• Job Title: Strategy Director
• Level & Responsibility: This role is at a Director level or equivalent and has responsibility over a team.  
• Location & Hybrid Working: 2 days a week in office in our Leeds office. 
  

The role

We are looking for a Strategy Director to join SMG. The Strategy Team is a ‘central team’ helping to create connected commerce marketing campaigns for supplier brands across all of our SMG agencies (Capture, & Retailer Partnerships). In this role, you will lead and inspire excellence in connected commerce marketing strategies across our agencies responding to a diverse range of exciting and challenging opportunities/campaign briefs. You will share knowledge and skillset to grow the businesses strategy capabilities via training and coaching and will create a reputation for unique, insightful and relevant consultation that fuels both SMG and our client’s growth!

Our specific role as a Strategy Team is to bring to the table a curiosity to understand everything we can about shoppers, retailers, retail media at large and a desire to fuel original and innovative creative ideas, and a passion to bring this all together to create memorable, effective, and connected commerce plans. The result is that all our recommendations to clients across SMG have a clear strategy and big idea at the centre.

Why SMG?

We are dedicated to supporting our employees to be the best version of themselves both inside and outside of work. We have an extraordinary culture built by exceptional people and it’s because of this that we’ve been recognised by Best Companies within the top 5 best Marketing & Media agencies to work for, with a World Class and Outstanding accreditation across the past 2 years. 

We are also dedicated to continuously reviewing and improving our benefits package to offer the best that we can for our people. We have a whole page dedicated to our benefits here, but here's some of our favourites...

💰 10% discretionary bonus scheme

🧘‍♂️ £1,800 yearly wellbeing fund (on top of your salary!) towards your personal wellbeing and passions

🫶 4 additional Wellbeing Days - one to be taken each quarter, dedicated to focusing on your wellbeing

📚 £500 yearly “Uni Fund” towards learning and development

🎧 Free headspace subscription

🕐 4pm Friday finishes all year round

🥳 Two fully paid conferences a year at Summer & Winter, as well as a dedicated team that put on activities and celebrations throughout the year

Why you?

In line with our company values, within your role you'll want to stay honest, stay hungry, stay foolish, and most importantly, have fun! More specifically, you'll have / be:

• Strategic and creative thinker with natural curiosity and questioning mindset
• Ability to create the vision by having a lens on the future
• A healthy love of connected commerce marketing
• The ability to boil the most complex down to the most simple and succinct articulation
• An understanding of data tools and media channels
• A proven track record in creating (connected) marketing plans that have delivered results
•  A balance of strategy and commerciality
• Great knowledge and understanding of emerging and existing media channels.
•  An ability to analyse data and glean relevant insights including 1st Party Data.
• Experience working with multiple stakeholders to deliver best in class client service (even internally), at all times
• An ability to work at pace, across multiple projects and subject areas
• A consummate and confident storyteller

P.s. we try really hard to make sure that we list only essential criteria here, BUT if you think you can do an amazing job, yet don't have every single thing on this list, we'd still love to hear from you.

What you'll be doing

We pride ourselves on creating challenging and exciting opportunities, meaning that no two days are the same. However, here's an idea of what your responsibilities will look like:

Strategy Department and people leadership:

You’ll have responsibility for a section of the strategy function within our Central function ‘Axis’. You’ll need to work with the other Strategy Director(s) and the other
directors within Axis (Insight Director, Media Director and Creative Director) as well as Partnership and agency directors to define the vision, strategy and goals for the
department and ensure excellence in connected commerce campaigns. You will lead the people within strategy ensuring their engagement, motivation and capabilities
resulting in the highest performance levels.

Ownership of the strategy function output:

You will be responsible for ensuring the excellence in output from your team. You will need to set the quality standards of work and exceed, surprise and delight our client’s
expectations in developing responses to a wide range of diverse briefs (from Kellogg’s to General Mills, from Boots to The Very Group and including consultancies and new
business along the way) and identifying pro active opportunities and initiatives. You will ensure the efficient and streamlined operation of the function.

Building Strategy Capability:

As a subject matter expert, you’ll be responsible for building strategy capability across the business through in house training and coaching – influencing all teams, not just
your own

Lens on the future:

Bring the outside in by sharing relevant industry trends and data via appropriate channels /papers from thought pieces on the metaverse to the latest in retail media
networks – with identified opportunities and ‘so what’ to drive our business growth and that of our Clients’

Supporting growth ambitions:

We’re a small company growing fast, with growth set to continue - this means that you can be working on a wide range of exciting and challenging projects and you will
need to be motivated to work on both short and long term strategic projects as well as a hands on approach when required

More information and resources to support you & your application...

• To find out more about our agencies and departments, click here.
• To find out more about our application & interview process and supporting you through this, click here.
• To find out more about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at SMG, click here.
• To take a look at our FAQ's, click here.

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