Director Brand Strategy

Job Description

The RBC brand is one of the organization’s most valuable assets. It is built and spent daily by several lines of business, each making locally rational decisions that, in aggregate, determine whether the brand compounds or erodes. This role exists to hold the enterprise-wide view of that dynamic — and to make sure it has a seat at the table before decisions are made, not after.

The Director, Enterprise Brand Strategy is a highly strategic role responsible for the development and management of RBC’s Masterbrand and its integration through all priority initiatives across the enterprise for the purpose of generating outsized impact for the business. The role requires fluency in strategic frameworks that keep brand architecture and brand decision-making coherent across a large, complex, multi-line-of-business organization. This is not a marketing execution role.

It is a role for a sharp strategist who thinks about portfolio, category, and competitive positioning grounded in the growth priorities of the enterprise, not just the aesthetics of its expression.

This person will partner directly with the Head of Global Brand Strategy to shape how the organization orchestrates the RBC brand in a period of significant structural change, including the accelerating integration of AI into how brand is built, personalized, governed, and experienced and the fundamental shift in the consumer’s relationship with financial services, globally. They will be expected to bring a point of view on what AI means for brand architecture, brand governance, and brand risk over the next several years, and to translate that point of view into frameworks the enterprise can actually use.

• Own and evolve the enterprise brand architecture — the logic that governs how the Masterbrand, sub-brands, product brands, and line-of-business brands relate to one another, and the decision rules that keep that system coherent as the business changes.
• Evolve and maintain the interaction models and mechanisms (frameworks, decision rights, escalation paths) that let individual lines of business move quickly on brand decisions while protecting enterprise-wide brand equity.
• Serve as a senior advisor to business units on brand strategy questions: brand extension, naming, portfolio architecture, market entry, value propositions, evaluating each through the lens of enterprise-wide implications, not just the requesting business unit’s immediate objective.
• Identify where local, well-intentioned brand decisions could create enterprise-level architecture, legal, or reputational exposure, and intervene early enough to matter.

• Lead rigorous, evidence-based research into brand effectiveness, category dynamics, competitive positioning, and emerging disruption — able to synthesize sources ranging from brand effectiveness intelligence to robust internal brand datasets.
• Analyze the intersection of brand, business, consumer and cultural context to build clear strategic direction for the business that is informed by proprietary brand data and an in-depth understanding of enterprise brand planning. This capability is analytical (research driven) and creative (narrative building).
• Mine internal and external data for insight, not just information, translating research into a small number of sharp, decision-useful conclusions that change what leadership does next.
• Build and maintain a point of view on the competitive and category landscape, including how adjacent disruptors and category redefinition are changing what “brand” needs to do for the business.

• Develop the organization’s thinking on AI and brand governance — including how generative and agentic AI change brand consistency risk, personalization at scale, distinctive asset management, and the practical mechanics of enforcing brand standards when more brand-adjacent content is created outside traditional marketing workflows.
• Stay current on how AI is reshaping brand discovery, distribution, and perception, including AI-mediated search and recommendations, and translate implications into guidance for the…