Strategist

Job description

Established in 2004, OLIVER is the world’s first and only specialist in designing, building, and running bespoke in-house agencies and marketing ecosystems for brands. We partner with over 300 clients in 40+ countries and counting. Our unique model drives creativity and efficiency, allowing us to deliver tailored solutions that resonate deeply with audiences.

As a part of The Brandtech Group, we’re at the forefront of leveraging cutting-edge AI technology to revolutionise how we create and deliver work. Our AI solutions enhance efficiency, spark creativity, and drive insightful decision-making, empowering our teams to produce innovative and impactful results.

Role: Strategist

Location: Johannesburg, South Africa

About the role:

We’re looking for a Strategist, someone who thrives in the unique challenge of being both an insider and an agency partner. You’ll provide end-to-end strategic guidance to senior clients across diverse categories, acting as a trusted advisor who can move seamlessly between brand strategy, creative strategy, and commercial problem solving. This isn’t a role where you’ll sit on the sidelines. You’ll be expected to get your hands dirty, work at pace, and bring a point of view that challenges the status quo. You’ll partner closely with Managing Partners, Business Directors, ECDs and CDs to drive both the quality of strategic thinking and the commercial growth of your accounts. And when opportunity knocks for new business, you’ll be ready to open the door.

What you will be doing:

Strategic Leadership

• Provide strategic direction that transforms business challenges into creative opportunities, with a track record of work that demonstrates commercial impact
• Write crystal-clear creative propositions and compelling briefs that consistently inspire high quality creative work
• Act as a trusted creative partner, actively involved in shaping ideas, providing strategic input throughout development, and championing work that delivers against both creative and commercial ambitions
• Guide creative development with confidence, knowing when to push for brave work and when to build a bridge to clients
• Lead the development of brand positioning, messaging frameworks, campaign strategies, and comms architectures that set brands up for long-term success
• Challenge clients when necessary, knowing when to push back and when to build bridges

Day-to-Day Excellence

• Own the strategic quality bar across your accounts, ensuring every brief, deck, and presentation is clear, compelling, and commercially grounded
• Be disciplined in your approach to problem-solving, confidently using communications frameworks and bringing structured thinking to complex challenges
• Demonstrate the craft of strategy daily, from insight mining to brief writing to creative evaluation
• Stay immersed in what makes great work, continuously studying case studies and staying current with creative trends
• Deliver work that performs on the OLIVER creative scale and earns recognition at e ectiveness and creative awards

Commercial Partnership

• Play an active role in the growth and financial success of your portfolio of accounts, acting as a commercial partner to Managing Partners and Business Directors
• Position OLIVER for upstream opportunities, broadening our scope beyond execution into strategic consulting
• Proactively identify opportunities for organic growth through cross-selling existing capabilities (Gen AI, Sustainability, B2B, Social, etc.)
• Be commercially savvy about your own time and team resources, ensuring e iciency without compromising quality

Client & Stakeholder Management

• Build and maintain strong relationships with senior clients, earning your seat at the table for their biggest strategic challenges
• Work as a true insider; understanding the politics, pressures, and priorities of your client’s business as well as they do
• Facilitate workshops and lead strategic conversations with C-suite stakeholders and cross functional teams
• Manage complexity well, especially in matrix organizations with multiple agency partners and internal stakeholders
• Proactively manage day-to-day client relationships, anticipating needs and bringing solutions before problems arise

New Business & Growth

• Support new business efforts with compelling strategic thinking and confident pitch presence
• Support Managing Partners and Business Directors when strategic firepower is needed
• Help build OLIVER’s reputation for strategic excellence through the quality and effectiveness of your work

Knowledge & Thought Leadership

• Build deep expertise in at least one sector, with strong working knowledge of 2-3 others – demonstrating you can adapt quickly to new categories
• Stay current with culture, consumers, commerce, and creativity through continuous learning
• Build a network across the industry that you can leverage for clients and OLIVER
• Begin establishing yourself as a voice in the industry through speaking, writing, or participation in trade bodies
• Contribute to OLIVER’s Strategy Playbook and internal knowledge sharing
• Mentor and develop junior strategists, helping raise the overall quality of strategic thinking

What you need to be great in this role:

Experience & Expertise

• 7+ years of strategic planning/brand strategy experience, ideally across multiple sectors
• Proven track record of developing strategies that have delivered both creative excellence and commercial results
• Strong business acumen: you understand/know where growth comes from
• Deep knowledge of consumer insights, brand building, and how creativity drives business outcomes
• Confident with research (qual & quant): you know how to design it, interpret it, and use it to inform better decisions
• Understanding of digital, social, CRM, and emerging channels and able to collaborate with specialists and brief across the marketing spectrum

Thinking & Craft

• You can distil complexity into clarity, finding the compelling angle that unlocks creative possibility
• You bring imagination to problem-solving, not just analysis
• You understand people, culture, and what makes ideas resonate emotionally
• You’re numerate and data-literate; able to tell stories with numbers as well as words but you also trust your intuition
• You know how to write a brief that inspires great creative work
• You can simplify the complex and communicate to inspire

Working Style

• Self-sufficient and autonomous, but you know when to seek input and collaborate
• A natural team player who rolls up their sleeves and gets stuck in
• Comfortable presenting to senior clients and holding your ground in challenging conversations
• Growth mindset; always learning, always looking for the next opportunity fast, collaborative, and fearless (to borrow from our agency values)
• Resourceful and proactive; you spot opportunities and make things happen

Communication & Influence

• Highly persuasive in both written and verbal communication
• Confident presenting strategic rationale and selling ideas
• Diplomatic but direct; you’re not afraid to speak your mind, but you do so with intelligence and humility
• An excellent collaborator who builds strong relationships with creatives, account teams, and clients
• Able to influence and convince with clear, rational, evidence-based and inspiring arguments

Req ID: 15984

#LI-MR1 #LI-HYBRID #LI-DIRECTOR

Our values shape everything we do:

Be Ambitious to succeed

Be Imaginative to push the boundaries of what’s possible

Be Inspirational to do groundbreaking work

Be always learning and listening to understand

Be Results-focused to exceed expectations

Be actively pro-inclusive and anti-racist across our community, clients and creations

OLIVER, a part of the Brandtech Group, is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating an inclusive working environment where all employees are encouraged to reach their full potential, and individual differences are valued and respected. All applicants shall be considered for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, neurodivergence, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by local laws.

OLIVER has set ambitious environmental goals around sustainability, with science-based emissions reduction targets. Collectively, we work towards our mission, embedding sustainability into every department and through every stage of the project lifecycle.