Mid-weight Strategist

time left to apply End Date: April 30, 2025 (18 days left to apply)

job requisition id JR

Agency : Havas London

Job Description : Havas London is Havas UK's flagship creative agency. Our mission is to make a meaningful difference to brands, businesses and people.

We're the only major UK advertising agency to share a single building with every other specialist business in our network, all under a single P&L. Sitting within the Havas Village in King's Cross affords us some clear advantages; none more so than our ability to build bespoke, multi-discipline teams around our clients, whatever their business need.

These are not teams that are together on paper alone, but teams physically, culturally, logistically and financially aligned. This set-up allows us to complement - not replicate - our specialisms.

We're looking for a curious, collaborative, and creative Midweight Strategist to join us at Havas London.
From the first spark of a brief to the final execution, you'll be hands-on across the full strategic journey-partnering with teams to shape thinking, build compelling territories, and turn insight into impactful creative. You'll play a key role in crafting strategy, digging into research (from desk research to social listening), co-writing briefs, and helping steer the creative process. Alongside the team, you'll also be presenting work to clients, developing stimulus for testing, and staying sharp on culture, competitors, and consumer behaviour. It's a role for someone who thrives on variety, loves getting stuck in, and wants to help make meaningful work that makes a difference.

RESPONSIBILITIES

DEFINING

This is all about how we understand and define the problem to be solved, becoming experts in the client's business and understanding what success looks like and how to achieve it.

1. Understanding the business - challenges, growth opportunities, category threats, new entrants.
2. Identifying the creative opportunity within a brief.
3. Understanding the real world context the brief lives within - socially, politically, environmentally, financially, culturally and technologically - and connecting the dots.
4. Understanding people - having our feet on the ground, not head in the industry.
5. Insight mining and development - finding new ways into the challenge, unlocking, reframing and challenging the status quo.
6. Setting KPIs and what success looks like. Putting the power of strategic thought at the centre of creative excellence.

As a Strategist, in this area:

1. You will work closely with junior clients to help understand the business and marketing challenge.
2. You're translating the client brief into a clear problem to solve and definition of what success looks like.
3. You're defining KPIs and measurements of success against a brief.
4. You're understanding the real world context in which the business operates and how this impacts the role of the brand and our approach for comms.
5. You're starting to shape positioning territories using Meaningful Brands.
6. You're delving deeply into research and insight tools to discover buried nuggets to drive the strategic planning process.
7. You spend the time talking to other people, gaining first hand insight from those who will have different opinions.
8. People come to you for the answer and if you don't know, you'll have the resourcefulness to find it quickly.
9. You are able to differentiate between a fact and an insight.

DEVELOPING

This is all about how you develop the work, from strategy all through creative and measuring results:

1. Being clear on the key parts of the brief, flexing with creative development but keeping in mind what the work always needs to deliver.
2. Working closely with creatives to build a meaningful idea that can inspire change.
3. Being clear in your role and taking responsibility for your output.
4. Rolling in and getting your hands dirty.
5. Being impatient to act now.
6. Eyes on the output, not strat for strat sake.
7. Developing clear campaign structures that ensure the create works hard in all channels.

As a Strategist, in this area:

1. You understand the process and are able to drive the thinking forwards, knowing what will be needed to move the work on.
2. You offer yourself up to help on projects, taking a proactive approach within the team.
3. You're comfortable working with research agencies, creating stim and briefing them, in order to develop the creative thinking.
4. You are involved in the oversight of other agency insight pieces.
5. You're ensuring the work stays on brief and that the objectives and KPIs continue to hold true.
6. You're comfortable developing comms plans and ecosystems that ensure the campaign has structure and talks to people in the right place at the right time.

STORYTELLING

This is about being clear, persuasive, compelling and passionate in what we say and how we say it.

1. Developing simple written narratives that bring new thinking and never regurgitate the brief.
2. Making the strategy inspiring and thought provoking.

Contract Type : Permanent

Here at Havas across the group we pride ourselves on being committed to offering equal opportunities to all potential employees and have zero tolerance for discrimination. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applicants irrespective of age, sex, race, ethnicity, disability and other factors that have no bearing on an individual's ability to perform their job.