Vice President of Brand Strategy and Governance - Global Marketing

The Executive Office plays an integral role in setting and advancing Goldman Sachs’ corporate strategy, and in preserving the firm’s distinctive culture. We are responsible for safeguarding the firm’s relationship with alumni, clients, shareholders, policymakers, and the broader public, while ensuring that our own people remain informed about the firm’s evolving priorities. We also partner with the businesses to source high-impact opportunities in line with the firm’s social and sustainability agendas.

About Goldman Sachs Marketing

Led by the firm’s first Chief Marketing Officer, the marketing function at Goldman Sachs is backed by momentum and a broad imperative to unify the discipline, driving a business-critical function focused on the firm’s future growth. As such, Global Marketing is focused on building out a data-and-technology enabled team of growth marketers, delivering value for the brand and the business. The organization consists of Corporate Reputation Marketing and business marketing teams, as well as center of excellence (COE) teams like paid media, research, and design. Together, these functions collaborate to build a unified, scalable, and consistent approach to marketing the brand and its offerings. Our mission is to drive commercial impact for the firm and the businesses we serve.

About the Role

The VP of Brand Strategy and Governance is responsible for delivering a world-class Goldman Sachs brand expression through a range of strategic solutions. From narratives and value propositions to frameworks and creative platforms, this senior leader should wield a strategic toolkit that’s as broad as it is deep. The ideal candidate will be equal parts high-level thinker and hands-on doer, as comfortable being generative and driving ideation as they are executing and sweating the details.

Critical to this role is a strong brand governance muscle—this leader will be expected to evaluate the firm’s existing (visual and verbal) governance system, manage inbound governance requests, and optimize the governance infrastructure to be faster, more efficient, and eventually, partially automated.

In addition to enterprise-level (i.e., Goldman Sachs corporate brand) work, the VP of Brand Strategy and Governance will partner with businesses across the firm to support their strategic and creative needs. This role will partner closely with cross-functional teams (e.g., Research and Effectiveness, Design, Integrated Marketing) to ensure clarity and consistency in messaging and exceptional standards of execution. 

The ideal candidate brings proven brand strategy and governance expertise, sound reputational judgment, experience managing teams and agency partners, confidence owning and presenting high-quality creative outputs. They are relentlessly curious and perpetual students of the Goldman Sachs brand and its businesses. They are willing to dive deep into complex challenges and recommend strategically rigorous solutions that are brand appropriate, audience aligned, and commercially minded.  

This role reports to the Global Head of Corporate Reputation and Integrated Marketing. 

Core Responsibilities

• Partner with teams of multidisciplinary marketers to drive a deep understanding of brand strategy fundamentals, tools, and ways of working
• Own the development of brand strategy and planning solutions (e.g., narratives, value propositions, messaging strategies, naming guidance) for the corporate brand and businesses across the firm
• Uplevel the brief creation and agency prospecting processes across Global Marketing in service of exceptional creative and strong relationships with world-class partners
• Improve and uphold the design governance process to ensure a unified, One Goldman Sachs visual identity, maintaining the highest brand standards and ensuring adherence to brand guidelines in a range of creative executions across the firm
• Evaluate and evolve the firmwide governance system and brand hygiene standards (for logo use and naming guidance) across the firm, including the testing and eventual adoption of new tools and technologies that drive efficiency and automation
• Developing best-in-class value propositions and messaging strategies for businesses and offerings across the firm

Qualifications

• 12+ years of relevant brand strategy experience, including fluency across key strategy disciplines, including traditional brand strategy and planning, messaging and communications strategy, architecture and portfolio strategy, and naming and taxonomy 

• Proven track record and developing and delivering brand strategy outputs and governance systems and processes for highly complex businesses that serve a range of corporate, institutional, and individual audiences

• Exceptional communication skills, including the ability to tell the story of the work and its impact coupled with confidence owning a room of senior leaders and stakeholders