Strategy Director

About Ogilvy

Ogilvy, part of WPP, has been creating impact for brands through iconic, culture-changing, value-driving ideas since the company was founded by David Ogilvy 75 years ago. It builds on that rich legacy through Borderless Creativity – innovating at the intersections of its advertising, public relations, relationship design, consulting, and health capabilities with experts collaborating seamlessly across over 120 offices in nearly 90 countries. Ogilvy currently ranks as the #1 global agency network for creative excellence and effectiveness by WARC, signifying its ability to deliver creative solutions that drive unreasonable impact for clients and communities. Ogilvy is a WPP company (NYSE: WPP). For more information, visit Ogilvy.com, and follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook.

About WPP

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. For more information, visit WPP.com.

Strategy Director

About Ogilvy

Ogilvy was founded in 1948 by David Ogilvy. David created a culture that deeply respects and cares about its people and clients. Our mission is to inspire people and brands to make an impact and we are committed to attracting, growing, and retaining the best talent in the industry.

About the Role

You’re an experienced strategist whose proven smarts, passion and curiosity have made you committed to helping clients understand and navigate our ever-changing world. Over the past 7+ years you’ve worked at an agency honing your skill and craft as a planner. You effectively apply a number of tools and techniques to uncover, articulate, and architect hidden but undeniable insights and clear and compelling strategies that inspire unexpected ideas for brands to carve out a unique and differentiating place in the marketplace.

In addition, across a number of complex clients of scale, you’ve demonstrated your ability to collaborate well with creatives and accounts as a core member of the team. You provide business-relevant perspective on communication challenges. This typically involves developing an understanding of the market and competitive factors, cultural headwinds and deep consumer understanding. You identify and prioritize opportunities and can help frame the overarching story of a project, most often in a creative brief and comms strategy. Ultimately, the job of the Strategy Director is to ensure that the team is set up to deliver not only solutions, but also insight that helps clients make decisions about their businesses.

What You’ll Do

  • Lead the strategic planning process on key agency accounts
  • Create compelling audience profiles that provide insight into behaviors, attitudes, lifestyle and usage to uncover meaningful insights
  • Conduct in-depth scouting into cultural trends, channel opportunities, competitive activity and distill into actionable implications and recommendations.
  • Lead Creative Brief writing
  • Provide inspiration and ideas to creative teams as they begin the creative development process; act as a partner and sounding board during the creative process
  • Lead or participate in the design, fielding and moderation of qualitative and quantitative research studies
  • Develop a deep understanding of all the data surrounding a client’s business
  • Build excellent relationships with creatives, accounts and agency partners
  • Be familiar with widely used and emerging tools and technology, channels and terminology

What You’ll Need

The Director role is an inspirational leader, connecting the team to Ogilvy’s overall strategic processes to drive powerful brand building and best-in-class creative. This is a high visibility role, which requires outstanding influential, collaboration and communication skills:

  • 7+ years of strategic planning experience with a proven track record of transformational, modern marketing work that has grown clients’ business.
  • Experience in CPG, health and automotive an asset
  • Integrated planning experience with emphasis on storytelling
  • Strong reputation for relationships with creative and account leaders and/or teams; is a creative thinker, passionate about ideas.
  • Can design and facilitate workshop activities to engage the client team in a creative problem-solving process.
  • Has expertise in multiple business strategy tools, frameworks and methods.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills
  • You’re as passionate about the world outside our walls as you are within them

How We’ll Support You

Ogilvy celebrates its people. Fully. Enthusiastically. Unhesitatingly. We’ll empower you with the tools you’ll need to succeed. We’ll give you the autonomy to seek out new paths and better ways of doing things. We’ll support you with colleagues who are experts in their disciplines, drawn from across the Ogilvy network. And we’ll provide opportunities for you to do work of which you’ll be proud, with people you’ll be proud to call your teammates.

The base salary range for this position at the time of this posting is indicated below. Individual compensation varies based on job-related factors, including location, business needs, level of responsibility, experience, and qualifications.

Salary Range
$90,000$140,000 CAD

At Ogilvy, our people are at the heart of what we do: a creative agency that sparks game-changing ideas across culture and business through collaboration, integrity, and a celebration of self-expression.

We believe in building powerful teams with purpose - and we relentlessly curate transformative initiatives that make our commitment to fairness, and equity a reality.

Our ultimate mission is to leave a positive impact on the world, creating a better future for all, while supporting and uplifting the global communities we serve. This is central to our mantra of Borderless Creativity.

Ogilvy is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

If you need any assistance seeking a job opportunity, or if you need reasonable accommodation with the application process, please contact us at accommodations@ogilvy.com. Please note that this contact is only for candidates who are requesting accommodation. Emails for other purposes, including application status requests, will not receive a response.

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