Associate Director, Strategy

Overview

Associate Director, Strategy at WPP Media, based in the Bangalore office, responsible for crafting the digital narrative for brands on scaled digital platforms to drive successful brand outcomes. Reports to the Associate Vice President, Strategy.

What you'll do

• Build India-centric cultural and audience understanding for brands through superior storytelling, leveraging local insights, trends and socio-economic shifts.
• Unlock category, consumer cultural, competition and shopping insights that lead to improved media recommendations for existing clients.
• Lead strategic conversations with senior clients on identifying growth levers, including new audiences, platforms and media models to drive brand metrics.
• Research to build a strong foundation that elevates discussions with senior clients.
• Craft narratives that address the business or brand problem statement with strong insights.
• Work with cross-functional teams, including content and media planners, to land the implications of insights into action plans.
• Maintain strong overview and custodianship of the account's strategic direction, business challenges and emerging opportunities.
• Get a deep understanding of the category, consumer and competition approach for your set of brands within three months.
• Present deep dives on audience behaviours, attitudes and emerging trends, both qualitative and quantitative.
• Engage directly with clients on key projects and maintain a regular strategy engagement cadence.
• Work on large strategy projects with the account team based on business challenges.
• Act as the strategy expert guiding content, influencer and other brand activations with cross-functional teams.
• Deliver breakthrough work through new thinking around audiences, consumer journeys and platforms that influence brand goals.
• Set up client strategy workshops, partner days and regular client reviews by bringing cross-category learnings together.
• Contribute to central strategy projects that deliver thought leadership, including articles and whitepapers.

What you'll need

• 5+ years with a blend of account planning and media agency exposure.
• MBA++ with marketing specialization.
• Must understand fundamentals of digital marketing, including Google and Meta certifications.
• Extremely well-read and well informed about marketing trends, especially in the travel sector, with a strong point of view on culture, audiences, localized insights, brand building and the emerging role of technology in marketing.
• Extreme curiosity, investigating the why of something and drawing patterns and learnings from multiple industries and adjacencies.
• Excellent presentation and storytelling skills, independently building a client-centric perspective and confidently presenting to senior management, including executive-level visually stunning presentations.
• Familiarity with digital marketing principles including OTTs, Video, Social and KOLs.
• Must be able to articulate consumer journey, key touchpoints and platforms, and brand behaviour on platforms needed for brand growth.
• Optimistic and collaborative, successfully working across functions and disciplines while being seen as a valuable contributor and enabler.

Nice to have

• Preference for working on global brands in senior roles presenting to top management.

Details

• Location: Bangalore office, India.
• Hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week.
• Accommodations or flexibility can be discussed with the hiring team during the interview process.