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The strategist will join the agency’s central strategy team, reporting to the strategy director and leading on existing client campaigns and new business pitches. This team sits at the heart of the agency, acting as a strategic planning function designed to empower our teams to deliver best-in-class strategic and creative thinking based on data-driven insights.

The strategy team is at the start of an exciting expansion as we grow our work across all parts of Four’s business. You will be key to the agency’s integrated ethos, working with multiple teams in the business to ensure best practice strategic and planning principles are applied to client work.

You will bring clarity to the complex, helping to plan and guide teams to deliver compelling strategic arguments powered by data and insight. You will be expected to work in a dynamic and collaborative environment that has been designed to foster creative thinking, and you will be expected to always be a champion of strategic and creative thinking and to be comfortable to constructively challenge and be challenged by some of the brightest minds in the industry.

Reporting into the strategy director and chief strategy officer you will be expected to represent the team in new business and client meetings and internal meetings with senior stakeholders. Training on the job from senior strategists in the team or with a professional body will be provided to support your development.

You will exemplify Four’s EPIC values: expertise, partnership, intelligence and community, both internally and externally.

Key responsibilities

• Understand the client’s audiences, objectives, and priorities and business imperatives, and support the delivery of clever and inspiring strategic and creative solutions to meet these needs
• Lead the development of a strategic direction identifying the problem statement, key value proposition, consumer/ stakeholder needs, and map out a series of compelling narratives and creative routes to address the brief with support from the senior strategic team
• Work with teams including PR consultants, behaviour change specialists and creatives to deliver strategies, to sense-check messaging and creative outputs against the brief and to champion creativity.
• Present research and analysis findings, insights and strategic recommendations to clients, and potential clients
• Develop insights briefs for internal researchers and analysts to inform strategic development for new business pitches
• Support with the development and performance of junior strategists, including mentoring and providing training and support as needed
• Be comfortable working on a number of different projects at the same time, normally in different subject areas and with different teams across varied geographies.
• Communicate effectively with key internal and external stakeholders and craft compelling narratives in presentations to clients
• Start to own your area of strategy and become the go-to person in the agency for that work

• Be proactive, provoke debate, and identify and drive the agenda for the future (by always staying up to date with news, politics, consumer and societal trends, etc.)

Skills and experience

• Previous experience in a relevant role, preferably a mix of research/ analytics and strategic planning, ideally part agency-side. We’re looking for strategy generalists and will consider people with different sector experience. Public sector or behaviour change experience is a bonus
• Research/ analytics experience and a point of view on the role of data and analytics in strategic planning and creative concepts and execution
• Experience in strategic planning from brief interrogation, to brainstorm facilitation and willingness to learn to write compelling strategy arguments or creative briefs in at least one area of strategy (experience with creative briefs is ideal but not essential)
• Experience (and maybe training too) in campaign effectiveness / measurement and

• Sharp attention to detail and strong numeracy skills
• Knowledge of planning tools and technologies including market intelligence, media and social media analysis, trend platforms, survey and social panels. We will not expect you to have worked with all of them but have proficiency in at least one and good working knowledge is important
• An insatiable curiosity, ability to observe trends and patterns that define our industry, the industries of our clients and society at large
• Critical thinking with a creative mind-set – always questioning the world around you, and coming up with “impossible” solutions that have a grounding in data/ can be proven to work in the real world
• Compelling communication abilities (written and verbal), ability to translate complex issues into simple arguments
• Collaboration – a team player who can work well with different teams across the group and support / advise them as needed on how to build solid evidence bases for solve client challenges, be ready to inspire, constructively challenge and persuade at all levels
• Strong time management skills and the ability to prioritise projects, be comfortable working with changing priorities at pace (agency fluidity)
• Be driven to deliver excellent work for your teams and your clients, always striving for best-in-class support

Equality and diversity statement:
We are proud of our diverse community at Four and are committed to reflecting the diversity of the world in which we live. We strive to improve our diversity and welcome applicants from all backgrounds, especially those from minority and under-represented groups. We do not discriminate on the grounds of age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, gender identity, marriage, civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race (including colour and ethnic or national origins), religion or belief. To the extent possible, we remove this information from CVs submitted to managers during the assessment process.

Flexible working policy:

Four has a fully flexible working policy across all its locations and offices. This means staff can work at home at any time unless they have face-to-face commitments such as client meetings and events, team meetings or training where they will be required to be in the office or another location.

How to apply:
Please send a CV and a covering letter including salary expectation to
[email protected] quoting STRATEGIST in the subject line. We thank all applicants for their interest however only those invited for interview will be contacted. We do not accept CVs
from agencies.

Office: London