Vice President, Strategic Planning

What is the role?

We are looking for a Strategist to join our growing Strategic Planning team in the Central Region.

The Strategy team’s role in the agency is to power more creative and effective solutions to our client’s business problems. We do this through asking questions like:

Who are we speaking to? It is a Strategists job to be the voice of the consumer/ customer – whether that’s a parent buying snacks or an Innovation Director buying tech solutions. They use a range of qual and quant research methods to get to know the target, their attitudes and behaviors.

What’s the context? Strategy’s role is to understand the market, competitor, and cultural trends to build a solid picture of potential barriers that could stand in the way and opportunities that could unlock success.

Why would anyone care? It might sound harsh but it’s a critical question to inform earned thinking for clients. Strategists need to understand the value and potential value that clients’ brands can bring to consumers lives, to culture and to conversations.

And when they have the answers to these questions, they distil it all down into single-minded strategy that provides direction and inspiration for colleagues to develop creative campaigns that get results for clients.

It sounds easy and when it’s done right it looks easy too, but it’s not! It takes a while to learn how to take research output from information to insights and build up an understanding of how brands work, but you will receive training and opportunities to build your skills on the job and lots of support from your team.

What will you be doing?

You will be the day-to-day research lead on a diverse set of client partners.

• Developing and actioning research plans
• Conducting qualitative and quantitative research
• Crafting insights based on research
• Developing a strong understanding of your client and their target audience
• Working with the strategy team to articulate findings and related insights
• Providing strategic insights to your assigned clients
• Supporting with pitch preparation and new business activities
• Attending client meetings
• Maintaining a knowledge of industry trends

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

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.

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We are seeking a new Senior Strategist to join our team. The ideal candidate is someone who has previous strategy experience, a strong interest and aptitude in social media platform work, and a foundation of integrated digital media skills. You’ll be expected to work within an integrated team, working with account, creative and analytics functions to ensure flawless strategic execution of the client business objectives.

 

Position Description 

• Work both independently and collaboratively to develop campaign briefs and strategies, as part of cross-functional teams
• Stay up to date on the digital latest trends, creating reports and guiding the team on activating against those trends
• Help turn research-based observations into inspiring insights and creative brief
• Have a deep understanding of social media platforms within an understanding of how to best execute on each individually
• Develop crisp and compelling content for client decks and pitches
• Perform business analysis, data mining, and visual storytelling
• Actively contribute to client meetings, creative brainstorms and strategy sessions
• Cultivate relationships with key decision-makers across the business, including creative and digital strategists, research/analytics experts, and account teams

 

Qualifications

• 4-5 years of relevant work experience
• Strong understanding of the overall media and social landscape, with an emphasis on digital experience
• Knowledge of social platforms, including paid amplification and campaign optimization
• Strong knowledge of broad set of audience, insights and analytics tools such as YouGov, MRI, GWI, WARC, etc.
• Detail-oriented, multi-tasker with excellent time-management skills
• Strong written, verbal communication and presentation skills
• Demonstrated ability to construct an argument supported by evidence
• An active curiosity about brands and culture
• Ability to quickly understand and translate complex business or policy issues
• Strong time management, project management and organizational skills
• Meaningfully contribute to a civil, fast paced, inclusive and positive work environment
• Enough poise to work with multiple creative and account management colleagues across diverse experience levels and disciplines
• Proactive, self-starter who can work well both independently and as part of a team

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, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.

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VP, STRATEGIC PLANNING, HEALTHCARE

If you’re an amazing creative strategist with a passion for health and want be a part of a team who is reinventing the playbook for earned-first healthcare communications, we should talk. Weber Shandwick is looking for a VP of Strategic Planning, Healthcare to steer the strategy for multiple high-profile healthcare accounts, from a pharma company with innovative oncology treatments to first-to-market leaders in vaccines and rare disease.

About you:

You are endlessly curious about consumer mindsets and the drivers of behavior change. You love working on health and want to set new standards for what good health ideas look like. You think and write clearly, and you understand diverse media platforms and technology. You are able to frame a problem, develop succinct insights and strategies, and explain what it all means in a compelling story. You’re open-minded, battle-tested, inclusive and empathetic. You have a high level of cultural fluency, and while you’re by no means a scientist, you think science is cool.

 

CLIENT AND WORK

Leads integrated teams to create and implement flawless execution plans informed by strategic vision, with very limited support from senior strategic planning leadership

Responsible for all strategic planning for a limited number of clients

Leads the strategic process, from start to finish

Oversee the crafting and evaluation of primary and secondary research plans to segment audiences, and understand the cultural, societal, business and media context impacting a business to uncover business insights

Leads engagement with confidence and commitment to high quality, data-driven strategic brand recommendations, tactical plans and programs

Focuses on the strategic vision driving the detailed execution and performance evaluation

Ensures the plan is strategically sound, accurately addresses interesting insights and opportunities informed by research/ analytics findings in partnership with Global Intelligence

 

LEADERSHIP AND TALENT MANAGEMENT

Manages account engagements independently, with minimal guidance

Guides planning resources, assignment of strategic planning staff

Establishes interpersonal relationships within and outside of department, with focus on building inclusive culture and mentoring colleagues outside of personal relationships

Promotes the development and advancement of underrepresented groups in team through professional development trainings

Mentors, coaches and develops direct reports to deliver high performance while supporting personal and professional development goals

Actively participates in the hiring and onboarding of talent; Supports and develops processes to enhance inclusive hiring practices for team

Participate in trainings build own cultural competency and ability to lead, coach and develop diverse teams

Actively participates in office or agency DEI initiatives to attract and retain diverse talent

 

GROWTH AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Responsible for identifying opportunities to expand client engagements in partnership with integrated teams

Responsible for net new business opportunities

 

BUSINESS ACUMEN

Responsible for reviewing, approving draft scopes, allocations and comparison against actuals

 

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: $145,000 – $180,000

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, colour, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.

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