Group Director, Brand & Experience Strategy at Dentsu in New York, NY

Job description

Job Description: About Dentsu We are business‑driven and creatively obsessed, helping clients grow through Transformative Creativity—creativity that solves real business problems, challenges convention, and creates meaningful impact. About the Team You’ll join the Dentsu Creative team supporting a leading health and convenience retailer, helping connect brand strategy and communications across pharmacy, health, wellness, and everyday retail. We are: Proactive leaders who set the agenda and bring energy to every engagement Question‑askers who push beyond the expected to find what’s interesting Makers and doers who turn thinking into actionable outputs Growth-minded teammates who seek out what they don't know as much as they do Radical collaborators who work fluidly across disciplines Role and Responsibilities This role leads strategy for a specific business vertical within a leading health and convenience retailer, working on multiple vertical initiatives while connecting its priorities to the broader enterprise. We’re looking for someone equally comfortable navigating a large, highly matrixed brand and rolling up their sleeves to develop scrappy thought starters, find unexpected creative angles, and resourcefully turn early thinking into something teams can build on. You’ll set the strategic agenda, lead and develop other strategists, and build the client confidence that gives ambitious ideas room to grow. You will: Set the strategic agenda across assigned workstreams, connecting business priorities and audience needs to a clear point of view on where the brand can grow. Develop big strategic platform ideas grounded in data and rich in insight and steward their growth and development across campaigns, communications, and experiences. Connect the dots across enterprise stakeholders and business verticals, aligning teams around a shared brand direction while giving distinct audiences and business needs the focus they require. Serve as the lead strategy team member with responsibility for the quality of the strategic work, partnering closely with other strategy leaders + creative leaders to ensure it inspires distinctive, effective ideas. Oversee brand frameworks, integrated communications plans, and consumer journeys, ensuring clear communications jobs to be done and complementary channel roles in partnership with media and other specialists. Identify and develop opportunities to grow the client partnership, shaping proactive proposals with account leaders and contributing to new business efforts where relevant. Contribute to the agency’s intellectual property by developing useful approaches and perspectives on culture, human behavior, and brand and communications strategy. Use all forms of data to uncover insights, with a strong mastery of both qualitative and quantitative research. Set research and learning agendas that help teams make better strategic and creative decisions. Lead, coach, and develop strategists, setting clear expectations, giving constructive feedback, and helping them build judgment and confidence. Partner with account and project leads to prioritize work and deploy strategy resources effectively. Act as a trusted senior client and creative partner, reframing briefs, facilitating working sessions, and building alignment around recommendations that drive the brand and business mission forward. Demonstrate and foster a collaborative work environment in which ideas flourish. Stay hands-on in research, brief writing, and creative development when the work calls for it. Guide measurement and learning agendas with specialist partners, connecting communications objectives to meaningful brand and business outcomes and applying what the team learns. Champion thoughtful use of AI to sharpen strategy, speed insights, and improve output quality while maintaining a strong strategic point of view and human judgment. Lead the strategic story in case studies and awards submissions, making the idea, the work, and its impact