Director of Brand Strategy

Game Seven Agency, an Excel Sports Management Company, is a full service creative and experiential agency that lives for sport, music and culture. From the biggest moments to the smallest details, we pride ourselves on being in the know and building relationships that matter, for brands that matter.

Our team is comprised of creatives, strategists, producers, designers, project managers, influencer managers, filmmakers, volunteers, activists, ballplayers, hypebeasts, social media moguls, runners, mixologists, party promoters, hip-hop elitists, show-bingers, hot-take havers, vintage t-shirt collectors, natural wine connoisseurs, fitness fanatics, pet parents, plant parents, human parents, and general good time havers.

Clients include Hennessey, Nike, Jordan, Spotify, Meta, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, Timberland, Oakley, Footlocker, Chime, Fanatics, Bleacher Report, Uninterrupted, and more.

As the Director of Brand Strategy, you’re a leader that’s responsible for building and ensuring our team is building strong strategy playbooks with big ideas, creative platforms, and activation plans.

The ideal candidate is equally strategic and creative (big conceptual ideas), has experience building full strategy decks, and overseeing/directing Strategists on their own plans.

Alongside our Excel Brand Marketing teammates, you’ll work mainly on projects that are partnership-driven – like a brand’s multi-year partnership with a league or team – coming up with the strategic plans, creative platforms, and ideas that bring it all to life. Your time will
go towards existing projects/AORs, new projects/RFP’s, and the management of a Brand Strategist (with the opportunity for more direct reports in the future).

This role is for you if you get excited about great brand partnership marketing, think in headlines, know the standard partnership asset package doesn’t cut it, and have built/executed plans like these. You’ll report to the Director of Brand Strategy, contributing to everything from multi-year retainers to big pitches.

Soft skills are extremely important to our team, especially as a leader. You need to be tapped in, passionate about the work, good at taking initiative, able to push your own ideas forward, communicate your ideas clearly, collaborate cross-functionally, and solve problems
with empathy.

Important! The Strategy team at Game Seven isn’t writing briefs like at traditional agencies – we’re responsible for cultural insights & strategy, narrative & copywriting, and big ideas, & activation plans.

Role & Responsibilities:

• Serve as the Strategy Lead on key workstreams (project-based and AORs), owning the strategy playbook, creative platform, big ideas, and activation plans.
• Manage and provide oversight to Strategists on projects, with feedback and direction that helps them build great work and sell their plans through to our clients.
• Work closely with both Game Seven and Excel Brand Marketing teammates on the daily, serving as the Strategy thought leader on some of our biggest joint projects.
• Lead on new partnership-based RFP’s, collaborating closely with Accounts, Creative, Partnership Strategy, and Production pitch amazing strategic & creative proposals.
• Develop and implement new processes on our partnership-based workstreams that
  helps the team work better (ie. how to get clients to brief us better).
• Serve as a strategic thought partner to our clients by helping define and shape the brand’s vision/role for their partnership with a roadmap for our team to help them get there.
• Go from brief to execution, being able to take in a client brief, build out a plan, and follow through on the execution of creative and production.
• Build amazing decks. Great copy. Elevated design. Great visual references. Then, present and pitch your work to internal and external leaders, often Director, VP, or CMO-level.
• Assist in the development and growth of our Brand Strategy specialty (expertise, hiring, etc.) as we grow with current and new clients.
• Stay tapped in on our brand, their partner, the sport, and social to provide timely and reactive ideas that help them maximize the partnership marketing.

Requirements & Skills:

• 8+ years of working in creative/strategy – agency, brand, tech preferred.
• 2-3 years of managing direct reports.
• Portfolio of brand partnership work (sport, music, entertainment are a plus).
• Great taste in creative work, strong level of polish in your own work.
• Experience building full strategy decks (copy, flow, design)
• Strong leadership skills and experience helping people grow in their roles.
• Proficiency in creating Google Slides decks (design, layout, speed, familiarity).
• Passion