Sr. Strategist

Bring culture, insights, and strategy together at H/L, where meaningful marketing begins with understanding people—their experiences, behaviors, communities, and culture. We are seeking a Senior Strategist to integrate these perspectives into integrated campaigns for automotive, lifestyle, insurance, and other consumer brands.

About the role

Working closely with the Director of Multicultural Marketing, this role will translate cultural and consumer insights into strategic recommendations, campaign approaches, and meaningful brand experiences across channels. As a member of the multicultural marketing team, you’ll partner with account, creative, media, social, and production teams to shape culturally relevant work and support impactful client solutions. This is a hybrid role based at the H/L Oakland, CA office.

Responsibilities

• Partner with multicultural marketing leadership to support strategic development across client work.
• Bring cultural insights and audience understanding into campaign recommendations and brand storytelling.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop integrated marketing solutions across channels.
• Contribute to proactive planning and opportunities that strengthen multicultural thinking across the agency.
• Help deliver meaningful work across consumer categories and brands.
• Develop strategic briefs, messaging frameworks, and campaign points of view that connect business goals with consumer needs.
• Translate cultural, behavioral, and audience insights into actionable recommendations.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen brand relevance through culturally informed strategies.
• Collaborate with creative, media, social, production, and account teams to bring culturally relevant campaigns to life across brand, social, influencer, experiential, and media channels.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to bring strategic ideas from concept through execution.
• Build connected storytelling approaches across paid, owned, earned, and social platforms.
• Analyze audience, media, and campaign performance insights to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Apply cultural, audience, and performance insights to inform recommendations, optimize campaign approaches, and uncover opportunities to strengthen brand connections.
• Stay connected to evolving cultural trends, consumer behaviors, and platform dynamics.
• Support day-to-day strategy development across campaigns and initiatives by translating direction, insights, and objectives into actionable recommendations.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure multicultural considerations are thoughtfully integrated into both multicultural and broader market opportunities.
• Support proactive planning efforts that strengthen culturally relevant work across the agency.
• Partner with the Director of Multicultural Marketing to support strategic planning and campaign development.
• Contribute cultural and audience perspectives to client conversations, campaign planning, and agency initiatives.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in strategy, communications planning, brand planning, or integrated marketing within an advertising, media, or creative agency environment.
• Experience developing strategic recommendations, briefs, and campaign frameworks.
• Strong understanding of multicultural audiences, including AACM, ACM, and HCM communities, at local and national levels.
• Ability to connect qualitative and quantitative insights to meaningful marketing strategies.
• Experience collaborating with creative and media teams throughout campaign development.
• Strong understanding of media ecosystems, audience segmentation, platform behaviors, and performance metrics.
• Strong communication and presentation skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with automotive, lifestyle, QSR, retail, insurance, or other consumer brands.
• Experience navigating cultural nuance, identity dynamics, and acculturation.
• Experience working across both multicultural and general market campaigns.
• Spanish-language fluency or additional multilingual capabilities.
• Ability to support primary research in brand studies and consumer behavior.

Pay

For SF Bay Area / California-based candidates, the salary range for this position is expected to be between $90,000 – $115,000 annually. Actual compensation offered will be determined based on experience, qualifications, budget considerations, internal pay equity, geographic location, and market compensation data. Compensation for candidates outside of California varies by geographic area.

About H/L Agency

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. Headquartered in Oakland, California, with people in 20 states and offices in Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix, and St. Louis, H/L pioneers new ways to push clients’ businesses forward and serve the communities we call home.