Head of Strategy

Publicis Groupe · Johannesburg

Company description

Publicis Groupe Africa is a leading marketing, communications, and business transformation network operating across 36 African countries, combining creativity, technology, and local insight to deliver integrated client solutions.

Publicis Groupe Africa is part of Publicis Groupe, the second-largest communications group globally, founded in 1926. The African network operates as a partnership of 44 communications agencies with offices spanning 36 countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, and many others.

Its headquarters are in Johannesburg and Cape Town, providing a central hub for continental operations.

Overview

HEAD OF STRATEGY

Strategic Leadership | Culture & Intelligence | Integration | AI & Future-Fit Growth

THE OPPORTUNITY

Telecommunications is one of the most dynamic categories in the market that sits at the intersection of technology, culture, connectivity, customer experience and everyday life. This role offers the opportunity to work with a leading telecommunications client and help shape the next generation of its agency partnership.

We are building a connected, future-fit model that brings together creativity, intelligence, data, technology, AI and world-class execution around the customer. It is an opportunity for ambitious leaders to influence the work, the operating model and the capabilities we build — creating a partnership designed not only for today's challenges, but for what comes next.

ROLE PURPOSE

The Head of Strategy is the senior strategic leader responsible for the quality, ambition and evolution of the strategic product across the Publicis/client partnership.

The role ensures Publicis deeply understands the client's business, customers, culture, market and growth challenges, and translates that understanding into clear strategic direction that inspires creativity, shapes integrated solutions and creates measurable business value.

The Head of Strategy will lead a future-fit strategy function that combines human insight, culture, data, media, technology and AI to move the partnership beyond reactive briefing toward proactive, intelligence-led planning and opportunity creation.

A critical part of the mandate is to connect strategic thinking across disciplines and Groupe capabilities so that the client receives one coherent view of the problem, the opportunity, the audience and the path to growth.

The Head of Strategy is ultimately accountable for ensuring that the strategic product delivers:

Clear, differentiated and actionable strategic direction.
Deep understanding of the client's business, customers, culture and market.
Strong strategic influence and senior client confidence.
Integrated thinking across brand, creative, media, data, technology and experience.
Meaningful use of AI, data and emerging intelligence capabilities.
Better briefs, stronger upstream planning and more proactive opportunity creation.
A high-performing, future-fit strategy team and culture.

Responsibilities

STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP & VISION

Set and champion the strategic vision and planning standard for the client/Publicis partnership.
Translate the client's business priorities into clear strategic agendas across brand, customer, communications, experience and growth.
Ensure strategy moves upstream into business and marketing challenges rather than beginning only once a communications brief is received.
Lead integrated strategic thinking across brand, digital, social, media, data, customer experience, commerce and innovation.
Create clarity from complexity and frame the questions that the client and agency should be solving.
Develop strategic platforms and longer-term thinking that create consistency beyond individual campaigns.
Ensure strategic recommendations are practical, differentiating and connected to measurable outcomes.

SENIOR CLIENT & BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP

Build trusted senior relationships with client stakeholders as a strategic adviser and provocateur.
Develop a deep understanding of the client's business model, categories, customers, competitive environment, priorities and growth challenges.
Challenge client and agency thinking constructively and help redefine briefs where the stated problem is not the real business problem.
Lead high-value strategic workshops, planning sessions and senior client conversations.
Anticipate emerging client needs and bring proactive strategic perspectives before they become briefs.
Partner with the Managing Partner to increase Publicis' strategic influence and access across the client organisation.
Ensure strategy consistently demonstrates how Publicis can contribute to business and brand growth, not only communications delivery.

CONSUMER, CULTURE & MARKET INTELLIGENCE

Create a strong understanding of people, culture, category and context at the centre of the strategic product.
Stay closely connected to shifts in South African culture, consumer behaviour, technology, media and society.
Turn research, cultural observation, customer data and market intelligence into useful strategic insight.
Identify tensions, behaviours and unmet needs that can unlock distinctive creative and business opportunities.
Ensure teams move beyond descriptive data toward meaningful interpretation and implication.
Build repeatable intelligence and knowledge-sharing practices that strengthen strategic quality over time.
Bring relevant global thinking into local strategy without losing cultural relevance.

