Senior Communications Strategist

WHO WE ARE

At The Martin Agency, we believe that when you impact culture, you impact sales. It’s that simple. Buzz is our business metric. We’ve created steady buzz for brands like CarMax, GEICO, Old Navy, OREO and UPS, to name a few. And we’ve been doing it a long time.

We are home to makers, thinkers, problem-solvers, dreamers and believers. People whose jobs are just as interesting as they are. We’re an agency that values the candid, the curious, and the fiery. People who put their hearts first and win because of it. These are the principles we put our confidence in, and how we give our clients and our people — those here and on their way to us — a way to be seen. Invisibility is our nemesis. For our clients and for our people, we make space for all to be valued, to be celebrated, and to exist beyond the noise.

We are committed to creating a place of belonging — a space where employees do not need to sacrifice who they are to exist and grow in our workplace.

THE TEAM

We sit at the strategy table and are embedded at the core of the creative process. We fight invisibility, focusing on creative communications that impact culture and drive our clients’ business.

We find tension across the consumer experience and challenge teams and partners to find creative solutions.

YOUR IMPACT

You are curious about people and why they behave the way they do. You’re driven by the need to meet them on their journey with a creative message that feels perfectly catered to that moment. You believe in the power of creativity and make room for ideas. You make ideas better. You’re excited at the prospect of finding new ways to connect people with brands. Sometimes you wonder if you should have been a creative, or a brand strategist, but there’s something about the structure and utility of comms that appeals to the part of you that likes to solve the whole puzzle.

The Senior Communications Strategist will partner with various disciplines to develop and lead integrated campaigns.

You will be the go-to expert on all things communications and media.  You will champion the consumer viewpoint, ensuring all campaigns are purpose built to be contextual and intentional.  Acting as an integrated lead, you will have the unique opportunity to influence both creative and media.

This role will report directly to the Co-Directors, Comm Planning.

 Key Responsibilities:

• Working with brand strategy & creative teams, cross-agency media teams, and clients – serving as the connective tissue that helps the team see the full potential of ideas and work together to make the greatest impact.
• Developing communications plans, campaign narratives, and cross-channel processes that organize creative, media, and partner principles in a single, integrated campaign presentation.
• Challenging all teams to ideate based on surprising insights and tension that sets the client’s brand apart from competitors and solve tangible consumer challenges.
• Collaborating and integrating with the media client and agency then translating media plan information into actionable takeaways for the broader Martin team’s development needs.
• Becoming a sounding board for both creatives and media clients to bounce ideas around and gut check media choices/plans.
• Considering new and innovative ways to bring the creative idea to life across paid, owned, and earned channels.
• Creating briefs to share with creative teams based on larger paid media executions or valuable insights.
• Providing thought leadership in the following areas: consumer behavior, creative media, emerging media, and technology.
• Working with partner agencies and clients to lead the development of an integrated process that allows all teams to work as efficiently and effectively as possible.
• Challenging and inspiring the Martin creative team by encouraging them to use channels to their maximum potential and illustrating ways media can give creative ideas an extra dimension.

We’d love to hear from you if you… 

• Have 4-5 years of experience as a communications planner, or as a media-based agency strategist (including media planning and digital strategy). 
• Are an empathetic thinker that understands how tension drives both behavior and attention.
• Are able to work closely with both creative and analytic teams – right and left brains – qualitative and quantitative skills.
• Are an energetic and a driven self-starter and a team player with a positive attitude.
• Are able to provide day-to-day strategic leadership to multiple client and partner groups including brand, digital, social, PR, and experience.
• Are a critical thinker with a background in media or communications strategy. Need a working knowledge of current media trends, strategy, and the overall media landscape including TV, digital, Paid/Earned/Owned, partnerships, etc. 
• Have strong interpersonal, verbal and written skills with experience writing briefs and/or presentation decks that carry a strategic thread from strong objectives to activation. 
• Expert at translating brand strategy between multiple partner agencies or internal disciplines.
• Have the ability to present to senior level clients in situations ranging from formal, large audience presentations to small, strategic conversations. 
• Have a passion for research and consumer insights including experience with syndicated tools and alternative research methods.  Must be familiar with, and preferably fond of, finding insights within large data sets and across multiple data sources.
• Have experience analyzing campaign performance and an understanding of the role analytics plays in demonstrate the impact integrated, omni-channel advertising campaigns have on the brand.