Group Director, Brand & Experience Strategy

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 clear and compelling.

What Success Looks Like

• Sets direction that helps teams make decisions across multiple workstreams and shifting priorities

• Builds senior client trust and earns opportunities to shape the brief earlier

• Connects enterprise priorities without flattening distinct business needs into one generic approach

• Raises the ambition and quality of the creative work through sharp insights, clear briefs, and active partnership

• Develops strategists who can lead work with greater independence and confidence

• Turns proactive thinking into stronger work and meaningful opportunities to grow the partnership

Qualifications

• 8+ years industry experience with 2-4 years leadership experience, including leading strategists and overseeing integrated brand and communications work

• Proactive leader with a strong strategic vision and a track record of turning it into distinctive creative work

• Excellent data analysis and research skills, with the ability to turn evidence into a clear point of view and actionable recommendations

• Proven ability to drive new business and strategic growth through proactive thinking and strong client partnerships

• Strong mentoring and leadership abilities, with experience giving feedback, managing priorities, and developing strategic talent

• Experience navigating a large, highly matrixed brand, connecting stakeholders and business priorities across an enterprise

• Strong storytelling, presentation, and facilitation skills, with the confidence to constructively challenge senior clients and inspire creative teams

• Ability to connect brand strategy to communications tasks, consumer journeys, and channel roles across paid, owned, earned, social, digital, and in-store experiences

• Creative curiosity and resourcefulness, with an appetite for unexpected angles, scrappy thought starters, and hands-on problem-solving

• Experience partnering across creative, account, media, data, and other specialist teams to build connected work

• Experience in retail, health and wellness, pharmacy, or CPG is a plus

Additional Information

At dentsu, we believe great work happens when we’re connected. Our way of working combines flexibility with in-person collaboration to spark ideas and strengthen our teams. Employees who live within a commutable distance of one of our hub offices, currently located in Chicago, metro Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York City, are required and expected to work from the office three days per week (two days per week for employees based in Los Angeles). Dentsu may designate other Hub offices at any time. Those who live outside a commutable range may be designated as remote, depending on the role and business needs. Regardless of your work location, we expect our employees to be flexible to meet the needs of our Company and clients, which may include attendance in an office. 

The annual salary range for this position is $136,850 - $180,000. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law. 

Benefits available with this position include: 

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance, 

• Life insurance,

• Short-term and long-term disability insurance, 

• 401k,

• Flexible paid time off, 

• At least 15 paid holidays per year, 

• Paid sick and safe leave, and 

• Paid parental leave. 

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, in accordance with its plans and policies. For further details regarding Dentsu benefits, please visit www.dentsubenefitsplus.com. 

To begin the application process, please click on the “Apply” button at the top of this job posting. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and qualified candidates will be contacted for next steps. 

Location:

New York

Brand:

Dentsu Creative

Time Type:

Full time

Contract Type:

Permanent