DATA, AI & FUTURE-FIT STRATEGY

Data, AI and technology are core inputs to modern strategy and should strengthen how problems are understood, opportunities are identified and decisions are made.
Champion the use of AI to accelerate research, synthesis, scenario exploration, knowledge retrieval and strategic development while maintaining human judgement.
Build strategic fluency in data, analytics, connected identity, personalisation, customer journeys and emerging technology.
Partner with Data, Media, Technology and Experience teams to connect behavioural and performance data to strategic decisions.
Identify where AI and emerging technology create new customer, brand, communication or business opportunities for the client.
Develop frameworks that help the client navigate changing consumer behaviours, platforms and technology.
Ensure AI-generated analysis is interrogated critically and supported by appropriate governance, source quality and human oversight.
Help evolve the strategic product from periodic planning toward more continuous, intelligence-led decision-making.

INTEGRATED STRATEGY & POWER OF ONE LEADERSHIP

Act as the senior strategic integrator across Publicis Groupe capabilities servicing the client.
Bring together brand strategy, communications planning, media, data, experience, technology, commerce, content and other relevant strategic disciplines.
Ensure the client receives one connected strategic point of view rather than separate discipline-specific answers.
Create common strategic frameworks and language that enable teams to solve problems together.
Partner with network and global strategy leadership to access relevant thinking, tools and capability.
Remove strategic silos and ensure specialist expertise is brought in at the right point in the process.
Help make Power of One tangible through the quality, coherence and breadth of the strategic product.

BRIEFING & UPSTREAM PLANNING

Own the strategic quality of the briefing process in partnership with Client Leadership and Operations.
Ensure briefs clearly define the business problem, audience, desired behaviour, strategic proposition and success measures.
Lead or support development of strategic briefs for priority initiatives.
Challenge incomplete, overly tactical or execution-led briefs before they enter the creative process.
Build stronger upstream planning practices that reduce reactive work and improve visibility of future priorities.
Connect annual, quarterly and campaign planning so that individual briefs contribute to broader strategic objectives.
Support the adoption of future-fit briefing tools and processes that improve quality, consistency and speed.

CREATIVE & EFFECTIVENESS PARTNERSHIP

Partner closely with the Executive Creative Director to ensure strategy and creativity operate as one problem-solving unit.
Provide inspiring strategic foundations that unlock ambitious creative thinking rather than constrain it.
Stay engaged throughout creative development to protect the strategic idea and strengthen the work.
Use culture, audience understanding, data and evidence to improve creative choices.
Partner with Media and channel specialists to define how ideas should behave across touchpoints.
Ensure measurement frameworks are established early enough to assess whether the work achieved its intended effect.
Lead strategic learning from performance and effectiveness, feeding insights back into future planning.
Support development of effectiveness cases, award submissions and thought leadership where appropriate.

GROWTH, INNOVATION & NEW BUSINESS

Contribute actively to growth of the client partnership by identifying strategic opportunities beyond current scopes and briefs.
Develop perspectives on emerging client, category and customer challenges that can unlock new work.
Lead strategic thinking for pitches, proposals, capability presentations and new-business opportunities.
Partner with Creative, Data, Media, Technology and Experience teams to develop new propositions and solutions.
Help define the strategic rationale for new products, services, platforms and transformation opportunities.
Strengthen Publicis' reputation through distinctive thinking, thought leadership and visible strategic contribution.

TALENT & STRATEGY LEADERSHIP

Build, lead, mentor and inspire a high-performing strategy and planning team.
Ensure the team has the right mix of brand, integrated, digital, cultural, data and experience strategy capability.
Create clear standards for strategic quality, behaviour, collaboration and performance.
Develop strategists' ability to simplify complexity, generate insight, tell compelling stories and influence senior stakeholders.
Create an inclusive culture of curiosity, sharing, challenge and continuous learning.
Identify future capability requirements and build fluency in AI, data, technology and evolving strategic disciplines.
Maintain strong relationships with Groupe and network strategy leaders and create opportunities for knowledge transfer.
Partner with Operations and Talent on resource planning, recruitment, development and succession.

