Associate Strategy Director

DEPT® is a Growth Invention company built to help the world’s most ambitious brands grow faster. Operating at the intersection of technology and marketing, our 4,000+ specialists deliver growth invention services across Brand & Media, Experience, Commerce, CRM, and Technology & Data. We’re 50|50 tech and marketing, partner-led, and first to move. Clients include Google, Lufthansa, Meta, eBay, and OpenAI. We have been certified B Corp and Climate Neutral since 2021.

JOB PURPOSE

This position sits in our Marketing & Technology service based in London. We combine data, technology, creative content, and paid media to crack brands’ business problems & drive revenue through a variety of digital marketing solutions like ad campaigns, augmented reality, and chatbots. Our clients include ASOS, Just Eat Takeaway, Twitch, TikTok, and The White Company. 

We are excited to be looking for a new Associate Strategy Director to join the team! This Associate Strategy Director will join a London based service whose specialism is producing award winning, digital and social, creative campaigns and content for a variety of well known and culturally current clients. 

The role of the Associate Strategy Director will be to balance creating & guiding longer-term up-stream strategy, with sharpening the quality and strategic nature of our creative executions for a high volume of work; they will be responsible for being the buffer between a client brief and a creative idea. This person will be responsible for championing excellent strategic thinking that sets our brilliant creative teams up for success on all briefs. The Associate Strategy Director will collaborate closely and effectively with wider strategy teams, account managers, creatives, media specialists and a Strategy Director to create brilliant work that works. 

The UK Strategy offering is small, but growing fast, and collaborates with wider EMEA Strategy teams. This person will ensure that we continue those relationships with wider EMEA and global strategy teams to identify talent, resources and shared processes and tools.  

WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU

For the work: 

• Deeply understand human beings.  Real ones. The ones we’re making the work for. You’re good at finding what they need. At identifying real problems to solve for them. You find humanity in data. And ultimately, you define a genuine role that brands can play in their lives. 
• Get into the world and into culture. We don’t expect you to be a world-famous TikTokker, DJ or photographer (although we would welcome it). We do expect that you develop strategy informed by culture, so that we inform culture in turn. 
• Innovation: instill market-leading innovations in digital and social strategy that our clients couldn’t get anywhere else

For our clients:

• Understand our client’s business. Not better than our clients do. That’s crazy and an insult to our clients. But understand it: how they make money and their business strategy, that, we must do.
• Building & maintaining trusted client relationships: being on speed dial for our clients to align on challenges, opportunities or ambitions. In this, utilising the most advanced thinking and approaches to deliver incremental improvements on ROI for any type of business. 
• Be a partner + confidante: Usher them when they want it, guide them if they need it. We work in partnership with our clients, it helps the work and it helps the team, so we need the relationships in place to do so. 

For the team:

• Work autonomously, together. We want you to feel autonomous - that your work is yours. At the same time, we expect you to enrich your work with other people’s perspectives. 
• Be comfortable in a debate. We’re not order takers. We disagree a lot. With everyone. Not because it’s fun, but because it’s necessary for better work. 
• Lead. Not in a performative way, more, set the tone. Motivate with your actions. Push the boundaries. That kinda way. 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Support client + creative teams across the business to develop strategies and ideas that answer our clients briefs and exceed their expectations
• Bring the audience into the agency, let their voice be heard to guide thinking.
• Understand culture and harness it to shape the work 
• Lead hands on with one key account to drive the most pioneering work.
• Guide creative thinking across a range of campaign types including but not limited to TTL, Digital and Social
• Write and communicate compelling creative briefs to help our creative teams deliver ideas that overcome business challenges
• Work in partnership with the Strategy Director and creative teams, removing the barriers to creativity, help guide them towards powerful, effective work.
• Prove the effectiveness of campaigns 
• Be able to engage top-tier clients when presenting, with their strategies rooted in robust insights 
• Work with senior clients and consult on key strategic projects
• Participate in new business pitches
• Serve as a thought leader across the business 

SKILLS AND PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE 

• A high level of relevant experience within a strategy-focused role in an agency setting
• Advanced level understanding & experience within digital marketing, including new and growing social platforms 
• Advanced understanding of the creative process
• Advanced experience collaborating with creatives and helping guide their creative output
• Advanced understanding & experience within social media marketing
• Advanced understanding of how to garner insights for action
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, including the ability to communicate complex subjects simply
• Ability to work with senior clients on key strategy projects and comfortable presenting to C-level audiences
• Very efficient, producing significant output with minimal wasted effort
• Very organised, with a high attention to detail

WE OFFER:

• A flexible, hybrid working policy (2 days from the office, depending on location).
• An excellent salary based on experience and equal pay policies
• Pension, free private healthcare, mental health support, and company sick pay scheme.
• 26 days paid holiday (plus UK Bank Holidays).
• Refreshments are provided in the office all week, as well as drinks at 4 pm on a Thursday.
• Help getting you to work with a season ticket loan and cycle to work scheme.
• Enhanced family friendly policies to support new parents.
• The opportunity for possibility. We want to enable you to do what you do best and help you develop your skills further with training, development and certifications.
• Global annualDEPT® Cares Month in which employees come together and donate their skills to support local charities.

WHY DEPT®?

We are a Growth Invention company built to help the world’s most ambitious brands grow faster. Operating at the intersection of technology and marketing, we create what is next by pioneering ideas, acting fast, and moving further because standing still just is not in our DNA.

We are drawn to people who stay curious, move with intent, and never stop inventing. Our culture runs on three values: better together, relentlessly curious, and get sh*t done. It is how we work, how we grow, and how we make things that matter.

At DEPT®, you will find the freedom to explore, the space to collaborate, and the trust to make a real impact for our clients, for each other, and for the world we are helping to build.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION 

At DEPT®, we take pride in creating an inclusive workplace where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive. We actively seek to recruit, develop, nurture, and retain talented individuals from diverse backgrounds, with varying skills and perspectives.

Not sure you meet all qualifications? Apply, and let us decide! Research shows that women and members of underrepresented groups tend not to apply for jobs when they think they may not meet every requirement, when in fact they do. We believe in giving everyone a fair chance to shine.

We also encourage you to reach out to us and discuss any reasonable adjustments we can make to support you throughout the recruitment process and your time with us.

Want to know more about our dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion? Check out our efforts here.