Vice President, Social & Influencer Strategy
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Published
10/24/2024
VICE PRESIDENT – SOCIAL & INFLUENCER STRATEGY
At Weber Shandwick, we build brand stories designed to earn attention, coverage and conversation. We’re a passionate and diverse team that protects and promotes some of Canada’s (and the world’s) most iconic and beloved brands … and has fun while doing it!
If you’re a dynamic digital and social leader with an integrated-marketing mindset, here’s an opportunity to play a leadership role at a forward-thinking, award-winning and globally leading agency. Over the last five years, Weber Shandwick has been recognized as PRovoke Media’s Canadian Agency of the Year, IABC Canadian Large Agency of the Year, a certified Great Place to Work (six years running) and boasts the most exciting client list of any agency in the country.
POSITION PROFILE
We are currently seeking a Vice President – Social & Influencer Strategy to join our Integrated Media team in Toronto. We’re looking for a self-starter who is ready to take the lead in shaping our digital offering and driving the agency’s social and influencer teams forward. As a key leadership position, this person will lead Social & Influencer Strategy for Canada. This role will lead breakthrough work across several major accounts, while driving growth and inspiring digital innovation across the agency.
The ideal candidate is an experienced leader who is passionate about social media and working with influencers and creators. The position requires expert-level understanding of social platforms and influencer marketing and the role they play in the larger interconnected and ever-evolving media ecosystem.
They have deep experience in the social and influencer space with notable brands and are in tune with emerging trends, as well as the broader cultural and technological shifts taking place in the media landscape. This role calls for curiosity about what comes next in technology, marketing and media, paired with a passion for working with influencers.
We’re looking for someone who knows how to motivate a team, tap into their passion and lead with a sense of integrity, honesty and humility – a leader who can set the big-picture strategy but isn’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and dive into the work.
Most importantly, we are looking for someone who wants to put their strategic skills to work driving engagement for great brands, is highly collaborative and willing to grow and lead a team doing bold new things.
Responsibilities
- Develop a deep understanding of our clients’ businesses and target audiences, and – working in close collaboration with our Creative, Insights and Client Experience teams – lead the creation and execution of innovative and integrated social and/or influencer campaigns that drive trackable and meaningful results
- Serve as the primary Canadian social and influencer lead for major global brands –
leading the development of innovative social/digital initiatives from briefing to execution, including campaign strategies, content creation, paid integration and measuring effectiveness/ROI, as well as digital team structure and workflows
- Stay at the forefront of technology trends, new applications and emerging platforms to champion social and digital innovation and continuously further our offerings
- Provide expert counsel to clients and colleagues on social/digital/influencer trends, issues and best practices – act as a thought leader who shares knowledge, expertise and strong counsel internally and externally
- Continuously advance the agency’s influence offering; overseeing key relationships with talent agencies and content creators, and institutionalizing a set of best-in-class tools and processes for identification, contract negotiation, content planning, paid amplification, campaign optimization, measurement and ROI analysis
- Collaborate effectively with inter-agency teams to develop holistic plans and fully integrated strategies for our clients
- Work closely with our Insights team to advance our social listening and analytics offering
- Socialize and promote our social and influencer capabilities to drive organic and new business growth
- Lead a high-performing team of digital specialists; mentor and develop junior team members
REQUIREMENTS
- 12+ years of experience, preferably within an agency environment
- A thorough command of the social media and digital world (from the evolving social web to mobile tools and trends), sophisticated client service and digital communications skills, high energy, and passion for this area of rapid change and innovation
- Expert-level proficiency in social media platforms and inherent curiosity about emerging communities – willing to experiment with cutting-edge platforms and techniques and sell in new ways of thinking to clients
- Deep expertise in building and managing influencer programs, establishing best practices and leading strong influencer marketing teams.
- Understand the paid media environment and how it applies to a holistic social media strategy
- Familiarity with a broad set of social, media and influencer analytics tools; and experience working with an analytics team to measure campaign ROI and generate insights that inform future strategy
- Established relationships with social platforms, partners, influencers and talent agencies
- Outstanding communication skills to successfully present program recommendations and establish trusted relationships with senior clients
- Proven new business expertise and success
- Proven experience building teams, managing and mentoring junior staff and working collaboratively in a cross-functional setting
The Weber Shandwick Collective recognizes that your health and wellbeing are a priority. This is why we offer a full suite of benefits including:
- Medical
- Dental
- Vision
- RRSP (with employer match)
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Juice Money – $60 monthly reimbursement to be used towards purchases that nourish your health, mind, body, and soul
- Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) – $50 monthly cell phone reimbursement
- MyDays – Flexible time off
- Short-Term Disability
- Paid Parental Leave Policy
Weber Shandwick is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Weber Shandwick recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, colour, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.
