As an Associate Strategist your main job is to be curious and learn.  This entry level position is all about trying new things and learning new things.  Lots of new things and learning the craft of being a Planner.  Working with multiple Strategists, helping them, learning from them and picking their brain about how they do what they do.  

Skills To Master:

·      Exploring your Planning Style: Including working with many different Planners and learning how they work, how they get to insights, what their process is so that you can adopt the things that fir your style and personality and rework the things that don’t.  Reach out to other planners, share your work, pick their brains, Ask lots of questions.  

·      Understanding the competitive marketplace in which your brands live.  This will include executing competitive reviews, gaining retailer understanding via Kantar and the P2P institute.

·      Understanding and engaging in secondary research.  Exploring the IRC and knowing where to go for information.  Understanding Google analytics, Social Listening, Numerator, Simmons and other types of secondary source data to be used for insight generation and strategic POVs.  You will do A LOT of data pulling as an Associate Strategist but should also provide your POV on what you are seeing.

·      Understanding and engaging in primary research.  Some of the best insights come from getting out in the world and talking to people.  Whether it be focus groups, person on the street interviews, ethnographies, chatting with retail employees or shop a-longs, talking to other humans and digging into what makes them tick is the bread and butter of planning.  

·      Mining cultural fuel and uncovering insights.  The insight is the lifeblood of a good creative strategy and is critical to an effective creative brief.  As an Associate Strategist you will start to understand how to mine and crafts insights as you work with other more seasoned strategists on briefs.  

·      Learning to craft creative briefs.  The creative brief is the primary tool of the Strategist.  It is sometimes referred to as the first ad.  Great brief writing takes a long time to master but you should start to learn to craft briefs in tandem with more senior strategists at this level.

·      Learning the creative process and how to give creative feedback.  You won’t be part of every meeting but if you worked on a brief or helped to dig into insights that went into a brief, you should be part of the internal creative review.  Your main role here is to observe and learn what happens as the strategy becomes an idea and then a presentation to the client.  

·      Learning the basics of Shopper Marketing.  Shopper Marketing is more complicated than brand marketing in that you have to think through the needs of both shopper AND retailer.  There are many nuances here to learn.  

·      Note: you will not do all of this in your first few weeks or months but as your time as an Associate Strategist progresses, you should be doing more and more of this.  

How To Thrive:

·      Being a self-starter and raising your hand for projects, looking for opportunities to do new things, offering your help and getting involved in the agency (clubs, ERGs, Activities, volunteer opportunities) so you can meet new people and make a big agency smaller.  Although your manager is there to help you, be a cheerleader and guide for you, you are ultimately the shepherd of your career,. 

·      Helping, helping, helping.  Not everything will be a big project although some will.  Understanding that sometimes doing an amazing job at the small things lead to big things is important.  

·      Being amazingly curious - asking as many questions as you can.  This is your time to learn, ask why? Find out why people do what they do, think like they think.  Ask how you can help. Ask for clarification on terms or ideas on things you don’t understand.  Ask for what you need to grow, learn and thrive.  Ask how you are doing and for feedback.

·      Contribute: We are a small(ish) entrepreneurial agency in which everyone is expected to be strategic, creative and a business leader.  The more you want to be involved, contribute, do great work, the more you will thrive. J

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.