Strategy Director

Ogilvy UK has been creating iconic ideas that deliver impact at scale for clients ever since David Ogilvy founded the company in 1948. Ogilvy UK specialises in bringing together brand advertising, customer experience marketing, PR, influence and consulting, all fuelled by Behavioural Science. Our world-class award-winning creative campaigns deliver solutions for clients including Sainsbury’s, Argos, , Mondelēz International, Unilever, TK Maxx and Pernod Ricard.  

In 2023, Ogilvy UK celebrated their 75th anniversary and was the most awarded agency in Europe. Ogilvy is home to the largest influencer marketing practice globally, and hosts the world’s biggest festival of behavioural science and creativity, Nudgestock – now in its 12th year. 

Are you the kind of strategist that wants to create enormous impact on some of the biggest, and most famous brands in the world?

Do you want to build your career in an agency that has been named Network of the Year for both creativity and effectiveness? 

Do you look out and above your discipline, and resist the desire to stay in your lane?

Are you a well all-rounded strategist with strong knowledge of how brands grow in the Social & Digital Age that you use to drive transformative work?

If so, read on.

A bit about Ogilvy.

You’ve heard of us, and you know some our famous campaigns. But do you know how we work, and what makes us different?

Most importantly, we don’t just create advertising ideas, we create ideas that impact how consumers see and navigate through their world. We achieve this by breaking down the barriers and working fluidly between the engines of modern marketing today: Advertising, Consulting, Experience, PR & Social & Influence, and Health.

We call this Borderless Creativity.  Ogilvy scales this by seamlessly connecting and accessing the deep and diverse cultural expertise of 132 offices in 83 countries and in a way that celebrates our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. 

About This Role

This is a role across some of the most iconic brands around within The Coca-Cola Company from trademark Coca-Cola to Sprite and Fanta. The role sits at the centre of a bespoke model, WPP ‘Open X’, created to deliver impact for the needs of these brands.

You’ll be employed and homed at Ogilvy, sitting in the heart of a welcoming, feisty and fun planning community in London’s Sea Containers House – a key WPP campus where you will work closely and collaborate with wider WPP teams from David, VML, Wavemaker and EssenceMediacom across continents.


What the role entails

• Drive strategic planning from client brief to creative delivery across Global, Regional and GB campaigns
• Lead the necessary research to identify core driving insights for your creative briefs that will lead to increasingly ground-breaking work
• Unlock opportunities within key audience passion points, such as music, food culture, gaming with in-depth focus on culture and experiential.
• Bring to life storytelling under newly articulated brand platforms through localisation and activation across the end-to-end ecosystem
• Integrate strategy and execution of work across Advertising, Brand, Content (ABC), PR&I and social, and Consumer Experiences to deliver single narrative connected concepts
  
  

In Terms Of The Skills We Are Looking For

• Very strong strategic thinker who enjoys grappling with brand foundations and can capture the essence of brands in simple, persuasive language.
• Confident discussing business issues and understand how brands grow in CPG, prior experience would be advantageous
• Data literacy and ability to understand client’s business results and issues with experience writing effectiveness case studies
• Ability to think quickly on your feet, engaging in strategy conversations with clarity and confidence with clients
• A passion for writing creative briefs that lead to amazing work
• Ability to inspire through well designed presentations, skilled verbal articulation and visual communication
• A keen interest in the creative process, demonstrating a readiness to help shape/champion creative ideas, while making sure they are on strategy
• Expertise in modern marketing with an understanding of how brands must show up in today’s ecosystem
• A worldly view embodied in a curiosity about other markets and cultures, experience working on global or pan-market brands would be a strong advantage
• Strong initiative to push work and deliver strong both as a team player and collaborator as well as working alone with autonomy: owning workstreams from start to finish; planning the approach; managing your time effectively and demonstrating attention to detail.

What can you expect from us? 

This is a role where you can make career defining work, working alongside agency talent and clients who are at the very top of their game. Beyond career development, Ogilvy offers a great fun and fulfilling working environment, with a strong community and a lack of silos. You’ll be part of a tight-knit team of people willing to go out of their way for each other and you’ll get guidance and full support from senior leadership
team members.

Our learning and development team are on hand to provide training for you, to help you excel in every aspect of your role. So, if you think you may not have experience in some aspects of this position, don’t worry, and apply away. We’re here to help you grow and nurture your skills.

How we help you thrive

• 25 days annual leave + 1 Volunteer Day
• Bupa Healthcare (includes Bupa health assessment and menopause support)
• Enhanced Maternity, Adoption and Shared Parental leave
• Hybrid Working model
• A 1.5:1 matching pension structure
• Wellbeing and Health: Up to £25. per month towards physical or online exercise class membership, Unmind membership, LifeWorks tool and annual eye tests. 
• Learning and development budgets plus Enhanced and ongoing wellbeing incentives and activities throughout the year
• Season ticket loan and cycle to work scheme 
• Life Assurance x4 salary 
• Inclusion@Ogilvy: To foster an inclusive environment we have our internal groups: Ogilvy Rewired, Roots, Equals, Proud plus Parents and Carers. See here for more information 

Our ambition is to attract the very best diverse talent to Ogilvy, and to be the employer of choice in the UK. We want everyone to feel welcome when they join us, and once they’re here, for them to want to stay with us, grow their career, and to feel they belong with us.

We are an equal opportunity employer and we’re committed to creating an inclusive, welcoming environment for everyone who wants to work at Ogilvy. For us, diversity, equity and inclusion is integrated into everything that we do. We believe that for creativity to flourish, everything about how we work must have diversity at its core. Your race, colour, ethnic, religion, gender, gender identity, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, have no bearing on our hiring decisions, but we encourage everyone to feel free to express their true selves in an environment we are consistently striving to make as inclusive as possible.

We aim to facilitate an accessible and positive application experience for all candidates. If you require any adjustments from us to support you through the process or expect to require any adjustments to working conditions to be able to best perform in the role, please let us know. We are happy to consider all reasonable adjustments.

If you live with a disability and you would like to take advantage of our offer of a guaranteed interview under the Disability Confident Scheme, please ensure you fill out our voluntary Equal Opportunities Questionnaire when applying.