Influence Creative Strategy Lead

Influence Creative Strategy Lead

 

Role: PR & Influence  
Location: Blackfriars, London 
Full Time / Part Time: Full Time Fixed Term Contract
Remote / Hybrid: Hybrid working

About Ogilvy:

Ogilvy UK has been creating iconic ideas that deliver impact at scale for clients ever since David Ogilvy founded the company in 1948. The agency 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, Lloyds Banking Group, Madri, Unilever and Mondelēz International. 

Ogilvy’s influencer marketing practice is the largest globally; we are proud to be the most awarded influencer agency for six years running and the recipient of the Cannes Grand Prix for Social & Creator for two consecutive years.  

Ogilvy UK also hosts the world’s biggest festival of behavioural science and creativity, Nudgestock – which is now in its 12th year. James Murphy is the CEO of Ogilvy Group UK, which includes Ogilvy UK and New Commercial Arts (NCA), a boutique creative agency he co-founded in 2020, recently acquired by WPP. 

 

 

The role:

Ogilvy Influence continues to thrive. Over the past 4 years we’ve seen our business outgrow the market and in 2025/26 we will continue to capitalize on that growth.

Ogilvy has always been at the forefront of Influencer Marketing and as we are looking for an experienced, well-connected, passionate Creative Strategy Lead. Someone who gets it, loves it, is passionate about influence strategy, creativity and measurement and can help our clients keep pace with the best and most innovative ways to reach consumers.

Influence is in one of five Ogilvy UK businesses so this senior role connects you into a team of super smart people working in Ogilvy One, Health, Advertising and Consulting. As well as leading a team of Influence strategists, you’ll also be working on integrated through-the-line campaigns like our award winning Have A Word for the Mayor of London and Turn Your Back for Dove.

We are seeking an Influence Creative Strategy Lead – an industry visionary and transformative leader – to define the future of influence for Ogilvy and our clients. This role demands an individual who not only crafts groundbreaking influencer strategies rooted in culture but also inspires and directs world-class creative execution that earns attention and drives business transformation.

You are an acknowledged expert in the influence landscape, deeply engrained in social culture, and consistently at the forefront of the latest channel formats, trends, and emerging technologies. You possess an encyclopaedic understanding of both paid and earned influence strategies, capable of integrating them seamlessly to deliver unparalleled impact across a diverse and high-profile portfolio of brands.

As a pivotal leader within Ogilvy UK's Influence offering, you will provide ultimate strategic counsel, inspiration, and direction to C-suite clients and internal teams. Your remit extends beyond traditional influence, leveraging earned-first experience and insight to shape strategies across Ogilvy’s mega businesses – from customer experience and behavioural science to advertising and branding. You will be instrumental in pioneering new models and challenging the status quo, ensuring our influence work consistently sets new industry standards.

The mission of this role is to not only solve our clients' toughest business problems with innovative influence creative strategies but also to elevate the agency's entire influence output to its highest potential. You will lead significant new business pitches, inspire ambitious, multi-faceted influence programmes, and foster a culture of continuous innovation and bold thinking. Your natural curiosity for how customers interact with brands will drive the development of transformative ideas that redefine categories and build agency reputation.

In this world, no day, nor brief, is the same. Your ability to embrace agility, champion cross-craft collaboration, and structure for creative success will be vital. You will mentor and empower a team of strategists and creatives, guiding them to deliver brand-defining influence creativity and ensuring Ogilvy remains at the cutting edge of the industry.

The Skillset:

We are looking for an industry titan who possesses an insatiable thirst for uncovering powerful influence insights and architecting groundbreaking creative strategies across paid, earned and owned channels. This is someone who wants to break the system, is frustrated with how most brands are doing influencer marketing, and who can see the future of the industry on the horizon.

 

Defining the Problem: Masterminding strategic re-framing for enterprise transformation.

• Counsels C-suite clients, forging long-term strategic partnerships and shaping their influence agenda.
• Challenges foundational assumptions, architecting holistic, transformative solutions across all disciplines for complex client challenges.
• Defines true client problems, identifying latent opportunities and pioneering new growth avenues.
• Champions influence's strategic role within broader business ecosystems, influencing enterprise-level planning and investment.
• Serves as the indispensable "go-to consultant" for influence creative strategy within client executive teams.

