Strategy Director

Strategy Director

Reports to: VP, Strategy FLSA Status: Exempt

We're the U.S. Brand Experience practice of FutureBrand, a global strategic design consultancy with offices in Syracuse, Cincinnati, Detroit, and New York City, and the secret weapon behind countless global innovators.

Through the unique combination of the insight and strategy expertise of a management consulting firm, the creativity of world-class storytellers and design innovators, the rapid, in-context prototyping capabilities of a manufacturer, we've become indispensable partners to some of the world's leading brands.

We make what should be, creating transformative brand experiences that bridge the gap between what a brand promises and what people experience in the real world. We achieve this through a unique synergy of behavioral design thinking and creative brand expression.

Our work works for a living, and we measure success by tangible design solutions in the marketplace.

What the Role Is

The Strategy Director is an exempt level position at FutureBrand that will develop compelling solutions for some of the world's best-known brands. You will work closely with talented multi-disciplinary teams to translate business opportunities into persuasive experiences that orchestrate growth for our clients.

At its core, this role requires strong powers of observation, pattern recognition, and analysis. But also, more uniquely, strength in experience strategy, journey mapping, storytelling, creative copywriting, and persuasive presentation. A background in design thinking and working hand-in-hand with creative designers is a definite plus.

As a Strategy Director, you will collaborate to innovatively solve problems and persuasively deliver strategic solutions to a variety of audiences, both internal and external. Functionally, this means you will lead phases of the work that deliver:

• Grounding in our clients' worlds to comprehend their business situations and subsequent strategic objectives for our work
• Immersion in the user's point of view to understand what their challenges are, what they are doing today, and what the opportunity is to influence their behavior
• Deep synthesis of client and desk research to identify relevant key insights, opportunities and formulate hypotheses
• A clear and simple strategic framework based on key insights and opportunities
• Translation of this strategic framework into actionable and distinctly different creative territories (in collaboration with design)
• Concept development that is on-strategy and stays true to the insights and strategic direction

Throughout the development of the work you'll need to be able to:

• Identify and execute the most relevant ways to deliver succinct, compelling recommendations to our clients
• Lead the communication of project narratives and strategies to internal and external audiences
• Develop and lead workshop sessions to foster more meaningful internal collaboration and client engagement in projects
• Partner with research to unearth foundational insights and/or validate hypotheses
• In general, be a thoughtful, consultative partner to our clients and internal cross-functional teams

In addition to project responsibilities you will be tasked with advocating for, executing, and elevating the FutureBrand strategic process and methodologies

You will support the training and development of newer Strategy team members

You will also begin to lead cross-functional handoffs on projects, providing direction to team members outside the strategy practice

Contributing to internal culture:

• Socialize new strategy approaches and tactics with the studio
• Ask questions, seek clarity about your role, and demonstrate ownership of your tasks and deliverables
• Mentor junior-level team members

Knowledge and skills:

• Innate curiosity – a desire to "figure things out"
• Empathy – you know how, and have a desire, to put yourself in other peoples' shoes
• Active listening – you're always in the moment and engaged
• Expert communication – confident and persuasive writing/presentation skills
• Pattern recognition – the ability to recognize synergies across disparate qualitative/quantitative sources
• Problem-solving – you have excellent natural problem-solving skills, and a desire to continuously improve
• Calm as a cucumber — a proven ability to deliver under pressure while handling multiple tasks
• Collaboration – you work well with others (across cross-functional teams) to accomplish tasks and can take feedback and direction from others
• Flexibility – you know how to adapt your approach based on the circumstances in front you and can manage multiple and competing work priorities, demands and changes
• Diligence – you're organized (in a way that works for you) and have impeccable attention to detail
• Research design — you're comfortable designing, leading, and analyzing qualitative research
• Data Analysis — you're comfortable interpreting and analyzing quantitative insights
• Workshopping — you have proficiency in planning, preparing, and facilitating strategy and ideation workshops
• Platforms — you have a strong proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite. Proficiency in Mural/Miro or other collaborative ideation platforms and Adobe Suite a plus.

What it requires

• A strong desire to create and contribute to an inclusive creative environment.
• Bachelor's Degree
• 5-7 years of consulting, research, or other relevant work experience
• Up to 25% travel

Note: This job description is not intended to be all-inclusive. Employee may perform other related duties as negotiated to meet the ongoing needs of the organization.