Senior Strategist (1 Year Contract, Maternity Leave)

Track is looking for an experienced 1:1 strategist to join our growing strategy team – a blended group of digital, CRM and integrated strategists who believe in the power of customer data to create relevancy, change behaviour and ultimately grow our client's business. The role will be based out of Toronto, Ontario (hybrid - 2 days a week in office) to cover a one-year maternity leave.

The ideal candidate is someone with proven experience leveraging data to create communications journeys that are targeted, personalized and drive business – building value in both the short term and long term (CLV). You are experienced at driving both organic growth through current clients as well as helping pitch (and win) new business. You are at your best when you are collaborating with both analysts and artists, crafting the kinds of briefs that inspire world-class data-inspired creativity.

You have demonstrated skills in mapping out ecosystems and architectures for campaigns, providing platform expertise and innovation opportunities, leading workshops with creatives to inspire great work, and collaborating with analytics to optimize program testing and measurement.

This role is client facing, and so the candidate must have impeccable attention to detail and strong oral/written communication skills.

Responsibilities:

• Lead integrated planning projects for key clients/projects bringing in the optimal mix of analytics, strategy, creative, tech, account representation to craft various deliverables like playbooks, campaign strategies, response plans, creative briefs, POVs, trends and reports.
• Provide leadership in business development – collaborating with NA Biz-dev team to create POVs and whitepapers for lead gen, responding to RFPs, and helping drive the pitch presentation – both strategically and from an overarching story perspective.
• Ability to see both the forest and trees, being able to help visualize how moments connect to form a cohesive customer journey – and how to transform those strategies into comprehensive connections plans, with an emphasis on segmentation, micro-journeys and content/cadence planning.
• Proactive in seeking to connect customer data with consumer research and cultural trends to uncover meaningful insights about a consumer and their behaviour.
• Reactive in responding to client questions, requests or needs while always taking a beat to think through the right approach and long-term implications.
• Develop both the strategy and the story – you will have the ability to clearly articulate and present your work in a confident and persuasive manner to clients and teams.
• Keep tabs on the competitive landscape and share industry news/innovations, particularly in the 1:1 space on an ongoing basis.
• Develop and maintain a positive relationship with appropriate Client contacts and partner agency network.
• Establish strong relationships with internal team members across all agency departments.
• Provide inspiration and ideas to creative teams as they begin the creative development process; act as a partner and sounding board during the creative process to help spark innovation, and possess the ability to formulate and communicate an objective point of view on creative work that is constructive and representative of the consumer.
• Support the development of thought leadership to both enhance the internal knowledge base on what the strategy team can do, but also to bolster the external positioning and new business efforts.
• Educate both agency and client on best practices and trends as they evolve, making sure our brands are always developing and distributing best in class work.
  
  

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of integrated communications planning experience with emphasis on data-driven, 1:1 / digital communications.
• Experience across digital, data, technology, with depth in CRM & loyalty.
• Experience in leading strategy for new business opportunities / RFPs / pitches.
• Desire to help build a culture inside the agency and with the client that is focused on using data to drive creative and executional innovation.
• Strong ability to think creatively, strategically and analytically.
• Proven builder of team expertise; supports development and shares best practices.
• Impeccable attention to detail.
• Excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills.
• Ability to multitask and manage multiple clients and projects.
• Excitement to dig into always-on campaign optimization and ability to tell a compelling story through reporting.
• Can design and facilitate large workshop activities to engage the client team in a creative problem solving process.