Brand Planner

Strategic Planner / Brand Strategist (3+ years)

A warning disguised as an opportunity

This is a job for someone who enjoys the uncomfortable bit in the middle-the gap between “we

need a strategy deck by Friday” and the far more interesting question: what should we do that

will actually change behaviour?

If you believe humans are mostly rational, this role will irritate you. If you believe humans are

predictably irrational, and that brands are largely a set of mental shortcuts people use to make

life easier, you’ll feel oddly at home.

This is not a “make it sound clever” strategy role. This is a “make it work” strategy role.

What you’ll actually do

1) Find the lever, not the lecture

● Hunt for the small, non-obvious variable that changes outcomes disproportionately.

● Replace pious category clichés with a sharper diagnosis of what’s really going on.

● Use research like a burglar uses a torch: to find what matters, not to admire the furniture.

2) Turn mess into meaning (and meaning into action)

● Build positioning, propositions, messaging systems, and brand voice that don’t collapse

the moment someone asks, “Yes, but why would anyone care?”

● Translate business constraints into strategic advantage (price, distribution, attention,

trust, habit).

● Make choices. Strategy is mostly saying “no” convincingly.

3) Write briefs that produce work, not presentations

● Create single-minded briefs that creatives can run with without needing a séance.

● Define the audience, the behaviour to shift, and the reason people will actually do it.

● Protect the spine of the idea while improving the surface of the execution.

4) Be the person in the room who improves the room

● Assist workshops and interviews that create decisions

● Present a point of view that’s legible, defensible, and commercially useful.

● Separate “I don’t like it” from “it won’t work”-politely, but firmly.

5) Operate like an adult

● Handle multiple categories and problem types without panicking.

● Work fast without producing fast-food thinking.

● Use tools (including AI) to accelerate the boring parts so you can spend time on the

interesting ones.

What we’re looking for

● 3+ years in strategy/planning or not (you don’t need to be a planner, but if you are not

you will need to demonstrate tremendous aptitude and show some work (agency,

consulting, or in-house-so long as the work is real).

● You can write. Not “long”, not “loud” but clear.

● You can think in systems: behaviour, incentives, memory, context, attention.

● You don’t hide behind frameworks; you use them to make decisions.

● You’re comfortable being disagreed with, and you can disagree without being

unpleasant.

● You have taste. You can smell generic strategy from three rooms away.

What success looks like

First 30 days

You ship something solid quickly-research to POV to brief-without turning it into a PhD.

By 60–90 days

You can understand business problems, find the lever, build the story, brief the work, help it

land.

What you get

● Proximity to real decisions and outcomes, not just recommendation theatrics

● Range across categories and problem types.

● Autonomy-paired with the mild terror that comes with it.