Senior Strategy Partner

Job Description:
Carat builds modern businesses in media around the people that matter.
Modern businesses are built in media, around people. This is what we do.

For scaled brands, Carat is the gateway to dentsu. With our bespoke approach to client partnerships, we innovate to drive both immediate performance and longer-term transformation.

We achieve this in three unique ways:

We understand people better than anyone else, which helps us pinpoint growth audiences and move brands at people speed

We combine media, creative, and customer experience to design end-to-end experiences that build brand equity, create value for communities, drive commerce outcomes, and inspire loyalty

We pioneer next-gen media outcomes that build modern brands, increase brand power, and benefit society

We don't sit back. We pioneer in media, positively advocating for people, business and society in everything that we do.

This Senior Strategy Partner role is focused on leading key global clients and reinforcing Carat's role as a strategic partner to their brand & media leadership in developing future-facing strategic guidance, thought leadership, and best practices for a diverse subset of local markets.

Role purpose
The Carat strategy team combines craft skills, creative problem solving, and a diverse range of experience to find and address the challenges that we believe hold our clients back from growing as fast and as profitably as they should.

All clients in our portfolio have a diverse geographic footprint, combine both traditional and non-traditional growth markets, and boast strong strategic talent that love collaborating on a wide range of projects.

The Senior Strategy Partner is responsible for developing and delivering brilliant cross-disciplinary solutions that elevate the role of media on the business agenda of the clients in their portfolio, for growing the depth and breadth of Carat's partnership with those clients, for managing and developing the strategic talent in their village, for leading strategy on new business pitches, and for supporting the Head of Strategy in setting and delivering the strategy agenda for the agency.

We are looking for strategic leaders who are unafraid to provoke, who are a constructive sounding board, who are empathetic people leaders, and enthusiastic collaborators with the Head of Strategy in setting and delivering the strategy agenda for the agency.

Concretely, this means:

• Elevating the role of media in our clients' business by providing constructive provocations in the areas of growth audiences, consumer journey mapping, media creativity, end-to-end experience design, and media and marketing effectiveness – all to drive their clients' marketing and commercial ambitions
• Establishing Carat as an extension of their clients' marketing and business leadership
• Partnering with senior stakeholders in their clients' media and marketing teams to drive the media, communications, and marketing agenda with best-in-class strategic recommendations
• Proactively identifying business challenges, developing cross-disciplinary solutions, and successfully selling them as incremental projects / scope
• Driving thought leadership on the media, marketing, and business challenges and opportunities they believe will unlock new value for their clients
• Proactively identifying and driving value-creating strategy projects and training initiatives, and doing so in collaboration with the wider Carat global strategy team
• Leading strategic responses on significant global / cross-market new business pitches
• Being a leader of strategists, inspiring them to deliver the best, most thought-provoking, and pioneering work and points of view

Key Accountabilities
Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Forging strong relationships with senior global clients, helping them identify and understand the key issues facing their business
• Being vocal and collaborative with clients (having an informed opinion), sharing insight into the changing media landscape, and demonstrating Carat's role within an integrated communication mix
• Leveraging econometrics, business analytics and past campaign/competitive learnings to develop, refine and deliver media implementation guidelines
• Driving excellent and appropriate use of insights & planning tools on client briefs to drive business-outcome-focussed planning across the media ecosystem
• Developing creative ideas, media partnerships and innovations based on the communications strategy, and working with various Dentsu specialisms & teams
• Developing responses & guidance to strategic and campaign briefs from global clients to ensure best in class thinking & global consistency
• Building a deep understanding of dentsu's strengths, products, and product pipeline to identify incremental growth opportunities for our business as we develop strategic direction for the client
• Creating and driving a thought leadership agenda that combines the latest and greatest in marketing theory with real-world application and commercial impact
• Coaching and guiding junior team members on all aspects of planning and strategy
• Leading strategy on new business pitch responses for Carat as well as the dentsu media service line
• Own and drive Carat's strategy training agenda, leveraging the best of dentsu where appropriate and creating from scratch where deemed necessary
• Work with head of strategy to codify strategy team structure, job specs, competency frameworks, and career progression paths

Professional Skills Overall
You will have a strong, proven track record of:

• Ability to work with multiple stakeholders across companies, cultures and countries to drive your agenda through influence
• Strong skills in persuasion and selling of your ideas and strategies to new and existing clients
• Skilled in mentoring and developing individuals from a wide variety of disciplines, cultures and backgrounds.
• Excellent ability and proven track record of working with clients at a senior level to advise on the strategic direction of their communications and its ability to deliver business value
• Given the client portfolio, the successful candidate will be able to demonstrate intelligence in CPG marketing and ways of working
• Best in class strategic thinking with an ability to communicate (written & verbal) strategic and innovative ideas with clarity and simplicity
• Strong understanding of the role of media in delivering business value for modern brands
• Cultural awareness, analytical skills, and relentless curiosity
• Working knowledge of media and communications planning tools and processes
• Strong understanding of multiple sources for market, consumer and media intelligence
• Proven track record of identifying and developing insights, measurement and evaluation projects
• Deep experience developing marketing and communications strategies for multi market clients, with a proven ability to marshal multiple countries behind your strategies, driving consistency with local nuances

What do we offer?

• 3 extra days off (yes, at dentsu we take your well-being very seriously) - next to 25 annual holiday days off there are 3 Well-being Days;
• 2 Social Impact Days - you can volunteer for the cause of your choice;
• Extensive learning and development possibilities - wide range of in person and online training courses;
• Clear career progression;
• A hybrid work model, we work 3 days at the office, 2 days at home;
• And, of course, a good salary and excellent fringe benefits.

Inclusion and Diversity
We're proud to be different and that starts with our people. We believe in equal opportunities for everyone. We won't define people by their race, gender, sexual-orientation, age, or disability. Individuality is what makes us great, we want everyone to bring their full self to work and create something amazing. That's what we care about.

So, whether you're joining us, or looking to move to a different part of the business, we work hard to make sure we create equal opportunities for everyone.

Location:
Amsterdam

Brand:
Global Carat

Time Type:
Full time

Contract Type:
Permanent