Strategist Edmonton Or (Remote)

Job Title: Strategist

Department: Strategy

Reports To: Director, Strategy

Location: Canada – Preference given to candidates in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec

Target Start Date: August or September, 2024

Posting Date: June 13, 2024

Submission Deadline: July 1, 2024

About Us

Brandish is a creative agency helping brands in their pursuit of relevance by focusing on the people our clients are trying to connect with – their audience. We are a young agency looking to expand our internal team.

As a people-driven agency, we emphasize a culture that is flexible and adaptive to the ever-changing world of work. We are a remote-first agency with a co-working space for optional use in Winnipeg. Our people are enthusiastic problem solvers who share their diverse skill sets, perspectives and experiences throughout our agency across Canada.

About the Strategy Team

The Strategy Team connects our clients to their customers, ultimately ensuring their brand experience is relevant, sustainable and differentiated.

They find the market, audience and industry insights required to develop brand strategies and positioning that matter to people. Then, they manage the brands through customer experience mapping, creative, marketing and product innovation in coordination with all other agency team members.

About the Role

Our Strategists bring our clients closer to the needs of their customers through brand strategy consulting, brand positioning, brand management and creative or product innovation. They are responsible for defining the right customer problem and outlining the “way-in” to best solve it. They lead insight gathering, representing the customer both internally and externally. They use briefs or team sessions to onboard and action all work to fulfill our clients’ brand strategies.

The Strategist works with the Director, Strategy and Creative Director to build strong brand strategies and independently manages effective brand marketing initiatives.

The Strategist is responsible for:

• Collaborate with the client and Brandish teams to develop positioning and messaging strategies, as well as strategic media and communication plans
• Leading insight gathering projects for clients, including the management of focus groups, qual & quant surveys, focus groups, video streeters and interviews.
• Finding customer, business and category insights and translating them into strong briefs & briefings for the creative team.
• Identifying, advocating for and managing marketing and communications initiatives that will elevate and reinforce our client brand strategies in-market
• Co-leading creative strategy alongside the creative director and art directors to support brand and strategy articulation
• Develop brand and creative KPIs to accurately measure performance against client goals and objectives.
• Collaborate with Brandish teams to scope client work and plan appropriate budget allocations for brand objectives.

About You

Must-have qualifications:

• 4-6 years in a professional brand marketing, advertising or creative communications setting.
• Experience in an agency environment is considered an asset.
• A strong portfolio of real-world strategies and deliverables that:
  • Clearly highlights your involvement in each project
  • Showcases your ability to represent the customer
  • Demonstrates your approach to briefing the Creative team
• 2-3 professional references
• Valid VISA, PR, or other documentation required to be legally eligible to work in Canada

Personal skills and abilities:

• Thrives in a collaborative, remote-first working environment.
• Highly creative thinker who is interested in pushing boundaries and trying new things.
• Strong oral communicator. You enjoy workshopping ideas and presenting them to team members for feedback. Confident and able to facilitate large meetings with specific strategic or creative objectives.
• You’re curious about people, trends and habits. You’re always interested in the why behind people’s decisions. And you’re culturally in-tune with industry and consumer trends.
• You look to solve the cause, not the symptoms.
• Comfortable working with clients independently, establishing goodwill and effectively leading the work
• Extremely motivated self-starter. Ability to self-manage and set direction for problem-solving within strategic working groups.
• Strong sense of empathy. You’re able to look at problems from multiple perspectives and find mutual benefit and understanding.

Tools and software:

• Google Drive (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.)
• Google Meet or Zoom
• Slack or MS Teams
• Survey Monkey or Google Surveys
• ClickUp or Asana (not required, but an asset)

Total Compensation & Benefits Package

Brandish offers a comprehensive Comp & Benefits package for all full time team members. This includes:

• Annual salary: $75,260 – $79,776
• Fully paid benefits package with Manulife (family coverage)
• Unlimited paid time off (vacation, sick days)
• A 4-day work week (we are closed Fridays)
• Flex time
• Quarterly performance reviews with opportunity for growth
• Year-end bonus based on individual and company performance