STRATEGIC TRANSFORMATION & FUTURE OPERATING MODEL

Play a leading role in evolving the strategic function and the broader client operating model.
Challenge legacy planning processes that create unnecessary delay, duplication or disconnected thinking.
Develop more agile, collaborative and intelligence-led approaches to planning.
Support transformation programmes by ensuring business, customer and strategic objectives remain clear through change.
Help define how strategy should interact with future workflow platforms, knowledge systems, AI tools and connected data.
Ensure new ways of working improve strategic quality and speed rather than simply adding process.
Create an environment where strategy is continuously learning and improving.

OPERATIONAL PARTNERSHIP

The Head of Strategy owns the strategic product, planning standards and strategic capability, while the senior operations leader owns the operating engine that enables the strategy team and wider account to deliver effectively.
Partner closely with Operations to ensure the strategy model is appropriately resourced, prioritised and supported.
Provide visibility of strategic capacity, specialist capability requirements and key planning dependencies.
Support efficient briefing, review and workflow structures that give strategists sufficient time and access to solve the right problems.
Use agreed platforms, governance and ways of working to improve collaboration, visibility and knowledge sharing.
Escalate capacity, process or structural issues that materially affect strategic quality or client outcomes.
Ensure the Strategy team participates effectively in integrated planning and delivery rhythms.

PERFORMANCE, EFFECTIVENESS & ACCOUNTABILITY

Create clear accountability for strategic quality, team performance and client impact.
Establish meaningful measures for strategic contribution, including client confidence, effectiveness, proactive opportunity creation and quality of briefs and thinking.
Track whether strategies translate into differentiated work and measurable business or brand outcomes.
Use campaign performance, audience learning and client feedback to improve future strategic recommendations.
Maintain visibility of team health, workload, capability and development.
Ensure strategists are accountable not only for producing presentations, but for improving the quality of decisions and outcomes.

MEASURES OF SUCCESS

Strong senior client confidence in Publicis' strategic leadership and thinking.
Increased strategic influence and earlier involvement in client business and marketing challenges.
Consistently high-quality briefs, strategic platforms and integrated plans.
Stronger connection between business problems, audience insight, strategy, creative work and measurable outcomes.
Increased proactive opportunities and strategic propositions brought to the client.
Meaningful adoption of AI, data and technology within the strategic process.
Improved integration across Strategy, Creative, Media, Data, Technology and Experience.
A high-performing strategy team with strong capability, retention and development.
Improved effectiveness learning and evidence of strategy contributing to business and brand results.
Reduced dependency on reactive briefing and campaign-by-campaign planning.
A stronger external and internal reputation for strategic excellence and thought leadership.

Qualifications

CRITICAL CAPABILITIES

Strategic business and brand leadership.
Integrated strategy and communications planning.
Consumer, cultural and market insight.
Strong analytical and problem-solving capability.
Data literacy and ability to translate evidence into implication.
AI and emerging technology literacy.
Senior client relationship and influence.
Compelling storytelling and presentation capability.
Creative partnership and ability to inspire ideas.
Effectiveness and measurement understanding.
Integrated leadership across multiple disciplines and agencies.
Strategy team leadership, coaching and talent development.
Growth, innovation and new-business capability.
Ability to simplify complexity and lead through ambiguity and change.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

Significant senior strategy, planning or consulting experience within advertising, marketing, communications, digital, media or related industries.
Demonstrated experience leading strategy across large, complex or integrated client relationships.
Strong track record across brand, communications, digital and integrated strategy.
Demonstrated ability to turn business, customer, cultural and market understanding into actionable strategic direction.
Experience leading and developing teams of strategists or planners.
Strong senior client-facing experience, including facilitation, workshops, presentations and strategic counsel.
Working knowledge of data, analytics, AI, emerging technology and modern customer-experience thinking.
Experience integrating multiple disciplines, agencies or specialist capabilities.
Experience in transformation, innovation or future operating-model development is advantageous.
Relevant tertiary or postgraduate qualification is advantageous; demonstrated strategic leadership, business impact and industry capability should be considered alongside formal qualifications.
Strong written, verbal and presentation skills.

Additional information

Publicis Groupe Africa is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits any forms of Discrimination or Harassment. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all our employees in line with our Employment Equity Plan.

All appointments will be based on qualifications, experience and best fit but preference will be given to candidates from designated groups. Interested candidates must please submit a concise CV including a link to your portfolio if necessary. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Should you not hear from us within 2 weeks after submitting your application, please consider your application as unsuccessful.