Please note that we will never request payment or bank account information at any stage of the recruitment process. As we continue to grow our teams, we urge you to be cautious of fraudulent job postings or recruitment activities that misuse our company name and information. Please protect your personal information during any recruitment process. While Monks may contact potential candidates via LinkedIn, all applications must be submitted through our official website (monks.com/careers).
As VP, Group Strategy Director you’ll help bring out the best in our creative strategy, brand strategy, and communications planning teams. You’ll uncover meaningful, surprising insights and set the tone for creating and selling ground-breaking work–while helping to define the business, creative, future vision, and growth across our accounts.
This role is a New York City (32 Old Slip #705. New York, NY 10005.), hybrid role!
Responsibilities:
- Develop insightful, innovative, cut-through strategies that lay the foundations for great work. Base your thinking on the client's brand objectives, KPIs, audiences, message, and voice, as well as on macro and locally relevant cultural trends and insights, overall industry best practices, business intelligence, and media performance data.
- Lead and provide hands-on project work, briefs, strategic POV, and recommendations to inform content development for connection moments and tactics, creative approaches and to answer clients’ business challenges and requests.
- Shine with your ability to blend creative, brand, product, and comms planning, always staying on top of best practices. You’re plotting how ideas will travel and be engaged with, then working with cross-functional teams to sell through and deliver them.
- Partner closely with account, creative, media, and operations leads, and any other capabilities, develop, sell, deliver, and implement best-in-class innovative work.
- Drive collaboration with global and regional teams, clients, and agency partners to facilitate efficient ways of working and delivery. Be a catalyst for fluid, clear, and collaborative communications, and work as one team.
- Approach all work considering data, culture, global and local relevance, and scaled content and performance rigor.
- Provide thought leadership on marketing vision and best practices for the marketing of today and tomorrow, powered by AI, fueled by cultural context, trend,s and conversations, and think dynamically about the evolution of creative media, performance marketing, content creation, and communication planning.
- Have a growth mindset and an eye to detect business opportunities for Monks and our clients, as well as the ability to build business cases and the recommended solutions.
- Have a contagious passion for our business and the creative industry, an infectious drive for rigor, qualitative work delivery, and a great collaborative attitude.
The essentials:
- Minimum of 10 years in agency strategy experience. A deep strategy background and holistic approach spanning brand, creative, and comms strategy, content, channel planning, and messaging including CRM and lifecycle strategy. A great ability to connect the thinking between media strategy, performance, big idea, tactics and social is essential.
- Proven track record of producing great strategy work across B2C and B2B–experience with financial services or fintech clients a plus.
- In-depth knowledge of modern marketing, content ecosystems, tactics, trends, and formats. Ability to develop tried-and-true and to drive innovative thinking and strategies - to lead thought-leadership on the evolution of approach.
- Developed consumer journeys, communication plans, and ecosystems for a variety of clients.
- The talent to clearly articulate your recommendations and POV through excellent storytelling.
- The ability to take the lead with clients to provide valuable strategic POV.
- The ability to flex across strategic and tactical thinking, depending on what’s needed. You can go deep while always connecting to the big-picture issue or opportunity.
- Expertise on understanding audiences, their behavior online, and IRL as users and humans.
- Developed learning plans, measuring performance and recommending KPIs, according to objectives, tactics, formats, and creative content.
- Analytic skills to interpret qualitative, quantitative research and media data, to inform learnings, insights, and recommendations for opportunities and optimization.
- Proficiency in industry research, trends and data tools, such as MRI, GWI and the key platforms.
- Experience in strategic planning internally and with clients, from a quarterly to a yearly basis. Scoping, LoE, approaches, and timelines.
- Strong communication skills, both verbal and written. Able to present information and ideas clearly and persuasively. Be the voice to align with key partners in the making and execution of a plan.
- Experience managing and mentoring teams that range in experience level.
- Natural ability to thrive in fast-paced and fluid environments, with complex structure and numerous projects and stakeholders.
#LI-Hybrid
#LI-SDL1
At Media.Monks, we believe in fostering an environment where a diversity of perspectives can thrive. We proactively work to design hiring processes that promote equity and inclusion while mitigating bias. We celebrate diversity and are committed to building a team that reflects the communities we serve. We welcome and encourage qualified applicants, from all backgrounds, who are excited to contribute to our mission.
Benefits
- Excellent, full coverage medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer-paid HRA
- Generous PTO and 15 company-wide holidays
- 401k with company contribution
- Paid parental leave
- Work-life balance with an emphasis on personal well-being
- Career growth in a disruptor space & entrepreneurial opportunities within the Monks network
- A globally diverse & inclusive culture with employee resource groups such as S4 Melanin, Pride.Monks, Cultura.Monks, and more!
- Authentic commitment to DEI efforts and sustainable growth. (Why Sir Martin Sorrell signed The Climate Pledge here!)
Monks has provided a compensation range that represents its good faith estimate of what Monks may pay for the position at the time of posting. Monks may ultimately pay more or less than the posted compensation range. The salary offered to the selected candidate will be determined based on job-related factors, but not based on a candidate’s sex or any other protected status.
About Monks
Monks is the global, purely digital, unitary operating brand of S4Capital plc. With a legacy of innovation and specialized expertise, Monks combines an extraordinary range of global marketing and technology services to accelerate business possibilities and redefine how brands and businesses interact with the world. Its integration of systems and workflows delivers unfettered content production, scaled experiences, enterprise-grade technology and data science fueled by AI—managed by the industry’s best and most diverse digital talent—to help the world’s trailblazing companies outmaneuver and outpace their competition.
Monks was named a Contender in The Forrester Wave™: Global Marketing Services. It has remained a constant presence on Adweek’s Fastest Growing lists (2019-23), ranks among Cannes Lions' Top 10 Creative Companies (2022-23) and is the only partner to have been placed in AdExchanger’s Programmatic Power Players list every year (2020-24). In addition to being named Adweek’s first AI Agency of the Year (2023), Monks has been recognized by Business Intelligence in its 2024 Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Awards program in three categories: the Individual category, Organizational Winner in AI Strategic Planning and AI Product for its service Monks.Flow. Monks has also garnered the title of Webby Production Company of the Year (2021-24), won a record number of FWAs and has earned a spot on Newsweek’s Top 100 Global Most Loved Workplaces 2023.
We are an equal-opportunity employer committed to building a respectful and empowering work environment for all people to freely express themselves amongst colleagues who embrace diversity in all respects. Including fresh voices and unique points of view in all aspects of our business not only creates an environment where we can all grow and thrive but also increases our potential to produce work that better represents—and resonates with—the world around us.