#LI-SK1
We make our careers website accessible to any and all users. If you need an accommodation to participate in the application process, please contact us at JobAppAccommodation@ipgdxtra.com. This email address is not for general employment inquiries or vendors; rather it is strictly for applicants who require special assistance accessing our employment website. Due to volume, messages sent to this email address that are not related to an accommodation cannot be answered.
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- Spearhead high profile activations and campaigns for some of our top lifestyle, consumer health, and CPG clients.
- Develop a deep understanding of our clients’ businesses and target audiences, and working in close collaboration with our Creative, Insights and Client Experience teams, lead the creation and execution of integrated multi-platform campaigns that drive meaningful results
- Build social influencer strategies cross-functionally to align strategic efforts and priorities, and able to develop strategic outputs with little to no oversight. Collaborate closely with strategy, creative, paid and larger integrated agency teams to deliver program initiatives.
- Closely partner with social platform and digital SMEs to stay at the forefront of technology trends and emerging platforms to champion social and digital innovations and continuously further our offerings to break through social clutter and break through in earned media
- Provide expert counsel to clients and colleagues on social/digital/influencer best practices
- Serve as trusted voice on pop-culture, social trends and other cultural nuances for clients
- Lead end-to-end influencer procurement process from influencer recommendations to negotiations to servicing the partnerships.
- Play a lead role in the agency’s Influencer center of excellence, which develops and manages key relationships with talent agencies and content creators, and institutionalizes a set of best-in-class tools and processes for identification, contract negotiation, content planning, measurement and ROI analysis
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Qualifications:
- 8+ years of experience, preferably within an agency environment
- Strong understanding of the overall media and social landscape, with an emphasis on digital experience
- Excellent communication and negotiation skills, with ability to develop relationships with influencers, creators, agencies, and other partners.
- Passion for tracking and understanding new trends in culture
- Deep expertise in managing influencer programs
- Strong knowledge of social platforms, including paid amplification and campaign optimization
- Strong understanding of marketing funnel analytics & KPIs
- Familiarity with a broad set of social, media and influencer analytics tools
- Detail-oriented, multi-tasker with excellent time-management skills
- Strong written, verbal communication, negotiation and presentation skills
- Experience leading a team is an asset
Is this you?
Be a driver of culture: Must have true passion and understanding of pop culture and are part of the community (be it music, gaming, fashion, food, internet culture, etc) This job is the intersection of creative, strategy, marketing, technology, content creation and production; your energy must be driven by your lifestyle. You must influence creative ideations: from the ideas presented, to the influencers selected, to the content created, all the way down to the language used in post copy.
Have high cultural competencies: Understand the role and importance of diversity, equity & inclusion (DE&I) You must be culturally vigilant with the ability to understand, communicate with and effectively interact with people across cultures.
Have “Gravitas” in the influencer space and skin-in-the-game: Deep understanding of the influencer landscape is required. Proven ability to build, speak and grow relationships with change agents and cultural makers (celebrities, influencers, artists, thought leaders) directly or via their agents. You must be open to a public-facing role; willingness to speak publicly about influencer trends when opportunities present itself to the WS Influencer Team.
Know how to identify and manage diverse vendors and partners: in an industry where technologies (saas platforms, AI, managed services, etc) are popping on the daily, at high volume, no less, you must have experience working with RFPs and meeting with leading tech companies to understand their services and identify their uniqueness (and keep up with their ongoing changes in our WS influencer database)
Be ready to lead at any moment: working with your leads, you will learn to “step up to the plate” and lead effectively in the client’s and agency’s best interests while also helping to cultivate, mentor and coach mid to junior staff members on the influencer team.
Hustle: identify influencer opportunities (organic or new) to ensure influencer marketing continues to be a strong marketing discipline and revenue driver on your assigned account or at Weber Shandwick.
Think like a lawyer: you understand how important it is to be in compliance with best practices (FTC updates, platform requirements), continuously build our excellence by partnering with DXTRA legal and finance to ensure risk and liabilities are reduced and tamed for every campaign you touch.
Have experience building engaged audiences: on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Clubhouse and other distribution platforms.
Know how to build a story: you will build client presentations that tell smart, compelling stories, never “rinse and repeat” which requires you to be highly motivated, energetically-charged and inspired at all times.
Be curious, always: You are willing to learn a little bit of everything, and open to take on anything.
