Company

Position Summary

Strategy is a core driver of our agency’s success. We’re looking for a creative, data-savvy leader with a passion for communications and a love for building great work with others to join our award-winning team as Director Strategy.

The Director Strategy helps lead the delivery of world class planning and strategic communications solutions for our industry leading clients.

Reporting to EVP Strategy, this key role is equal parts creating sharp media strategies for plans, championing our culture of innovation and creativity, propelling agency expertise by leveraging your digital/data/insights chops, and delivering agency thought leadership through actionable POVs and consulting support to clients to help grow their brands.

Specifically, you will help drive thought leadership and capabilities across agency and client teams, work with planners to craft powerful connection strategies and consumer journey frameworks, lead ideation workshops, champion our leading-edge agency tools, showcase emerging tech and commerce trends, collaborate with other agencies and media partners, and help spark fresh thinking to raise the bar for our work.

The Strategy Director will act as a valuable coach and mentor across the broad agency team, and work closely with other agency fire-starters to identify new areas of growth. If you are motivated by the idea of exposure to an exciting breadth of brands, this role provides an excellent opportunity to touch a diverse array of categories and unique business challenges (CPG, entertainment, financial, retail, QSR, digital pure play, B2B).

You will also leverage your sharp writing and presentation chops to provide new business pitch support and help us continue to build compelling, award-winning campaigns (UM was Canada’s most awarded media agency at the 2022 MIAs, CMAs, Festival of Media North America, across 15 different campaigns - with over 80 industry awards in the last year alone, including wins at Cannes, WARC, Effies)

Join us on our journey as we continue to shine as one of the communications industry’s most vibrant and exciting places to work, grow and create. UM has been winning new clients and continues to expand our talented team to welcome fresh thinkers and collaborative leaders.

Key Responsibilities

·       Champion UM’s mission to deliver strategically driven, innovative communications solutions that drive business impact for our clients, today and tomorrow

·       Work with agency senior leadership to foster a culture of innovation and creativity

·       Work with business leads and planning teams to develop actionable insights (consumer, digital, tech, cultural) and connection strategies to fuel plans

·       Spark creativity and innovative thinking across agency, client, partner agency teams

·       Facilitate teams’ deep understanding of audience behaviours and attitudes, and the development of consumer focused, data driven, tech led solutions and consumer experiences

·       Champion the expansion of knowledge and skills throughout agency and client teams by tapping into UM’s powerful global strategy community, including IPG Media Labs, Collective Intelligence, and other proprietary resources

·       Drive the development of our agency’s core digital, shopper, and ecommerce knowledge base and planning skills proficiency

·      Lead ideation and development of media product - including strategic territories and media/creative tactics/partnerships - and ensure linkage to brand objectives

·       Support with other agency growth initiatives (research, investments, new business development, etc.)

·       Leverage leadership capabilities to motivate agency team and sustain a positive and productive work environment

Desired Skills & Experience

·       8+ years of related media, advertising, brand or planning/creative strategy experience

·       Excellent communicator with experience writing and presenting

·       Strong collaborative spirit and experience fostering positive working relationships with partners, clients, agency peers

·       Experience facilitating workshops and team discussions

·       Consumer and emerging tech trends junkie

·       A deep passion and interest in innovative, award-winning advertising work

·       Strong understanding of marketing and communications processes, with exposure to IMC practice

·       Knowledge of evolving dynamics of advertising and media communications

·       Experience synthesizing info from different sources to identify actionable consumer insights and stories

·       Experience working with marketing briefs and building connection strategies

·       A natural leader and coach, passionate about creating growth and development opportunities for others

·       Post-secondary education or equivalent professional education - University or college grad in a relevant discipline (Marketing, Advertising, Media, Communications, or equivalent)

Employment Transparency

UM is a full-service media agency and marketing consultancy that sees media as a powerful topline growth engine for brands. We are a dynamic and growing group of marketing and media innovators, fiercely committed to the spirit of ‘Better’. We use Better Science and Better Art to deliver Better Outcomes and create advantage to grow our clients’ businesses.

Part of the IPG Mediabrands family, UM is made up of entrepreneurially-minded planners, researchers, investment experts, decision scientists, account executives, and content and activation specialists—over 4,800 employees across 130 offices in over 100 countries around the world. 

Our roster of Canadian clients includes: Johnson & Johnson, BMO, Netflix, Spotify, The Hershey Company, SkipTheDishes, Sobeys, Sony, Estée Lauder, ExxonMobil, McCain, Boston Pizza and Sinai Health, among others.

UM is powered by industry-leading strategy, data analytics and tech capabilities. However, our unique culture – based on mutual support, shared passion and trust – is the reason why we excel as a team. We were Canada’s most awarded media agency at both the recent MIAs & CMAs (2020), Canada’s #1 Most Effective media agency (WARC 2020), #1 Most Competitive agency (RECMA 2020), campaign of the year winner (Adweek 2020 & Strategy) and recognized with 80+ local and global industry awards over the past year. UM was also rated Ad Age’s ‘Best Places to Work’ and #1 global media agency by technology advisory, Forrester, two years in a row.

UM’s culture is an inclusive one, where people are encouraged to bring their full selves to the office, and where personal and professional growth are a priority of every member of the team. The executive leadership is dedicated to building a culture that permeates every element of the company, from work flexibility, to career planning and regular talent reviews, to dynamic employee engagement programs.

We proudly uphold the following values:

Courage: Our courage to take risks drives our ability to set new industry standards.

Candour: Our candour through open and constructive dialogue ensures better outcomes for our people and our clients. 

Curiosity: Our relentless curiosity drives relentless innovation – being curious about the world, media, our clients and each other and using this curiosity to find new and innovative ways of doing everything we do.

Commitment: Our commitment to uncovering better opportunities for our clients and our community is at the heart of everything we do.

Community: We pride ourselves on fostering a community where everyone can belong while actively giving back to the communities in which we live.

Caring: We care about those around us and about being a diverse agency where everyone feels motivated and supported, both professionally and personally.