Digital Communications Strategist

Accenture in South Africa; Midrand; On-site; ZAR 700,000 - 1,100,000; Full time

Job summary

Accenture in South Africa is seeking a Digital Communications Strategist to bridge brand strategy and digital execution. You will define the creative direction, shape messaging, and ensure coherence across paid, owned and earned channels.

You will collaborate with creative, media, PR and account teams to turn insights into strategy and measurable impact, balancing culture, technology and platform nuances to deliver impactful digital campaigns.

Qualifications

• ±7 years’ experience in communications strategy, brand strategy, digital strategy or creative agency environments - mandatory.
• Strong grounding in Paid, Owned and Earned media, with a clear point of view on how brand and creativity drive digital impact.
• Proven ability to lead communications strategy that starts with idea and meaning, and then scales across digital platforms.
• Comfortable acting as a senior strategic partner to creative teams, channel specialists and clients.
• Ability to balance cultural intuition and creative ambition with strategic rigour and evidence-based decision-making.
• Excellent structuring, writing and presentation skills.
• Curious by nature; opinionated once informed.
• Enjoys complexity, but obsessed with clarity.
• Collaborative, grounded and low-ego.
• A Marketing or Communications-relevant tertiary qualification - mandatory.

Responsibilities

• Set the overarching digital communications direction across paid, owned and earned channels, grounded in brand strategy and business objectives - not isolated channel activity.
• Translate complex briefs, cultural signals and audience insight into clear communications platforms, strategic intent and messaging hierarchies.
• Anchor channel roles and creative expression across the digital customer journey, ensuring strategic coherence from awareness through to consideration, participation and advocacy.
• Take ownership of the overall communications direction across paid, owned and earned environments, ensuring specialist outputs ladder into a shared creative and strategic narrative.
• Work upstream with creative teams so ideas are conceived with digital behaviours, platform formats and distribution logic in mind - not retrofitted after the fact.
• Orchestrate and collaborate closely with media, social, PR, influencer and community teams; actively challenging, stress-testing and refining thinking to raise the quality of outcomes.
• Have the technical knowledge to work with Paid Media, CVM, SEO and Data specialists to ensure activation of strategy.
• Act as the point of strategic arbitration when trade-offs arise between brand expression, platform constraints and effectiveness goals.

Skills

Digital strategy

Brand strategy

Communications strategy

Education

Marketing or Communications degree

Job description

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading solutions and global professional services company that helps the world’s leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed across the enterprise, bringing together the talent of our approximately 779,000 people, our proprietary assets and platforms, and deep ecosystem relationships. Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and to be the most AI-enabled, client-focused, great place to work in the world. Through our Reinvention Services we bring together our capabilities across strategy, consulting, technology, operations, Song and Industry X with our deep industry expertise to create and deliver solutions and services for our clients. Our purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity, and we measure our success by the 360 value we create for all our stakeholders. Visit us ataccenture.com.

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading solutions and global professional services company that helps the world’s leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed across the enterprise, bringing together the talent of our approximately 779,000 people, our proprietary assets and platforms, and deep ecosystem relationships. Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and to be the most AI-enabled, client-focused, great place to work in the world. Through our Reinvention Services we bring together our capabilities across strategy, consulting, technology, operations, Song and Industry X with our deep industry expertise to create and deliver solutions and services for our clients. Our purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity, and we measure our success by the 360 value we create for all our stakeholders. Visit us ataccenture.com.

Accenture | Let there be change

Across industries and around the world, we are creating better experiences for people using emerging technologies and human ingenuity. Together, we can reinvent anything.

About The Role

This role is for someone who sits comfortably between brand strategy and digital execution - able to zoom out to define the creative and communications idea, and then zoom back in to shape how that idea shows up across digital platforms. If you naturally think in terms of meaning, persuasion and cultural relevance before channels, and enjoy turning insight into clear communication direction and direction into real-world digital impact, this role is likely your sweet spot. As a Digital Communications Strategist, you will be led by the impact of brand and creativity on digital platforms. You are not a channel specialist. Instead, you connect the dots across paid, owned and earned digital environments, working closely with (and constructively challenging) creative teams, media specialists, social, PR and account leads to orchestrate communication systems that are coherent, purposeful and effective. In short: this is a role for someone who believes digital impact is driven by strong ideas, disciplined communication frameworks, and an understanding of how creativity, culture and platforms interact.

AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY

• Digital Communications Direction & Strategic Framing
• Set the overarching digital communications direction across paid, owned and earned channels, grounded in brand strategy and business objectives - not isolated channel activity.
• Translate complex briefs, cultural signals and audience insight into clear communications platforms, strategic intent and messaging hierarchies.
• Anchor channel roles and creative expression across the digital customer journey, ensuring strategic coherence from awareness through to consideration, participation and advocacy.
• Orchestration Across Paid, Owned & Earned Digital Channels
• Take ownership of the overall communications direction across paid, owned and earned environments, ensuring specialist outputs ladder into a shared creative and strategic narrative.
• Work upstream with creative teams so ideas are conceived with digital behaviours, platform formats and distribution logic in mind - not retrofitted after the fact.
• Orchestrate and collaborate closely with media, social, PR, influencer and community teams; actively challenging, stress-testing and refining thinking to raise the quality of outcomes.
• Have the technical knowledge to work with Paid Media, CVM, SEO and Data specialists to ensure activation of strategy.
• Act as the point of strategic arbitration when trade-offs arise between brand expression, platform constraints and effectiveness goals.
• Insight, Effectiveness & Strategic Storytelling
• Turn insight, signals and performance inputs into clear, client-ready stories that drive decision-making and evolution of the work.
• Partner with media, data and performance teams to define success metrics that balance brand impact, creative effectiveness and engagement quality (not just efficiency).
• Analyse communications and creative performance across platforms to identify opportunities, learning agendas and implications for future work.

What We’re Looking For

• ±7 years’ experience in communications strategy, brand strategy, digital strategy or creative agency environments - mandatory.
• Strong grounding in Paid, Owned and Earned media, with a clear point of view on how brand and creativity drive digital impact.
• Proven ability to lead communications strategy that starts with idea and meaning, and then scales across digital platforms.
• Comfortable acting as a senior strategic partner to creative teams, channel specialists and clients.
• Ability to balance cultural intuition and creative ambition with strategic rigour and evidence-based decision-making.
• Excellent structuring, writing and presentation skills.
• Curious by nature; opinionated once informed.
• Enjoys complexity, but obsessed with clarity.
• Collaborative, grounded and low-ego.
• A Marketing or Communications-relevant tertiary qualification - mandatory.

Why join us?

We offer a transparent, fast paced approach career progression, with a focus on your strengths and continuous coaching from senior colleagues You will benefit from working alongside Accenture experts who are solving some of the biggest industry challenges with innovative thinking and pioneering tools Flexible work arrangements and a range of benefits including competitive rewards You will have access to state-of-the-art technology that will give you the opportunity to deepen your existing skills even as you help create the latest business trends You will also have opportunities to make a difference to the communities in which we work and live

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A Marketing or Communications-relevant tertiary qualification - mandatory.