Midweight Influence Creative Strategist

Midweight Influence Creative Strategist  
 

Department: PR & Influence
Location: London 
Contract type: Fixed-Term (12 months) 
Full Time/Part time: Full Time 
Reporting into: Creative Strategy Lead  

About Ogilvy: 

Ogilvy UK has been creating iconic ideas that deliver impact at scale for clients ever since David Ogilvy founded the company in 1948. The agency specialises in bringing together brand advertising, customer experience marketing, PR, influence and consulting, all fuelled by Behavioural Science. Our world-class award-winning creative campaigns deliver solutions for clients including Sainsbury's, Lloyds Banking Group, Madri, Unilever and Mondelēz International. 

Ogilvy's influencer marketing practice is the largest globally; we are proud to be the most awarded influencer agency for six years running and the recipient of the Cannes Grand Prix for Social & Creator for two consecutive years.   

Ogilvy UK also hosts the world's biggest festival of behavioural science and creativity, Nudgestock – which is now in its 12th year. James Murphy is the CEO of Ogilvy Group UK, which includes Ogilvy UK and New Commercial Arts (NCA), a boutique creative agency he co-founded in 2020, recently acquired by WP

The role:

We are looking for a brilliant creative strategist who can generate award-winning campaign ideas and influencer marketing strategy that is rooted in culture and earns the right to be seen and talked about. 

We need someone who is influence first, engrained in social culture and always on top of the latest channel formats and trends. You should be comfortable with both paid and earned ideas, and excited by the idea of working across a plethora of portfolios.  As part of the Influence offering at Ogilvy UK, you will bring insight, inspiration and creative energy to a broad range of high-profile corporate and consumer brands across both paid and earned. 

You'll be working primarily within the Influence team – so knowing how to earn attention is key – but earned-first experience and insight is increasingly relevant for all of Ogilvy's mega businesses.  From customer experience, behavioural science or advertising and branding – you'll have plenty of shiny new toys to play with. 

The mission of the Influence Creative Strategy team is ultimately to make the Influence output of the agency the best it can be, which can only happen with brilliant creative guidance, smart strategy and co-creation with our influencer talent. Projects range from brand positioning projects, launching new products with influencers and services, developing communications frameworks amongst many other things.  

In our world, no day, nor brief, is the same, meaning an embracing of agility and efficiency are vital. You will know the importance of working collaboratively with other creatives to reach the best ideas, along with our specialist influence accounts team who deeply understand our clients' needs. And of course, always bringing a natural curiosity for the many different ways customers interact with brands.  

The Skillset 

We are looking for someone who is excited to build effective, award-winning paid and earned creative with influencers at the heart. You will be a strong ideas person, with a passion for the social space and intuitively understand what "good" influence creative looks like. 

Conceptual and Strategic Thinking: What have we been asked to do, what can we do, what should we do? 

Challenge assumptions & lead across disciplines so the entire picture makes sense. 

Deeply understand the role of influence across channel. Continuously look for opportunities to bring the outside in to allow for fresh thinking across the team. Identify the client problem and get beyond treating symptoms.  Fully immersed in what a great solution would achieve and proactively consider how you would measure success. Help clients to understand the role for influence within their broader comms and marketing planning. 

Seen as integral member of the client team "the go to consult" for influence ideas. 

Tapped into culture: Constantly finding inspiration in the social space.  

Trusted to identify the right tension or trend, for the right brand, at the right time. 

Be our cultural ear to the ground, bring new inspiration and research on trends, tribes, new innovations, and fresh new thinking within influencer marketing and beyond.  Bring the best of external insight to sharpen briefs and identify compelling creative territories. Working knowledge of social strategies across influence and beyond, constantly up-to-date with platform changes. Identifying cultural tension points that are relevant for our brands to react to. 

Ideation: Able to build award-winning, effective, influence-first creative 

Act as an idea originator and proactively seeks to develop new ideas. 

Skilled at building earned-first and influence-first creative that drive results. Reliable idea originator; proactively seeking to develop new creative ideas with influence at the core or as an essential activation channel. Champion of influence ideas within the agency and with the client through their entire business. Has a wide breadth in tone of voice and can build a story that will translate to any media.  Brings strong cultural knowledge and relevancy to their work and inspire the creative community. Develops proactive briefs and inspires client and agency on the potential of influence.  Ensures channel/technology/audience thinking is baked into every creative strategy. Can articulate how an idea can influence all elements of client business rather than just comms. 

Storytelling: Defining the idea, proving, communicating & selling it. 

Pioneer new ways of framing and selling and idea, consistently using compelling soundbites. 

Prolific and confident delivery of ideas.  Can structure and lead a winning pitch with support from others, or whose addition to the pitch process would strengthen the response. Can hold senior level and company-wide presentations. A highly polished and compelling presenter in off the cuff and planned situations. 

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