Strategy Director

Strategy Director (Social & Content)

THE BIG PICTURE:

VCCP is the Challenger Agency for Challenger Brands. One of the UK’s most successful creative businesses, that exists to transform its clients fortunes by disrupting the categories they operate in.

VCCP is fully integrated, with deep capabilities in brand strategy, communications, customer experience, media, data and analytics, production and distribution. The company was founded in 2002 in London, with offices in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Shanghai, Sydney, Madrid and Prague.

Our London office has been shortlisted for Campaign magazine’s Agency of the Year almost every year for the past decade, topping the new business table 9 years out of the last 10.

OUR CULTURE:

The VCCP Group has a unique culture, and we are looking for people who will make a positive contribution to this, therefore the candidate must have the following attributes:

• A collaborative nature
• An entrepreneurial spirit
• Take pride in their work
• An honest approach
• Be un-precious and able to recognise that a good idea can come from anywhere
• Take responsibility

OUR PURPOSE:

So what do we actually do? Put simply we exist to transform the fortunes of our clients by challenging and disrupting the categories they operate in. It’s why we describe ourselves as ‘the challenger agency for challenger brands’.

ABOUT THE ROLE:

We are looking for an industry leading Social & Content Strategy Director to join the VCCP Planning and Social team to work across a variety of our clients.

As the Social & Content Strategy Director, you’ll be at the helm of our social-first creative and strategic output, leading the planning and execution of groundbreaking strategies for some of the world’s biggest brands. Social and content is at the heart of most brand strategies seeking to target a younger demographic. You’ll bridge the gap between insights, creative and media, ensuring our clients have a powerful social presence that resonates with audiences and drives measurable results. This role requires a deep understanding of digital behaviour, platforms, partnerships, trends, online culture and platform-specific best practices and measurement, coupled with strong leadership abilities and a relentless focus on innovation and creativity.

VCCP has a brilliant reputation for brand strategy, having created award winning brand platforms that have resulted in some of the most famous creative work of the last two decades. As the agency that typical enjoys lead status, this is an opportunity to ensure your strategic thinking doesn’t just shape one-off campaigns, but ideas that populate culture and transform businesses.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Strategic Leadership: Lead the development of social-first strategies across various brands, ensuring alignment with broader business and communication goals.
• Team Management: Mentor and manage social strategists, fostering a culture of innovation, excellence, and accountability.
• Insight-Driven Planning: Use data, insights, and trend analysis to develop audience-centric strategies, championing the “why” behind every post, story, activation and partnership.
• Platform Expertise: Stay on the cutting edge of social media platforms, identifying new opportunities and ensuring our strategies make the most of platform-specific features and innovations.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with Creative, Paid Media, Analytics, and Account teams to ensure seamless integration and effective execution of social campaigns.
• Client Leadership: Act as the social media thought leader and advisor for senior clients, presenting compelling strategies and advising on best practices and trends.
• Cultural leadership, Innovation and Trendspotting: Actively seek out and experiment with new tools, trends, and content formats to keep our clients ahead of the curve. Educate and inspire the agency with your knowledge and cultural curation.
• Campaign Analysis: Oversee the measurement and reporting of social media performance, using analytics to inform strategy, optimise content, and communicate results effectively to clients.

THE CANDIDATE:

We are looking for a Social & Content Strategy Director who is on the pulse, proactive, has a creative flair, stays on top of updates and trends, understands the wider marketing mix, but who is also into the numbers - easy find right?

The candidate will have a firm grasp of (but healthy skepticism towards) traditional planning processes and ‘the done way of doing things.’ They will identify with VCCP’s Challenger positioning and recognise it in the way they approach their own work.

They will be dynamic in their approach to planning, recognising the modern, fragmented media landscape and how communication needs to work on social and content channels, and how brands can show up in non traditional ways.

They will be passionate about populating culture, identifying proactive and inspiring ways to make brands relevant.

They will have successful experience on medium to large sized business or pitches with oversight from their planning leads. They will be confident briefing maestros who have no problem taking large, complex briefs and pitches from inception right through to delivery.

The candidate will have the confidence and heft to collaborate with and challenge agency specialist partners, media partners and senior stakeholders both internally and on the client-side, with a very high level of emotional intelligence and a natural ability to think on their feet.

Perhaps most importantly of all: they will have an unpretentious approach to advertising. This is not a position for those who put the proposition on a velvet cushion and baulk at the thought of mucking in with creatives and account management to get to the best and most powerful work, sometimes at the last minute, always to a high standard.

• Experience of leading teams and able to demonstrate thought leadership experience
• Proven track record of building client trust
• Social agency / content experience
• Commercially-minded: Understands effectiveness Measurement and evaluation
• Culturally Insightful
• Modern Media fluent (modern approaches to paid, owned and earned)
• Social channels expert (brands, talent, influencers, creators, publishers, consumers)
• A broad understanding of the role of social and content within brands and advertising
• Strong on best practice on platforms and partnerships (brand and creator)
• A proven track record of a range of work already achieved
• Experience working with campaigns and episodic content
• Ideally multi-market experience
• A track record of working with global brands across many categories
• Culturally native
• A demonstrable understanding of algorithms and optimisation
• Experience working with media and data specialists
• Confident Presenter and willingness to pitch
• Creative ally
• Commercially savvy
• High energy and heft to manage upwards
• Unpretentious and collaborative in getting to powerful work
• Have a strong sense of what they know and would like to know

ATTITUDE:

• A passion for all things creative and advertising
• Resilience to keep going in a fast paced environment
• Strives for excellence
• Can do attitude
• Approachable and personable
• Builds rapport and is able to quickly establish excellent working relationships
• Team player

VCCP DE&I Statement

We believe that DE&I is about creating a strong culture of inclusion within our agency, where everyone can thrive and be their authentic self. VCCP is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, or ethnicity. If you require any adjustments during the application or interview process, please let us know via joinus@vccp.com.

Criminal Records information

As part of our onboarding process, you will be required to complete a Criminal Records Declaration regarding any unspent convictions. For roles in finance, HR, Legal, IT or senior management, we may be required to verify your declaration with a basic DBS check, as well as an Adverse Finance and ID check.