Associate Director, Strategy

About the role

We're looking for an Associate Director, Strategy to help lead strategic planning across a fast-moving, high-visibility sports and entertainment business. This person will sit at the intersection of client objectives, fan behavior, cultural trends, media strategy, audience insights, and execution.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a strategic lead and trusted partner for assigned franchises, deeply understanding their business, audience, category, and growth objectives.
• Build clear strategic frameworks that connect goals, consumer insights, cultural context, media opportunities, and measurable business outcomes.
• Translate client briefs and business challenges into integrated strategic recommendations across media, content, partnerships, and activation.
• Identify key cultural, consumer, category, and competitive signals and turn them into actionable insights.
• Lead development of insight-driven media strategies that are audience-first, data-informed, culturally relevant, and commercially grounded.
• Partner closely with internal teams across planning, investment, analytics, activation to ensure strategy is translated clearly into execution.
• Bring strong data-centric thinking to briefs, plans, optimizations, and recommendations, using audience, performance, platform, and market data to guide decision-making.
• Own consumer and fan insights, ensuring they inspire strong tactical ideas and clear channel strategies.
• Identify opportunities for cross-platform, partnership, sponsorship, content, or innovation-led solutions when appropriate.
• Bridge conceptual thinking with analytical problem-solving, balancing big ideas with practical, measurable execution.
• Develop compelling narratives, presentations, and strategic POVs that simplify complexity and influence clients and internal stakeholders.
• Lead, coach, and motivate team members, helping raise the quality of strategic thinking, collaboration, and output.
• Champion effective use of planning and audience tools, including Omni or similar platforms, to support audience development, activation strategy, inventory analysis, and measurement.
• Maintain high standards for client service through responsiveness, ownership, attention to detail, and thoughtful communication.

Requirements

• A strategic thinker who can connect business goals to audience behavior, cultural context, and media opportunities.
• Strong analytical ability, with the confidence to derive actionable insights from data and translate them into smart recommendations.
• Exceptional storytelling and narrative-building skills, able to make complex ideas clear, persuasive, and executive-ready.
• Strong understanding of media planning, buying, activation, and optimization across digital, social, streaming, linear and/or emerging channels.
• Ability to operate in a fast-paced environment with shifting priorities, tight timelines, and high expectations.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build trust across clients, internal teams, and external partners.
• Strong project management instincts, with the ability to keep multiple workstreams moving without losing strategic focus.
• Comfort working in a matrixed environment and influencing without direct authority.
• A highly collaborative, low-ego approach, someone who can lead the thinking while bringing others along.
• Strong judgment, curiosity, and a proactive approach to problem-solving.
• Understanding of financial operations, budget management, strategic planning, and media activation.
• Familiarity with media planning, audience, buying, measurement, and reporting tools.
• Ability to identify process improvements and build repeatable mechanisms that improve team effectiveness.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 5+ years of experience in strategy, media strategy, communications planning, media operations, brand strategy, or related roles.
• Experience in an agency, media company, sports organization, entertainment company, platform, or high-growth brand environment preferred.
• Strong knowledge of media planning, buying, and optimization across multiple channels.
• Experience working across sports, entertainment, consumer brands, or culturally driven categories strongly preferred.

Skills

• Strategic thinking
• Data analysis
• Storytelling
• Media planning and buying
• Project management
• Collaboration
• Financial acumen

Benefits

Comprehensive benefits package including health insurance, retirement savings plan, paid time off, and more.

Pay

$70,000.00 - $125,000.00

Schedule

Our objective is to increase the requirement over time, and many of our agencies as well as Omnicom's corporate group already require five days of in-office attendance. Employees are required to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager.