Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning

Vice President, Influencer Strategy

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 integrated multi-platform campaigns that drive meaningful results
• Provide proactive counsel and thought leadership to internal team members and clients. Ensuring they are current with the latest industry shifts and how it impacts their business.
• Elevate and develop a team of multi-hyphenate team members that fosters a challenger mindset. Pushing to continue to elevate the skill sets and ambitions of each individual/team.
• Adept at driving and growing business through internal and external relationships. Understanding key business challenges to drive proactive solutions. Must have been an integral driver on new business growth.
• Build cross-functional social influencer strategies to align efforts and priorities and develop strategic outputs with little 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 strong counsel to clients and colleagues on social/digital/influencer best practices
• Play a key 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
• Collaborate effectively with inter-agency teams to develop holistic plans and fully integrated strategies for our clients
• Grow, mentor and develop junior team members 
• Experience directly managing and performance championship of staff or team
• Opportunity to lead a section of a large brand portfolio

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience, preferably within an agency environment
• Strong understanding of the overall media and social landscape, with an emphasis on digital experience
• Must have strong written and verbal communication skills. Comfort level presenting to all levels of stakeholders. External thought leadership and panel experience is an asset
• Deep expertise in orchestrating influencer programs. Be able to get in the weeds, but also develop strategic integrated counsel.
• Extensive knowledge of creating data informed narrative storytelling across owned, influencer, paid, and search.
• Strong knowledge of social platforms, including paid amplification and campaign optimization
• 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 and a previous people manager is a must

 

 

Successful candidates will:

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.

 

If the above describes you, your experience and good vibes, we want to hear from you! This dynamic team is winning and driving in the influencer/social game, help us continue to evolve!

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

 

Salary range: $116,000.00 – $155,000.00

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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SVP, Corpsumer Strategic Planning

The SVP of Strategic Planning will be the point person for “Corpsumer” work within TWSC Central market. COrpsumer reflecting the need to lead client and team partnership on relationships that need both corporate and consumer best-in-class work of a connected strategic vision and plan. This person will work to architect powerful business driving communications strategies in partnership with region and NA leadership. The ideal candidate is an experienced insightful thinker who immerses themselves in a category, loves to understand what drives consumers to act and is relentless about finding unexpected insights to drive communications forward. In this role, you will be involved in all elements of brand strategy including creating and analyzing data and market trends, shaping market research, and developing impactful insights and strategies that solve brand challenges.

Responsibilities:

• Leads businesses with powerful strategic positioning that stretches to both consumer and corporate stakeholders
• Guides client and internal integration teams to efficiently solve problems and collaborate together effectively
• Someone who has led powerful earned strategies with internal and client facing stakeholders. Ideas that are earned at the core but built to improve brand strategies.
• Acquires professional, mature presence in the team and client relationship, and shows strong presentation skills.
• Proactively identifies potential challenges with the research plan, creative brief, making recommendations for improvement prior to completion.
• Initiates and helps to execute strategic process, from research plan to creative brief, for approval from more senior leads. Co-leads client projects/ assignments.
• Mine data, research, and intelligence reports for insights and implications.
• Develop an immersive understanding of a product or brand’s market dynamics, customer mindset, competitive actions and industry trends.
• Derive and articulate insights that will drive behavior change.
• Cultivate strong relationships with staff, internal partners, and clients including counseling junior staff.

Experience Requirements:

• 10-15 years of experience in Corporate and Consumer strategies and best-in-class idea integration.
• Understanding of cultural brand strategy with familiarity of work within PR, digital and social media.
• Expertise in the marketing and communications industry.
• High level of comfort with research techniques and resources and insight generation.
• Demonstrated experience with analytics and analyzing data (not necessarily just pulling data but also manipulating it)
• Clear and compelling presentation skills.
• Agility in working style – demonstrated ability to work against tight timelines and to work collaboratively.
• Excellent verbal and written communication with the capability to construct and support arguments.

 

Chicago Salary Range: $162,000.00 – $200,000.00

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.

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, 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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Vice President, Strategic Planning (Washington, DC)

We are looking for a strategic leader who sees business problems from the eyes of real people, and uses data, keen cultural observation and experience to create strategies that will engage audiences and delivering measurable value. With an emphasis on developing compelling insights, this person will be an active member on two high-profile client teams and a large contributor to new business opportunities. They will be responsible for challenging conventional thought and providing a sound and fresh point-of-view for communications strategy and planning. Our ideal candidate should have experience building brand and creative strategies that deliver ideas across channels, tactics and content, and possess the ability to guide measurement that is aligned with strategy. Must enjoy the variety of working across a range of clients, from global brands to government agencies, and have experience driving strategy for social and influencer campaigns.

 

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead and drive the quality of strategic output for two key clients, developing creative strategy to inform social, influencer and earned media campaigns within inter-agency teams.
• Create a culture of insight, ensuring strategic insights are embedded into our client delivery and that the broader agency is educated on brand and communication strategy fundamentals.
• Collaborate with CX leads to guide key clients and provide consistent thought leadership.
• Champion and enhance the methods by which teams uncover insights and measures results.
• Lead, motivate and grow a team of planners, analysts and subject matter experts.
• Serve as an opinion leader by sharing best practices, case studies and thought leadership.

 

QUALIFICATIONS

• 10+ years of experience in strategic planning, preferably at an agency.
• Experience in consumer health, legacy brands and global strategy stewardship a bonus.
• Understanding of digital campaigns (owned social, influencer) and earned activations is preferred.
• Persuasive presenter and speaker, able to create decks and tell a story based on data and hypothesis.
• Experience building, managing and mentoring a team.
• Self-motivated, fun, a quick study, entrepreneurial and endlessly curious.

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

Washington DC Salary range: $124,000 – $165,000

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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