Associate Director, Brand Strategy

The Associate Director, Brand Strategy is an experienced professional who leads key deliverables, projects, and teammates within MBLM’s consulting discipline. They are hands-on contributors who use their experience to create agency strategy outputs and solve client challenges. These include, but are not limited to: brand positioning, brand architecture, messaging, naming for new companies and products, brand campaign concepts, brand research, thought leadership approaches, and writing for brand touchpoints ranging from corporate and institutional websites to marketing videos. They pursue a high standard of excellence and ensure the strategic and written materials that they create are compelling, creative, and defensible. This position is for a senior professional with over 6 years of experience who has shaped brand strategy, written messaging, and defined go-to-market copy for B2B brands, and is seeking an opportunity to impact a high-growth brand for an exciting client. Autonomy, creativity, and problem-solving ability are valued. This is a 2-month short-term contract role with the potential for future full-time employment.

Responsibilities

Owns the production of strategic and writing work products, including: desktop research and analysis, defining themes and concepts, writing strategic positioning frameworks, writing creative market-ready copy that adopts brand voice and strategy to communicate, constructing frameworks, and brainstorming names; Think and work in a structured way: define information needs from client briefs, seek out data and research where valid, use those inputs to create insights, understand client organization and issues, and use strategic and creative thinking to write solutions that are actionable and address the brief; Simplify the complex and organize information into logical constructs and systems, including understanding clients’ complex product portfolios, with the intent of marketing them to stakeholders; In coordination with discipline and account leads, deliver work that is creative, on-brief, on-time, and truly understands and solves client challenges; Present effectively to clients, deal with difficult client questions, and participate in/run strategy portions of client sessions/meetings; Interface with client contacts on key strategic issues, establishing credibility and trusted relationships; Aggressively pursue understanding of the client’s businesses and be viewed as a knowledge expert; Adopt MBLM’s strategy processes; Work with the partner leading strategy to seek feedback, revise work iteratively, and pursue a standard of creative and strategic excellence

Requirements

Six or more years of experience in brand strategy, agency, or in-house at a major B2B company with an exceptional brand; Expert-level command of the English language, with excellent writing and speaking skills; An analytical and inquisitive mindset and curiosity about the industries we work with; Proven experience with brand (not campaign) strategy for B2B and B2B2C brands; Demonstrated ability to conduct desktop research and assessments to understand and analyze brands and their communications, identifying areas of parity and opportunity; Demonstrated ability to, based on inputs from research, create differentiated and creatively powerful foundational brand strategy for B2B brands (brand promises/value propositions/brand positioning statements/brand narratives); Demonstrated ability to define tone of voice for a B2B brand, create messaging frameworks to guide future writing, and write creative brand messaging for touchpoints; Demonstrated ability to create compelling campaign themes and taglines; Can adopt new AI-native workflows and tools to augment work processes; Attention to detail and rigorous dedication to quality control across all output; A leader and a team player able to work with people across all MBLM disciplines and levels; Able to effectively multitask and deal with time pressures, keeping team members apprised; Fosters autonomy in their role while adhering to the highest standards of quality; Expert-level skills with the Apple iWork and Microsoft Office suites

Benefits

Potential for future full-time employment