Associate Strategy Director

• You’ve got 8 to 10 or more years of experience within an agency environment as a strategist, in research or consumer insight development with a research consultancy, or in a client-side brand management role
• You spot the trends before others do; you’ve got a demonstrated talent for abstract thinking, an instinct for pop culture, and an ability to develop real insight about human behavior
• Versatile and fluent in developing great strategic work that plays across all channels, including broadcast, digital, experiential, and social; demonstrated real-world experience across several flavors of strategic planning preferred (i.e., brand strategy, cultural or creative strategy, content strategy, social strategy or community management, comms planning, multicultural strategy, etc.)
• You can point to meaningful, firsthand experience of effectively designing research that leads to a better creative product; you’re comfortable with many qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and can identify when to use which; you’re quick to develop fluency in a client’s preferred approach to research methodologies, choice of partners, or prioritized metrics
• A confident presenter, facilitator, and interviewer—capable of presenting to and persuading C-level audiences
• You’ve personally fostered strong senior client relationships and are quick to win over new clients by articulating a deep understanding about their business or category
• You’ve got a bachelor’s degree in a relevant area of study; bonus points for a relevant master’s degree

• Immediately develop deep client relationships, serving as a virtual extension of our clients’ marketing or brand teams
• Take the lead on crafting creative briefing materials, brand positioning, brand development strategies, messaging strategies, communications plans, and more; partner with and coach several Account Service team members to improve the agency’s creative briefing process and its overall output
• Be a true partner to our Account Service, Creative, Media, Analytics, Social, and Insights teams; inspire excellent creative work, and tirelessly champion creativity
• Design and execute qualitative and quantitative research projects to aid in our understanding of clients’ business issues, their audiences, trends, and to assess creative opportunities; help the agency navigate the client’s research inputs to best guide our work forward
• Push beyond the obvious information to build a deeper collective agency understanding of your clients’ target audiences
• Proactively develop and articulate clear agency points of view
• Actively seek out ways to further distinguish H/L’s overall strategic offering from competitor agencies
• Other duties as assigned

For SF Bay Area / CA based: H/L offers projected salary range for a position as an estimate of what the company believes is a reasonable pay scale. The actual salary offered to a successful candidate will depend on various factors, including the job's scope and responsibilities, the candidate's qualifications, budget availability within the department, internal pay equity, geographic location, and external market pay rates for similar positions. The salary range for this position is expected to be between $160,000 - $175,000 per year.

Since 1985, H/L has been fiercely independent and making Momentum. Our strengths include local and national media activations, creative development, insights and analytics, full-scale digital and video production, multicultural marketing, and PR.

We’re headquartered in Oakland, California, with people in 21 states, and offices in Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix, and St. Louis. What unites H/Lers across the country is a common drive—to pioneer new ways to push clients’ businesses forward and serve the communities we call home. Learn more at  hl.agency.