Investment Strategy Associate Director - Platforms

TRG is seeking a full-time freelance associate director of investment strategy, platforms who is learning how brands grow and can execute platform-driven media to bring evidence-based marketing from theory to real-world investments.

Join the Strategy Collective, a cross-disciplinary team of strategists specializing in brand, communications, media investments, and analytics. We’re looking for a freelance associate director to join our growing team with a passion for evidence-based marketing and a strong understanding of buying-channel platforms that use penetration, reach, and spread to deliver on the econometric drivers of advertising profitability.

The investment strategy discipline secures and activates high-reach, platform-driven media environments that deliver broad category attention and ensures that investments support long-term brand growth and short-term business needs. This freelance role focuses on achieving broad reach, excess share of voice, and brand consistency across buying platforms like search and retail media, social TV, social commerce, and experience – focusing on constructing compounding, cross-channel advantages.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Shape or implement agency investment principles across channels for current clients, directing investment dollars to build mental availability across entire categories, with channels optimized for attention, not just clicking. Partner with brand, communications, creative, and analytics to ensure effectiveness across the media channels designed to reach the 95% who aren’t buying today.
• Help identify how media investment processes can be improved and developed to increase cross-department collaboration, ensure accuracy of tactical investment, and continually evolve to keep up with modern media supply and platform ecosystems.
• Monitoring how total channel investments are performing across all activated platforms, continually evaluating existing and potential platforms on opportunity, attention, adherence to industry standards, innovation, transparency, and the ability to deliver meaningful reach, plus identifying emerging platforms to bring innovative ideas to agency clients.
• Developing platforms investment team members in training across channels; helping strategists build working capability beyond legacy specialties; and investing in training of new hires at the supervisor, senior strategist, and strategist levels, as well as interns.
• Resolving day-to-day delivery, activation, or operational problems for current clients to protect media investments, maximize platform opportunity, and maintain high standards of billing accuracy and post-buy reporting across all channels.

What You’re Good At

• Recommend, plan, and execute cross-channel media investment to ensure that plans deliver efficient coverage of category buyers while meeting individual client marketing goals to achieve true brand growth.
• Mentor and train a team of three to five strategists by creating a culture of effectiveness and inclusivity – teaching, training, and supporting each individual from early career to associate director level and empowering them to center media recommendations on a client growth model and evidence-based strategy before platform- or discipline-anchored bias.
• Foster collaboration across multiple disciplines, including strategists, creatives, and brand managers, while sustaining deep expertise and passion in your legacy media channel. At the same time, champion and adapt to the shift toward integrated, cross-channel buying within the platforms ecosystem.
• Lead high-value planning and strategy activities with major media platforms, balancing the translation of agency scale into client advantages with test-and-learn strategies to identify and test new platforms.
• Maintain strong relationships with clients, platform sales, and industry communities and identify emerging opportunities across the platform marketplace.
• Speak to the evidence-based marketing fundamental principles taught by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, IPA, APG, LinkedIn B2B Institute, and others in the field of marketing science.

What You Have in Your Background

• Ten-plus years in media investment; media buying; or related client, operations, or analytics experience, including significant leadership roles; minimum seven years in platform-driven media execution.
• Experience mentoring high-potential investment strategists, focused on implementing our “memories move markets” vision, blending excellence in execution with teaching and caring leadership values to support both team and individual career growth.
• Exceptional platforms-based activation skills and strong understanding of the platforms media ecosystem, and history of accessing early innovation opportunities.
• Interest in continued learning through certifications, training, or industry participation related to marketing effectiveness.
• Strong understanding of how media platforms are selected and activated together based on inventory quality, transparency, and ability to deliver incremental reach across all channels to create significant advantages that increase share of voice and share of market.
• A building knowledge of marketing effectiveness frameworks including How Brands Grow (Sharp), Building Distinctive Brand Assets (Romaniuk), The Long and the Short of It (Binet/Field), and The Case for Creativity (Hurman). These books matter because they show how creativity and evidence work together to make brands easier to buy by making them harder to forget. An associate director in investment strategy should be an advocate for investments to maximize attention, reach, and mental availability, not just driving efficiency metrics.