Senior Insight Strategist

The role, in brief:

At VJ, the Insight team is central to the agency process. The Insight team  focuses on how our work can connect more meaningfully with consumers, with a focus on personal relevance and import that extends beyond the transaction. Uncovering these consumer motivations and behaviors is how we develop brand connections for our clients. This team is responsible for uncovering key strategic insights and behavioral cues – derived from custom and secondary research and knowledge of culture – to underpin advertising ideas and is part of a broader agency team to help formulate brand strategies to achieve client business goals.

The Senior Strategist is a big-idea, original-thinker who encourages clients (and internal account and creative teams) to question assumptions and reshape assignments into unique category-challenging propositions. This individual acts as a catalyst to move brands forward to and devise innovative ways to engage consumers/customers.

The Senior Strategist leads and contributes to new business and ongoing strategic client engagements, developing a deep understanding of the client’s business environment, competitive landscape, brand goals, vision and strategy. They regularly lead the charge to identify compelling insights, consumer needs and market opportunities that create a competitive advantage and help drive business for the agency’s clients.

The Senior Strategist position is client-facing and will often lead the role of Insight in client work product. In many cases, the Senior Strategist will also be lead player in alignment with Account Service leadership on client deliverables and works on a daily basis in leading consumer-focused work with multi-disciplinary teams throughout the agency.

Your main responsibilities:

• Strategy: Leverage a deep understanding of brand marketing to collaborate on the successful building of effective, innovative brand strategies across multiple channels
• Research: Initiate brand strategy discussions and subsequent market research initiatives to identify market needs, and create and exploit brand opportunities
• Insights: A strong passion for people and the desire to uncover key customer/market insights as the basis for strategies and communication, which change perceptions and influence behavior to create a competitive advantage
• Creativity and innovation: The ability (and desire) to think big across a wide range of strategic opportunities, from launch planning to the evolution of long-standing platforms
• Teamwork: Collaborate with multidisciplinary team members in the development and presentation of integrated, innovative, strategic marketing solutions
• Leadership: Management of Insights Strategy team members. This includes mentorship in the craft as well as delegation of work related to brand strategy, primary research, and other pertinent departmental projects.
• Analysis: Collaborate with multidisciplinary team members to identify key performance indicators that will support brand strategy and objectives, conduct analysis to determine program ROI, help create and inform metric reports and dashboards, make recommendations based on learnings as reports are developed
• Presentation: Cool, calm and compelling in the delivery of formal and informal presentations that deliver new thinking, close new business and educate clients and internal teams
• Literacy: Ability to produce clear and concise written documents (proposals, strategic rationales, point-of-view statements, case studies, discussion guides, etc.)
• Trend-watcher: Stay up to date with current trends and innovation in integrated communication strategies, (e.g., media, digital, research, etc.)

Those who succeed in this role are:

• Always curious, asking deep questions, unearthing new ideas, and finding new ways of looking at the world
• Adept in lateral, analytical and strategic thinking; able to apply creative thinking to business problems.
• Skillful in differentiating core advertising ideas from executional treatments and astute in assessing when ideas meet the brief and how they will influence behavior.
• Steadfast in guiding creative work to meet the brief and committed to nurturing work that does so.
• Possess the innate ability to sift through information to ID the most important or interesting ideas.
• Knowledgeable about our client’s business and market, and where and how advertising contributes to client success.
• Comfortable leading meetings and presenting ideas and work
• Exceptional in written and verbal communication.
• Fascinated by human behavior, social trends and cultures and how ideas influence people.

Ideal candidates will have:

• Bachelor’s degree required. Graduate degree preferred in behavioral sciences, business marketing and/or advertising
• Entrepreneurial “can do” attitude and a relentless passion for collaboration and innovation
• Demonstrated expertise for uncovering insights and knowledge of how to leverage it to achieve marketing objectives
• The ability to translate clients’ goals and objectives into actionable and measurable marketing recommendations
• Knowledge of marketing/advertising mix (nonpersonal, sales materials, interactive and traditional)

Agency Values:

The following characteristics are expected of each employee of the agency regardless of role or responsibility:

• Fearless: Of course we can do it. Absolutely. No doubt. Doesn’t matter if it’s the first time or the thousandth. We face and embrace and race through a changing world, brave because we have each other.
• Tenacious: Proactive by nature, optimistic by choice. Forward as a way of life. Solve as a mode of thinking. If you believe in something, sink your teeth into it and go, go, go.
• Passionate: Everything matters. Every client interaction. Every comma and every decimal. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing to the best of your ability.
• Me & We: What can you do to make your team successful? Find your moment, your specialty, your piece of the puzzle. And then own it for the greater good.

Vladimir Jones is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, or disability status.

Vladimir Jones is committed to building a diverse staff and encourages applications from minorities.