Senior Vice President, Planning

ABOUT THE ROLE:Zeno Group is looking to hire a Senior Vice President, Planning to join our North American Planning team. The right candidate will be insatiably curious about culture and people, a master storyteller, and relentless about uncovering compelling insights and crafting strategies that make genuine and meaningful connections between companies and audiences. This person will be a collaborative team player and inspiring leader to our growing team of planners, thrives in a growth mindset, and ultimately will play a pivotal role to drive the business of our clients and agency forward.  Being part of the Zeno Planning team means making the complex, simple. This role will cover multiple clients and categories across Brand, Corporate, and Tech, partnering closely with our primary research, analytics and creative teams across the network to deliver work that matters. 

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Set a new bar for depth of insights and creative fodder, infusing ambition, imagination, and revolution into the strategic process.
• Determine priorities and independently lead strategy efforts for multiple clients and new biz opportunities, from research to insights and strategy development through execution.
• Proactively listen for opportunities and build the case for additional strategic solutions within existing business.
• Manage and develop junior staff to conduct secondary research efficiently by analyzing research data to learn new insights, develop strategy and provide guidance on which key insights should inform the narrative.
• Working with practice leadership, develop the agency’s real-time cultural fluency and explore the latest AI research capabilities.
• Direct primary research initiatives ensuring methodologies match research objectives.
• Use a research-driven approach to develop the right questions, be an aggregator and help Zeno stand out at the table.
• Explore the intersection of culture, brands, and audiences from new angles to arrive at deeper insights.
• Develop innovative trends forecasts and landscape analysis reports across a variety of industries and clients.
• Identify key trends to help teams stay on top of audience behaviors, social movements and cultural themes.
• Provide fresh insight into audience and cultural trends as needed for existing clients and teams during planning cycles and opportunistically.
• Keep up to date with innovative work across industries.
• Interact and participate in presentations to Zeno teams and clients at a moment’s notice.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• 12+ years experience in a planning role at an advertising, digital, integrated marketing, or PR agency (or equivalent experience in strategy, insights and analysis.) 
• Extensive experience conducting and analyzing secondary research and developing concise, focused, compelling briefing decks for Creative and Account teams.
• Experience in consumer brand categories. 
• Deep expertise in planning strategy and new business. 
• Ability to explore the intersection of culture, brands, and audiences from new angles and provide guidance on deeper insights that should inform strategies.
• Excellent research skills and familiarity with standard platforms and tools, including analytics.
• Strong writing skills – can write with clarity, focus, and creativity.
• Confident presenter, ability to articulate smart and sometimes complex solutions in a straightforward and clear manner to a variety of internal and external audiences.
• Experience managing junior staff to develop skills and proficiencies 
• Strong familiarity with agency planning frameworks, models and capabilities.
• Understands role that PR and social media play in the overall communications marketing mix.
• Consummate professional with high standards to evolve the role of strategy to meet the future needs of communications in a tech-enhanced, human-driven world.

SKILLS:

• Fearless: Pushes for creative thinking; is purposeful and enterprising in problem-solving; embraces diverse trends, skills, specialties, and viewpoints.
• Innate curiosity about the human condition.
• Self-described culture vulture and/or data geek.
• Detail-oriented and process-loving with the courage to think outside the box.
• Resourceful, with the ability to work independently and juggle multiple projects/clients.
• Collaborative spirit.
• Someone who is hungry and wants to be part of growing an ambitious team that deeply explores and addresses business challenges and opportunities from a distinctly human standpoint.

ABOUT USZeno Group is the fiercely independent and global, integrated communications agency, born from PR. We bring together the boldest and brightest talent to help clients across industries and sectors unleash the power of strat