The Weber Shandwick Collective recognizes that your health and wellbeing are a priority. This is why we offer a full suite of benefits including:
- Medical
- Dental
- Vision
- 401k (with employer match)
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Juice Money – $60 monthly reimbursement to be used towards purchases that nourish your health, mind, body, and soul
- MyDays – Flexible holiday schedules
- Short-Term Disability
- Paid Employee Family Leave
- Family Building Benefit
NYC Salary range: $100,000 – $130,000
Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.
Weber Shandwick is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Weber Shandwick recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.
#LI-KG1
We make our careers website accessible to any and all users. If you need an accommodation to participate in the application process, please contact us at JobAppAccommodation@ipgdxtra.com. This email address is not for general employment inquiries or vendors; rather it is strictly for applicants who require special assistance accessing our employment website. Due to volume, messages sent to this email address that are not related to an accommodation cannot be answered.
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- Four-year degree or equivalent work experience in communications, journalism, marketing, or a similar field required
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- Excellent communication/presentation skills; verbal and written
- Strong attention to detail and project management skills
- Proficient in Microsoft Office suite.
- Benefit if proficient or use of social media listening, influencer management tools or creative editing software (Talkwalker, Tagger, Captiv8, CreatorIQ or AdobeSuite).
The Weber Shandwick Collective recognizes that your health and wellbeing are a priority. This is why we offer a full suite of benefits including:
- Medical
- Dental
- Vision
- 401k (with employer match)
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Juice Money – $60 monthly reimbursement to be used towards purchases that nourish your health, mind, body, and soul
- MyDays – Flexible holiday schedules
- Short-Term Disability
- Paid Employee Family Leave
- Family Building Benefit
[California/Washington] Salary range: $52,000 – $55,000
Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.
Weber Shandwick is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Weber Shandwick recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.
#LI-JP1
We make our careers website accessible to any and all users. If you need an accommodation to participate in the application process, please contact us at JobAppAccommodation@ipgdxtra.com. This email address is not for general employment inquiries or vendors; rather it is strictly for applicants who require special assistance accessing our employment website. Due to volume, messages sent to this email address that are not related to an accommodation cannot be answered.
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If you can spot what’s a trend before it happens, meet/exceed deadlines and want to take the group assignment out the chat & apply it to real brands, we want to talk to you. This person will assist in campaign, talent, event management and nourishing client relationships. This role will focus on a business that is across time zones and interacts with various internal specialty teams.
What You’ll Be Doing:
- Crafting storytelling in various mediums. A strong writing background across mediums is critical (social copy, client comms, outreach note, etc).
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- Input on influencer relations marketing campaigns and tactics. Managing authentication and campaign set up utilizing influencer management tools.
- Maintain strong talent agency and one-on-one influencer relationships. Curate compelling influencer pitches tailored to the account and brief ask.
- Development and management of timelines and weekly action plans to ensure all deadlines on client programs are met.
- Breaking down and manage detailed tasks with the Influencer and Account team associated with planning and implementing special public relations events and new product launches.
- Proactively monitor social media and influencer space for unique brand opportunities while also developing sense of competitor set and cultural conversations.
- Management of Influence team’s workflows and checklists (ways we manage programs).
- Coordinate with social platform and paid media team to ensure platform and paid strategic thinking.
- Collaboration with analytics team to ensure all data and metrics are collected appropriately to effectively measure results and develop campaign recaps.
- Interact with senior management and input into tactics and strategies.
- Partner with Corporate Communications team to assess risks and reputation.
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- Four-year degree or equivalent work experience in communications, journalism, marketing, or a similar field required
- 0-1 years of related professional experience
- Excellent communication/presentation skills; verbal and written
- Strong attention to detail and project management skills
- Proficient in Microsoft Office suite.
- Benefit if proficient or use of social media listening, influencer management tools or creative editing software (Talkwalker, Tagger, Captiv8, CreatorIQ or AdobeSuite).
The Weber Shandwick Collective recognizes that your health and wellbeing are a priority. This is why we offer a full suite of benefits including:
- Medical
- Dental
- Vision
- 401k (with employer match)
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Juice Money – $60 monthly reimbursement to be used towards purchases that nourish your health, mind, body, and soul
- MyDays – Flexible holiday schedules
- Short-Term Disability
- Paid Employee Family Leave
- Family Building Benefit
[California/Washington] Salary range: $52,000 – $55,000
Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.
Weber Shandwick is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Weber Shandwick recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.
#LI-JP1
We make our careers website accessible to any and all users. If you need an accommodation to participate in the application process, please contact us at JobAppAccommodation@ipgdxtra.com. This email address is not for general employment inquiries or vendors; rather it is strictly for applicants who require special assistance accessing our employment website. Due to volume, messages sent to this email address that are not related to an accommodation cannot be answered.