Senior Strategy Director

M+C Saatchi Consulting is looking for a Senior Strategy Director to join our London team. This is a pivotal leadership role within the practice, offering the opportunity to work with some of the world's most ambitious brands and organisations, helping them navigate growth, change, and transformation. We're looking for a strategic leader who combines intellectual curiosity, commercial instinct, and a passion for solving complex challenges to create meaningful impact for clients and our business.

About the Role

The Senior Strategy Director is one of the most senior consulting roles in our London team. The role spans the full breadth of our brand-led consulting work - brand strategy and positioning, portfolio strategy, brand architecture, innovation, customer and category growth, and commercial transformation.

As a Senior Strategy Director, you will own and lead the most complex engagements in the practice. You will take significant responsibility for the quality of our thinking, the growth of our key client relationships, and the development of new business - both organic (expanding what we do for existing clients) and net new (winning clients we do not yet work with). You will also be a senior voice in shaping our offer and developing the more junior consultants in the team.

What you'll do:

Leading client engagements

• Independently lead large, transformational brand strategy engagements end-to-end - from framing the brief, to designing the approach, to delivering board-level recommendations

• Act as a senior advisor to client C-suites and CMOs, shaping brand-led growth agendas with board-level impact

• Take ultimate responsibility for the clarity, rigour and inspiration of client deliverables

• Lead the storytelling and strategic recommendations on the work, supported by the broader Consulting team

Driving new business and account growth

• Own a portfolio of pillar and secondary accounts, taking responsibility for retention, growth and financial performance

• Actively target relevant new clients and lead high-profile pitches and proposals

• Identify organic growth opportunities within existing relationships and convert them into meaningful, sustained engagements

• Mentor and direct others in the team to win

Research and intelligence

• Be fluent in using the full insight toolkit - qualitative methods, quantitative research and analytics, and AI-powered tools and methods - and how to apply them to brand strategy engagements

• Push the quality of our analytical approach, challenging internal teams and external suppliers to deliver world-class outputs

• Use insight to generate actionable brand strategy recommendations that clients can put to work

Shaping our offer and IP

• Contribute to the development of new tools, frameworks and proprietary thinking that strengthen our consulting offer

• Develop fresh content and perspectives - including published thought leadership - that generate new client conversations and position M+C Saatchi as a go-to authority for brand strategy and brand-led growth

• Build on and contribute to our proprietary thinking, including our work on Return on Cultural Power (RoCP)

Leadership and team development

• Coach, develop and line manage more junior consultants, helping them stretch their strategic, commercial and craft skills

• Set the standard for client management, project delivery and team behaviour

• Act as an ambassador for M+C Saatchi's culture and values, internally and externally

About You

This is a senior hire, and we are looking for a stellar mix of experience, judgement and ambition. The successful candidate will have most or all of the following:

• Extensive experience in brand strategy consulting, ideally with significant time spent in a brand-led consultancy with strong commercial rigour and growth strategy capabilities

• A track record of leading complex brand strategy and innovation engagements end-to-end for major global clients

• Fluency across qualitative, quantitative and AI-powered research methods, and the ability to use them to underpin sharp brand strategy with commercial rigour

• A demonstrable track record of driving agency growth: winning organic and net new business through pitches, proposals and personal client relationships

• Outstanding storytelling skills: able to translate complex thinking into clear, inspiring narratives that move client decisions

• Strong commercial instincts: comfortable owning financial responsibility for accounts and projects, and confident balancing creative ambition with commercial discipline

• A mature, board-credible presence: comfortable advising C-suite clients and facing into difficult conversations

• A coaching and developmental instinct, with a track record of bringing on the next generation of strategists

• The ability to think laterally and creatively, and to inspire others to do the same

• The right to work in the UK (we are unable to sponsor work visas for this role)

ABOUT M+C SAATCHI CONSULTING

M+C Saatchi Consulting is part of the CEP Engine - combining Consulting, Experience, and Performance to deliver growth powered by culture. Our brands and teams span multiple geographies, with EMEA representing a priority region and home to some of our most significant client partnerships.

ABOUT M+C SAATCHI GROUP

M+C Saatchi Group is a creative solutions company that connects specialist expertise, fuelled by data, technology, and culture, to help clients navigate, create, and lead meaningful change. The Group operates across five core divisions: Connected Creativity; Passion Marketing; Global & Social Issues; Brand, Experience & Innovation; and Performance Media. Headquartered in London, operations span 23 countries with major hubs in the UK, Europe, US, Middle East & Africa, Asia and Australia. M+C Saatchi Group’s two principles, Diversity of Thought and Brutal Simplicity of Thought, guide how they build teams and solve problems.

M+C Saatchi Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer which does not discriminate, celebrates diversity and bases all hiring and promotion decisions solely on talent and capability, without regard for any personal characteristics.

All employee information is kept confidential according to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

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