Associate Director, Strategy

Chicago, IL (Hybrid)

$125K/yr – $150K/yrSenior Level6+ years expFull time

Posted 4 weeks ago

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Job Summary

Own the core strategy workstreams, turning complex client inputs into clear direction that connects insight to activation across brand, marketing, and experience design.

  • Directors and cross-functional partners keep work on scope, timing, and quality while you shape the strategic narrative.
  • Lead significant engagements from brief to deliverable, translating research into concise recommendations that guide creative direction and activation.

Job Description

Responsibilities

  • Bring clarity to complex client challenges
  • Develop a strong understanding of the client’s business, audience, category, culture, and competitive context.
  • Translate research, data, stakeholder input, and team discussion into clear strategic implications, choices, and recommendations.
  • Own significant strategy workstreams or smaller engagements, keeping the work organized, focused, and moving.
  • Anticipate risks, gaps, or open questions early, and manage up when guidance, alignment, or a decision is needed.
  • Use foundational strategy tools and methods, including strategic frameworks, stakeholder interviews, audits, workshops, frameworks, and synthesis to help structure the work and develop stronger recommendations.
  • Know when to apply a familiar method, when to adapt the approach, and when to seek guidance from senior strategy leadership.
  • Develop trusted working relationships with clients through preparation, responsiveness, judgment, and clear communication.
  • Lead client conversations and presentations in a way that invites useful dialogue, manages expectations, and helps move the work forward.
  • Turn complex inputs into concise, well-structured deliverables, briefs, narratives, and recommendations.

Requirements

  • A Bachelor’s degree, or a more advanced degree, with 6-9 years of experience in brand strategy, marketing strategy, communications strategy, customer/audience strategy, consulting, research, or a related discipline.
  • Experience developing insights, strategic recommendations, positioning, messaging, creative briefs, experience principles, or other client-ready strategy deliverables.
  • A working command of foundational strategy tools and methods, including strategic frameworks, stakeholder interviews, workshop support, qualitative and quantitative research inputs, competitive/category analysis, audience insight development, and synthesis.
  • Strong writing, presentation, facilitation, and communication skills.
  • Comfort working across different clients, categories, assignment types, and levels of ambiguity.
  • Ability to lead significant workstreams, collaborate across disciplines, and contribute to healthy engagement delivery.
  • Ability to manage up, ask for guidance when needed, and continue building strategic range and rigor over time.

Benefits

  • The chance to be a part of a growing company and the next success story
  • Amazing opportunities for career development
  • Recognition programs
  • Employee referral bonus
  • Fun and collaborative work environment
  • Casual dress code
  • Insurance Coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability)
  • 401(k) retirement plan, with employer 4% match
  • Work/life benefits, including mental health and wellbeing support
  • Flexible Time Off Policy
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VSA Partners

3.1 Glassdoor

VSA’s purpose is to design for a better human experience. As a strategy and creative agency, we blend consumer insights and data with human-centered design to activate meaningful, motivating and measurable experiences in an increasingly noisy world. With offices in Chicago, New York and San Francisco, VSA offers a full range of fully integrated capabilities—branding, advertising, data science and technology—all under one roof. VSA is also a proud member of Meet The People, an international family of unified but independent agencies. For more than 40 years, we have delivered solutions for business and creative leaders at some of the world’s most respected brands and forward-thinking organizations, including Google, Nike and IBM.

Founded in 1982
Chicago, Illinois, USA
125 employees (44 in marketing)
54% recommend to a friend
85% CEO approval

Traffic Signals

Monthly Visitors
6.3K
Traffic Source Mix
Search
30.1%
Direct
49.8%
Referral
8.9%
Social
9.5%
Paid
1.3%

Headcount Trend

Current headcount: ~126

Marketing Team

Marketing Team Size
13 (10% of company)
Median Career Experience
14.5 years
Median Tenure
8.5 years
Marketing Roles Posted (Last 30 Days)
1

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