VML & Ogilvy | Strategy Director / Senior Strategist, Japan

About the Role

We’re looking for a Strategy Director to lead building brand platform, creative strategy, and integrated communications design for some of the most ambitious brands in the market — primarily across the FMCG category, working with both multinational clients and Japan-headquartered global brands.

This role sits at the intersection of business problem-solving, human insight, cultural relevance, and creative excellence. You’ll be expected to turn messy business challenges into sharp strategic opportunities, unlock human truths that inspire standout creative work, and architect brand ecosystems that travel across channels, touchpoints, and markets.

You won’t just write decks. You’ll shape brands, influence clients, sharpen the work, raise the bar for the agency, and help build ideas that can genuinely move culture, shift perception, and drive growth.

What You’ll Do

Lead Brand Strategy

• Develop brand strategies that create meaningful differentiation and unlock growth.
• Define or refine brand positioning, value proposition, brand architecture, and narrative territory.
• Help clients navigate brand transformation, portfolio shifts, innovation pipelines, and relaunches.
• Partner with clients on both long-term brand platform thinking and immediate commercial opportunities.
• Translate global strategy into locally resonant brand direction, and vice versa.

Drive Creative Strategy

• Unearth insights, tensions, and cultural signals that fuel powerful creative platforms.
• Write inspiring, brutally clear creative briefs that give teams a springboard, not a straitjacket.
• Shape the strategic spine of campaigns, platforms, activations, launches, and content ecosystems.
• Collaborate closely with creatives to push ideas from “interesting” to “inevitable.”
• Interrogate the work and make it sharper, simpler, more relevant, and more effective.

Design Integrated Communications

• Architect holistic communication systems across Paid, Owned, Earned, Shared, Retail, Social, PR, Influencer, CRM, and Commerce.
• Build communication strategies grounded in consumer journey thinking and channel role clarity.
• Ensure brand building and demand generation work together — not against each other.
• Connect upstream strategic thinking to downstream execution across every consumer touchpoint.
• Help brands show up consistently, distinctively, and contextually across the full ecosystem.

Bring Human, Cultural, and Commercial Insight

• Decode consumer behavior, category dynamics, competitive landscapes, and shifting cultural contexts.
• Leverage qualitative and quantitative research, social listening, desk research, trend mapping, and brand data.
• Turn data into perspective, perspective into strategy, and strategy into work people actually care about.
• Identify whitespace opportunities and growth territories across audiences, occasions, channels, and propositions.
• Keep one eye on the market and the other on where culture is heading next.

Lead Clients and Influence the Business

• Act as a trusted strategic partner to senior client stakeholders, including brand leads, CMOs, and regional/global teams.
• Lead strategic conversations with confidence, clarity, and authority.
• Frame the problem, shape the opportunity, and sell the thinking.
• Play a central role in pitches, new business opportunities, and agency growth.
• Drive alignment across local, regional, and global stakeholders — often with competing agendas.

Raise the Bar Internally

• Lead, mentor, and inspire strategists at different levels.
• Champion strategic rigor without killing creative possibility.
• Elevate the quality of briefs, presentations, narratives, and thinking across the agency.
• Collaborate seamlessly with creative, account, production, media, PR, social, and data teams.
• Contribute to the agency’s intellectual capital, point of view, and strategic reputation in the market.

What We’re Looking For

Experience

• 8–12+ years of experience in strategy / planning / brand consulting / creative agency planning / marketing strategy.
• Strong track record in brand strategy, communications strategy, and creative development.
• Meaningful experience working on FMCG brands and an understanding of the category’s pace, complexity, and commercial realities.
• Experience working with multinational clients and/or Japan-origin global brands.
• Comfortable operating across local, regional, and global business contexts.
• Proven ability to lead senior client relationships and high-stakes strategic conversations.
• Experience leading pitches, major proposals, or transformative strategy projects.

Core Strategic Capabilities

• Ability to identify the real problem behind the brief.
• Strong brand thinking — positioning, architecture, proposition, portfolio logic.
• Sharp creative strategy instincts and the ability to unlock inspiring creative springboards.
• Deep understanding of integrated communications and channel orchestration.
• Strong grasp of human insight development, audience definition, and behavioral understanding.
• Ability to connect business ambition, brand ambition, and communications ambition into one clear strategic story.
• Strong analytical skills, but equally strong intuition and judgment.

Creative Agency DNA

• You know the difference between a “solid strategy” and a strategy that makes creatives want to make something brilliant.
• You can distill complexity into a sharp thought that unlocks the room.
• You understand that effectiveness and originality are not opposing forces.
• You’re fluent in the realities of making work — not just talking about it.
• You know how to push for better work without becoming precious, vague, or academic.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Strong team leadership, coaching, and mentoring capability.
• Skilled at cross-functional collaboration in fast-moving, high-pressure environments.
• Confident presenter and persuasive storyteller.
• Able to influence without relying on hierarchy.
• Calm under pressure, comfortable with ambiguity, and energized by complexity.

Language

• Fluent Japanese and business-level English required.
• Ability to lead discussions, present strategic recommendations, and write clearly in both languages is highly preferred.