About Us

UM is a global media agency committed to empowering brands to their full potential of growth through the power of patterns by opening a brand’s aperture and rejecting black and white marketing decisions. As the leading global media network in IPG Mediabrands, UM operates in over 100 countries, with more than 3,000 people serving a roster of global clients including American Express, General Mills, Emirates, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss & Co, Dyson, Enterprise holdings, Upfield, Just Eat Takeaway.com and Mattel. For more information, please visit uk.umww.com

Position Summary

UM places a particular emphasis on strategy as a key business driver. The Chief Strategy Officer is a crucial Leadership role responsible for innovation, positioning, and new business across the Region. As Chief Strategy Officer you will report to the President of UM EMEA and will lead a high-performing, talented Strategy department.

A future-facing strategist with an understanding and passion for business and consumer strategy in the media space, this person will be a progressive thinker and proven leader. Responsible for UM’s strategy product and capability roadmap in partnership with the Leadership team, the Chief Strategy Officer will be the driving force in understanding client needs and marketplace opportunities to identify capabilities. The Chief Strategy Officer will lead UM EMEA’s strategic offering, driving organic growth with existing clients and developing a best-in-market strategy team. With a will to win and a proven track record in founding and cementing new client relationships, the Chief Strategy Officer will serve as a fundamental contributor to the agency’s client relationships and new business efforts, developing winning strategies and propositions for existing and prospective clients.

Key Responsibilities

External/Client

Identify the client’s key business challenges or opportunities, and quantify the outcomes required to meet a client’s business goals, maintaining positive client relationships
Set challenges and create a regional culture for exemplary award-winning work
Confident approach to presenting to C-level client contacts across a range of topics, both within the usual wheelhouse of a media agency & outside, if the opportunity arises
Developing the next iteration of our established thought leadership agenda
Proactively identify strategic issues before they become real client problems, and demonstrate strong analytical and strategic skills to help address them
Oversee strategic responses for UM’s most critical clients from briefing to final document
Work closely with clients and the wider agency on helping to ‘transform’ their media needs and operationalize different multi-market structures and needs

Internal

Represent the strategy function in the UM EMEA regional leadership Team
Development of the high-performing strategy team
Set examples of ways of working, motivating the team to produce smarter thinking across platforms and touchpoints to deliver more innovative and creative strategic thinking
Ensure UM EMEA Strategy team continues to pioneer and develop world-class talent and be a beacon for the agency
Recruit and motivate resources
Create a powerful UM EMEA story, look, and feel with an edge to be more disruptive and provocative
Able to deliver a strategy with insight, audience & targeting info with first thoughts & a POV on the potential strategic platform and communications architecture
Work to continuously refine, train, and embed UM’s process and capabilities to keep it best in class in the industry
Work with the audience, research, and analytics function to define a robust measurement and learning plan to measure and optimize media plans

Commercial

Working closely with the Business Development team to develop innovative pitch-winning strategies
A key contributor to Agency & Client revenue opportunities by improving the teams’ Strategic output and positioning the strategy team to drive new products and services
Lead the strategy function in new business pitches
Work with key client business partners to pilot, refine, productise, and sell in new or evolved strategy capabilities – positioning strategy as a growth driver to our clients and the agency

Desired Skills & Experience

You are a progressive, strategic, and critical thinker with a passion for client engagement, and identifying real solutions and insights that will make a difference to clients, well-versed in media operations and landscape
You possess a keen understanding of the ever-changing media and digital landscape with a point of view on the trends that are pushing the industry; understand and remain absorbed in understanding people’s motivations and behaviors in the shifting landscape
You have a passion for people and experience in team management and leadership
You have good attention and focus on detail
You have a thorough approach to seeing through the delivery of products, projects, and services
You are a strong communicator and skilled storyteller, who sets the bar high for themselves and their team, with the ability to bring multiple, diverse groups of people together to define a single end-to-end solution
You have highly developed business acumen with solid commercial, strategic, and analytical skills
You are tenacious and relentless, never back down from a challenge; a superb problem solver who looks for the unexpected answer
You embrace new ideas and experimentation; are naturally curious, and are energized rather than intimidated by ambiguity and not afraid to fail
Ideally you will have multi-market experience but this isn’t essential

At Mediabrands and Kinesso, we celebrate difference and believe this makes us stronger. Mediabrands and Kinesso are equal opportunity employers and committed to championing an inclusive culture that provides a sense of belonging for all our employees. We do not discriminate against any applicant based on age, disability, race, colour, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, belief, marital status or any other characteristic protected by law.

Please reach out to our Talent Inclusion Specialist Jess at [email protected] if you would like to have a confidential conversation regarding any adjustments that would ensure our recruitment process is accessible for you. Please note requesting a reasonable adjustment will not affect your application.

UM is a media agency designed to Futureproof our clients’ businesses for the now and the next. We leverage the transformational power of rich business analytics and real-time intelligence to maximize growth and activate the full consumer journey across content and connections – all rooted in culture.

We believe in purposeful growth, and our Better World Media philosophy puts diversity, equity and sustainability at the heart of our business operations. We are committed to investing in diverse and responsible media partners, in order to drive more meaningful and authentic messaging for our clients.

As the leading global media network in IPG Mediabrands, UM operates in over 100 countries, with over 3,000 people innovating on a roster of international clients. Here in the UK, we are proud to work with some of the world’s most exciting brands, including Accenture, American Express, Just Eat Takeaway, Johnson & Johnson, Mattel, MoneySuperMarket and Spotify. London is also the home of our UM EMEA Headquarters, providing the full spectrum of integrated media and marketing services to global clients across the region. Our in-house tools and technology capabilities, driven by a truly multi-national, talented and passionate team of people, make us perfectly placed to create tailored, regional solutions for a diverse range of clients. As a regional hub, we act as a catalyst to integrate and connect – fuelling central strategies with both local insights and regional expertise. We have specialists across brand strategy, research & insight, data-driven analytics, 360 digital media planning and content creation, and we bring all of these disciplines together to provide frameworks that optimise our clients’ advertising investment in each market.