Strategy Partner Full Time NEW

We turn cultural understanding into commercial advantage.

From sport to music, gaming to fashion, we create culture-led thinking, ideas and concepts designed to travel – activated through partnerships, creators, talent, media and experiences. We shift brands from famous to favourite; and build brand love into brand growth. It’s work that works. Work worth remarking on.

That’s the Play Way.

Our People

We are a home for distinct specialists and culturally driven talent: the go-getters, the misfits, the people who push ideas further than the obvious or expected.

We collect remarkable people.

Because we believe remarkable people create remarkable work.

Why We Need You

We’re looking for a partnerships strategy expert with creative flair and demonstrated experience of helping brands build equity in sport, music or gaming through partnerships.

You will be leading partnership strategy on our flagship accounts, EE and JBL, and we therefore looking for someone ready to step into or step up to a senior role to take our clients to the next level in brand partnerships.

We’re looking for someone remarkable…

You will be immersed in culture, live and breathe brand partnerships, and can demonstrate how compelling strategies creatively activated deliver real commercial impact. You’ll be as tenacious as you are curious, and above all, you’ll be a Remarkable team player compelled to create Remarkable work.

Partnerships Strategy

• Proven experience of shaping and delivering partnership strategies for household name brands
• Strong understanding of the nuance of the modern media landscape and experience in developing the role for partnerships across an integrated media mix
• Good working knowledge of the UK partnerships landscape, particularly in sport, music or gaming
• Confident in working with or alongside rightsholders (governing bodies, leagues, talent, venues, clubs) to understand how IP is structured, licensed and enforced. Someone who knows the difference between what a rights package says and what it practically allows for brands
• Practical experience of developing partnership selection criteria and building robust partnerships selection frameworks
• Strong rights holder relationships and an understanding that the best outcomes come from building trust with the rightsholder, not just extracting value
• Proven ability to maximise the value of a rights deal by identifying where there is genuine headroom to push assets further, whether through creative interpretation of category exclusivity, leveraging and sweating key rights, or unlocking media and/or activation value that brands might overlook
• Strong understanding of fandoms and fan culture, and how to help brands show up authentically in new spaces
• Expertise in crafting creative strategy that drives innovative partnership activation, beyond a badging exercise
• Ability to shape creative thinking, topline ideas and concepts for partnership activation
• Diligence and risk awareness in IP-sensitive environments: Understanding of where the guardrails are strategically. Comfortable advising clients and creative teams on ambush marketing risk, IP clearance, trademark sensitivities and the reputational stakes of overstepping

Creative Strategy

• Strong insight gathering skills and the ability to turn these into inspiring creative springboards and briefs that unlock distinctive, culturally resonant ideas
• Ability to build brilliant collaborative relationships with creative teams and work with them hand-in-hand to ideate and co-create
• Strong storytelling and writing skillset: able to bring research, insights and data to life in compelling and intriguing ways and tell a strong strategic story
• Great creative instinct and solid understanding of what ‘remarkable’, culturally fluent creative work looks like

Work & Strategic Outlook

• Track record of building ‘work that works’ for clients: impactful, meaningful work that shifts the dial for brands and/or consumers
• Working understanding of the importance of Effectiveness in marketing
• Mastery of the written word: ability to write engaging decks and pitches, attention-grabbing award entries and powerful case studies
• Ambition to deliver industry recognised, award-winning work
• An openness to working with new tools, products and within new and innovative ways of working
• Interest in the application of AI to strategy and agency processes

Culture

• Several years working in partnerships across sport, music, gaming: ideally significant exposure to 1-2 of these sectors
• Deep understanding of the role culture plays in brand building
• Experience in leading and shaping strategy for with a brand who has played a key role in culture, owned a key cultural space or made waves in culture
• Advanced knowledge of the key players (influencers, media partners, collectives, initiatives) in 1-2 core cultural territories

Clients & Inter-agency working

• Track record of acting as strategic counsel to clients, building trusted relationships at all levels and serving as their go-to confidante on all things strategy
• A seasoned expert in working as part of all-agency teams – i.e. alongside creative agencies, media agencies etc – and building strong inter-agency relationships in these settings
• Experience leading client workshops for senior client stakeholders in marketing teams and beyond
• Top-tier presentation skills: confident presenting to senior clients
• A commercially savvy and proactive opportunity seeker who can spot gaps in client capabilities or capacity and confidently upsell agency products and services

New Business & Marketing

• Track record of leading pitches: helping to shape pitch win strategies, the team structure and the deck narrative.
• Brilliant contacts book across brands and culture
• An appetite for new business, helping to seek out and support new opportunities
• Ambition to be an industry expert: confident in writing though-leadership pieces and taking part in industry events

Agency & Team

• Working knowledge of navigating a large inter-disciplinary agency environment, managing workstreams across multiple internal stakeholders and teams
• Experience mentoring or managing junior strategists and insight execs
• The ambition to be a senior lead in a strategy team shaping strategic output for the agency
• Desire to own and shape areas of team development, products and ways of working
• Aspiration to upskill the wider agency, across disciplines, on areas of specialist strategic knowledge

Core Personal Skills

• A problem-solver, skilled in lateral, innovative thinking
• A proactive team player who puts their hand up and takes the initiative
• Strong storytelling and selling skillsets
• Brevity, the ability to boil down a problem and solution into a distinctive strategic bounce off point
• Strong feedback skills: experienced in delivering and receiving constructive feedback
• A true collaborator, a team-player who brings everyone on the journey

Musts

• Sit with the team in the Havas Play office 3 days a week
• Open to occasional travel for client meetings and events