tools to help populate customer profiles and personas; identify unmet needs, hypothesize key customer problems and solutions.
• Collaborate effectively and support knowledge sharing with colleagues from a range of disciplines including strategy, creative, and account management.
• Create clear compelling content for client presentations, POVs, and other deliverables.
• Leads the execution of creative projects - brief to presentation.
• Providing thought leadership internally with agency staff and externally with client team.
• Preserve and foster WI’s Culture and maintain a positive and forward-thinking attitude.

Communication Skills

• Must have excellent oral and written communication, organization, and presentation skills.
• Story-telling ability with an aptitude to ask the right questions, explain information clearly and succinctly, boil down relevant insights.
• Good eye for detail and strong grammar skills, business writing skills.
• Able to and comfortable and professional interacting with and presenting to clients.
• Ability to motivate staff, peers and clients.
• Must be able to provide actionable, constructive feedback, to strengthen the work and process.

Leadership Responsibilities

• Seeks out opportunity and challenge.
• Nice way of working with people, team player, across disciplines.
• Willingness and success managing up, down and across.
• Natural manager with aptitude for talent growth and development.
• Ability to develop and nurture client relationships.
• Primary client liaison to strategy discipline, ability to develop and nurture client relationships.
• Familiarity and knowledge of budget and scope management.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Communications, Advertising, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, the Arts, or anything with a hint of creativity etc.
• 10+ Years of Experience within advertising, marketing with a preferred focus in strategic planning.
• Innate curiosity and aptitude to learn about marketing, brands, advertising, communications, culture, people, etc. a burning desire to dig into what makes them tick.
• Creative and/or an appreciation for creativity, desire to be part of a creative environment and is excited about the creative process.
• Range of strategic sensibilities inclusive of communication, business and creative strategy.
• Self-starter goes above and beyond on tasks.
• Must have the ability to work proactively and independently within tight deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
• High level of accountability and responsibility required.
• Dynamic problem-solving skills and the ability to influence internal teams.
• Strong experience and understanding using industry tools and resources (MRI/Simmons, eMarketer, Mintel, Social Listening).
• Strong experience with quantitative research and the ability to synthesize and analyze data, draw actionable conclusions and identify trends; Experience with creating research methodologies and approaches.
• Qualitative research experience (focus groups, in-depth interviews, ethnographic research – strong personal experience interviewing or moderating).
• Experience in Multicultural Marketing.
• Able to effectively manage many tasks, projects and/or clients.
• Excellent project management and organizational skills.
• Able to work with Bi-Coastal Teams.
• Must be proficient on MS Office products.
• Maintains accurate timesheets that are completed by required deadlines.
• Looking to further establish leadership level in our industry.

The salary range for this position is $145,000 to $155,000. Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; the associated discipline; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company(applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

At WI we are committed to cultivating an environment that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion. We promote DEI in our workplace and are a global community who believe our unique qualities should be celebrated. We want everyone at Walton Isaacson to bring their authentic selves to work everyday, irrespective of age, disability (including hidden disabilities), gender, gender identity or gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, or sexual orientation.