Senior Brand Strategist at Ogilvy South Africa

Senior Strategist

• A senior role within the strategy team who takes the lead in developing brand strategies that tackle clients business issues.

Strategy:

• Develop and communicate innovative and effective branding strategies and concepts including but not limited to positioning, messaging, naming, portfolio strategy and employee engagement.
• Champion of our brand philosophy and ideas within the agency and to clients

Creativity

• Master the art of writing a single-minded and ideas-led creative brief.
• Ensure regular constructive feedback to creative teams where appropriate to ensure work is on brief

Relationships

• Develop and maintain long term client relationships and be responsible for bigger key clients
• Ensure regular upward communication takes place to line manager and exec director to share work and get feedback
• Develop strong working partnerships with project and pitch teams including Client Services, Creative and New Business

Management:

• Support Directors with team management as and when required
• Help mentor junior members of the strategy team

Thought Leadership

• Drive the continued improvement of strategic brand solutions within Superunion
• Work with the team to establish best practice new ways of working and develop new tools and methodologies
• Stay abreast of latest published thinking on branding, market based trends, brand successes, failures and industry business activity (mergers, acquisitions, opportunities)
• Support Superunion marketing efforts by writing actively for the blog, WPP Atticus, white papers and articles

Skills

• Excellent understanding of all branding deliverables and associated disciplines such as positioning, architecture, messaging, segmentation, research, engagement and interaction
• Ability to develop influential and effective relationships (internally and externally) across a global network and client base
• Able to independently manage larger projects and sell big ideas by inspiring a senior client group
• Commercially astute, with the ability to identify revenue opportunities and risks whilst working on projects
• Able to identify connections between projects, trends, emerging issues and basis for prospecting
• Able to craft and deliver client presentations and facilitate workshops at a senior or board level
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal

Experience:

• Demonstrable experience of leading corporate and FMCG/consumer brand projects
• Previous experience in similar role, client or agency or client side marketing
• Educated to degree level or equivalent