ROLE OVERVIEW

Croud is recruiting a Strategy & Planning Associate Director to help develop, coordinate, and lead our strategy offering in New York. Together we want to create a new type of strategic process: one that is based on intelligence data surfacing actionable insights, forming a connection to brand from our performance heritage, and actively preparing our clients and solutions for the next iteration of the media landscape.

Croud is a marketing agency with a unique business model, recently named Campaign's Global Performance Marketing Agency of the Year.

Located in the heart of Soho, our brand new New York office is home to a group of highly-skilled digital experts, passionate about driving innovation and delivering great work for clients. With a rapidly expanding team and client portfolio, Croud New York offers hands-on experience working with some of the world's leading brands across every industry sector.

Find out more about Croud NY here!

We are investing in Strategy & Planning as a priority arm of the business, and we want to add to our quickly growing US team with additional leadership. The global Strategy & Planning has continued to be the quickest expanding vertical in the business and this US role will sit alongside our UK counterparts to form our key proposition.

This role within the Strategy & Planning team is to create solutions that act as the connective tissue to drive for our clients & Croud. This role will be responsible for improving our client’s business by creating strategies that connect brand, marketing, and commerce. Developing partnerships that will foster new opportunities. Delivering best in class deployment and innovation. Defining the key foundation for the activations and experiences that will realize our client’s future. We’re looking for someone who can apply creativity and imagination to their campaign planning, and who can successfully develop and pitch big new media initiatives.

The right hire will share Croud’s values:

• Passion: loving what you do and being driven to excel with each new project/client

• Imagination: meeting challenges creatively and ready to try new ideas

• Integrity: accountable and always excellent to one another

RESPONSIBILITIES

• As Strategy & Planning Associate Director, there is no such thing as a typical day as you will constantly be challenged to build brands, push partnerships & bring new thinking.

1. Strategy: Oversee building of this vertical as well as managing team members that fall within this growth area

2. Brand Building: Understand client’s business KPIs and create programs to connect their initiatives to drive brand growth.

3. Deployment of Vision & Partnerships: Define a digital program's strategic vision, real operations and negotiate key partnerships to further the brand.

4. New Business: Work with new business teams on Croud’s proposition and pitch storytelling and platform strategy for all cross-channel clients

5. Innovation: Facilitating effective brainstorming and ideation sessions to spur growth, turning ideas into actionable programs and/or products.

Examples will include:

• Work closely with senior client stakeholders to identify and solve key marketing challenges, as well as internal collaboration with other teams at Croud to pull plans together

• Lead various components of strategy projects (e.g., positioning, architecture, naming, design, activation).

• Creating compelling stories that are able to engage, enthuse and impel various audiences to clear shared action.

• Reviewing, analyzing and helping teams to align brand experiences to marketing plans and drive measurable results.

• Lead or participate in project post-mortems; capture key learnings and develop case studies as appropriate.

• Create exhilaration sessions, testing roadmaps and agendas to guide brand building.

• Lead strategic review of solution development; ensure experiences, technology and marketing are delivered on-strategy.

This role would sit within our US Management team and feed into teams internationally. We want you to be a part of the Croud leadership team and community, contributing to our proposition and driving the business forward.

The successful candidate in this role as Strategy & Planning Associate Director will report to the Director of Strategy & Planning and work closely with Croud’s Biddable team, Media Measurement Director and VP of Client Leadership in the US.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Essential:

• Demonstrable in-depth experience as an Associate Director. We’re open to candidates from comms, media or digital planning backgrounds, or who currently work in strategy roles.

• Deep experience working with different flavors of strategy (brand, comms, data); and the ability to lead successful integrated projects.

• Experience of campaign planning that has driven demonstrable results for clients.

• Expected to be an expert across all media, including digital, social and traditional, demonstrating advanced knowledge in all areas.

• Establishes & oversees team’s planning process including research, strategy, evaluations and recommendations of media vehicles and tactics, through plan development, presentation, execution and follow-up.

• Extensive experience of presenting to clients and ’selling-in’ ideas, and of working closely with senior stakeholders to understand their business objectives.

• Great communication and presentation skills, with good attention to detail.

• Confidence in presenting and pitching, and preparing proposals.

• Be an ambassador in the development of new insights, audience segmentation and cultural analysis that will build and clients’ businesses.

• Experience managing a team.

• Responsible for growth and development of direct reports / team by providing clear, direct, actionable and motivating feedback

Desirable:

• Extensive experience of presenting to clients and ’selling-in’ ideas, and of working closely with senior stakeholders to understand their business objectives .

• Hands-on experience of key digital marketing platforms is preferred. These include (but are not limited to) Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Ads Manager, DV360

• Hands-on experience of industry planning & insight tools is a nice-to-have. These include (but are not limited to) TGI, GlobalWebIndex, SimilarWeb.

• Represent Croud at industry events, public speaking and thought leadership.

• Experience in CPG and/or Multi Brand Retail a bonus, but not a requirement.

KEY STAKEHOLDERS

• Line Manager: Director of Strategy & Planning 

• Key Stakeholders: VP of Client Leadership, Media Measurement Director, 

• Other stakeholders: US MD, US Biddable Media Team

COMPANY BENEFITS

Every employee is eligible for the benefits listed on our careers site which include:

• 20 days vacation a year + 10 public holidays 
• Sales commission 
• 401k plan
• Equity in Croud US following six months of employment
• Full Paid Medical Insurance (including dental and vision) 
• New Laptop provided
• Home office chair and monitor 
• Free Citi Bike membership
• Recruitment referrals bonus
• Classpass contributions
• Fruit, breakfast cereals, snacks, soft drinks and tea & coffee all provided
• Quarterly team offsites / Regular socials
• Agile working policy

Standard hours are from 9.00am to 5.30pm, there’s flexibility if agreed in advance with your line managers (it may also be necessary on occasions to work outside of these hours).

Croud is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the grounds of a person's gender, marital status, race, religion, color, age, disability or sexual orientation. All candidates will be assessed based on merit, qualifications and their ability to perform the requirements of the role.