 Insight Creation: Pioneering new categories of insight that redefine our client offering.

• Acts as Ogilvy UK's cultural antenna, continuously sourcing cutting-edge trends, innovations, and fresh thinking from influencer marketing and beyond.
• Leverages a vast external network to sharpen briefs, identify compelling creative territories, and drive transformational ideas.
• Distills complex, multi-source data into profound, actionable insights, inspiring radical creative ambition and strategic shifts.
• Champions and integrates innovative global research methodologies, setting new standards for cultural insight generation.
• Recognised as an industry thought leader, actively mentoring and shaping future influence strategists.
  
  

Setting the Path: Forging the strategic vision that drives business and industry transformation.

• Leads the creation of new influence strategies across entire client organisations, transcending individual campaigns.
• Pioneers new models for seamless integration of paid, owned, and earned influence strategies, setting industry benchmarks.
• Champions both proactive and reactive influence strategies, driving their adoption and integration across client businesses at the highest levels.
• Originates a new vision for influence that fundamentally transforms client businesses, inspiring ambitious programmes and market leadership.
  
  

Ideation: Igniting groundbreaking ideas that redefine influence and challenge agency product.

• Acts as an idea originator and provocateur, developing transformational ideas that build agency reputation and challenge our product.
• Develops proactive, visionary briefs that inspire clients and the agency on influence's boundless potential.
• Architects influence campaigns where channel, technology, and audience thinking are intrinsically woven into the core idea, driving scalable, impactful, and channel-agnostic ideation.
• Sets the overarching vision for influence creative, inspiring radical ambition and boldness across the entire team and wider agency.
• Comes to the table with fresh thinking, with the ability to develop ideas that can scale from a one-off social asset, to a Cannes-award winning campaign. (Evidence of past award-winning work is a huge bonus!)

 

Prototyping and Storytelling: Crafting compelling narratives that inspire action, investment, and industry culture shifts.

• Structures and leads winning pitches of immense scale, commanding the room with unparalleled authority and strategic foresight.
• Confidently leads C-suite and Board level presentations, influencing top-tier decision-makers and securing significant investment.
• Is a highly polished, compelling, and memorable presenter, setting the gold standard for strategic storytelling.
• Creates industry-leading decks and presentations that inspire action and significant investment, simplifying complexity for top-level stakeholders and driving agency growth.
  
  

Measurement and Effectiveness: Pioneering the science of influence effectiveness and shaping industry standards.

• Sets up projects for integrated evaluation from the outset, defining objectives and KPIs aligned with business transformation and long-term brand equity.
• Originates and contributes significantly to effectiveness studies and authors industry-defining best practices.
• Possesses encyclopaedic knowledge of measurement tools, metrics, and their pros and cons, guiding clients on the most impactful and innovative approaches.
• Is a leading industry contributor for influencer effectiveness, setting new benchmarks and driving forward the science and art of measurement globally.
  
  

Team Leadership & Development: Cultivating a world-class team to drive influence innovation.

• Mentors and develops a high-performing team of strategists (approx. 8), fostering a culture of continuous learning, growth, and creative excellence.
• Empowers team autonomy through thoughtful delegation, providing clear guidance and support.
• Drives performance through regular reviews, identifying development areas and crafting individual growth plans.
• Champions cross-functional collaboration within the team and across the wider agency, ensuring seamless workflow and knowledge sharing.
• Fosters an inclusive environment, mediating conflicts and ensuring team well-being and engagement.
• Recruits, retains, and nurtures top-tier talent, building a diverse and future-ready influence strategy team.
  
  

How we help you Thrive:

• 25 days annual leave + 1 Volunteer Day
• Bupa Healthcare
• Enhanced Maternity, Adoption and Shared Parental Leave
• Flexible Working Model with core working hours: 10am – 4pm
• A 1.5:1 Matching Pension Structure
• Wellbeing and Health: Up to £25.00 per month towards physical or online exercise class membership, Unmind membership, LifeWorks tool and annual eye tests.
• Season Ticket Loan and Cycle to Work Scheme
• Life Assurance

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. 

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.