Freelance Strategy Director

WHO WE ARE

SS+K is a creative agency specializing in brand reputation and issue advocacy, combining marketing and communications to help brands and organizations navigate significant business, cultural, and reputational change. Our mission is to help brands and organizations gain the Cultural Power they need to make the impact they want in the world.

For nearly 30 years, we’ve worked with both disruptors and the disrupted — including clients such as Microsoft, Delta, JPMorgan

Chase, Mount Sinai, Visit Iceland, Airbnb, and Whats App. Our commitment to impact has also led us to create essential campaigns for organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Girls Who Code, Communities in Schools, LeBron James’ More Than a Vote, and Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

SS+K is part of the M&C Saatchi Group, the world’s largest independent creative network.

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We are looking for a Freelance Strategy Director for a two month assignment.

As a Strategy Director at SS+K, you will lead brand and creative strategy for important brands and organizations facing significant business and cultural disruption. Working across brand reputation, issue advocacy, behavior change, and culturally relevant marketing, you will translate business challenges, audience understanding, research, and cultural intelligence into strategies that inspire breakthrough creative work and help change mindsets and behaviors.

You will serve as a senior strategic partner to clients and agency teams—bringing clarity to complex assignments, identifying compelling strategies for brands and organizations to drive meaningful change, and giving creative teams a focused and inspiring strategic foundation. You will operate as both a leader and a hands‑on practitioner: directing multiple engagements, writing briefs, shaping creative development, presenting and selling recommendations, and leading major new‑business pitches.

The strongest candidates will combine rigorous strategic thinking with cultural fluency and creative ambition. They will understand how communications can build trust, shift perceptions, inspire action, and contribute to business or societal impact—and know how to turn that understanding into ideas that people notice and care about.

Success in this role is making SS+K an indispensable strategic partner to our clients, elevating the quality and profile of our strategy practice, inspiring exceptional creative work, and helping the agency win and grow business.

• Lead brand and creative strategy across major client engagements and new business pitches, from initial problem definition through creative development and execution

• Develop and steward best-in-class strategic outputs — from big overarching brand strategies to creative execution briefs and communications plans — in close partnership with other disciplines

• Synthesize business objectives, research, audience understanding, and cultural intelligence into clear strategic direction and concise, inspiring creative briefs

• Bring a strong point of view on how brands earn relevance, build trust, and change mindsets, including the role of culture, surrounding audiences, and media behaviors

• Partner closely with creative leadership to challenge and elevate ideas, pushing work beyond the brief toward ideas that are strategically smart, earn attention, influence culture, and drive impact

• Design and facilitate client and internal workshops that build alignment, unlock strategic possibilities, and inspire exceptional creative development

• Define learning agendas and research plans that inform and shape strategic and creative deliverables, and measurement plans that prove impact

• Stay ahead of shifts in culture, public…