The Hired Guns are seeking a Content Strategy Lead to join an extraordinary digital agency that creates exceptional online experiences for some of the best brands out there. You’ll play a pivotal role in large-scale site builds and relaunches, shaping editorial and system content planning from initial strategy through implementation. These guys are brash, confident, fun, opinionated, and smart, and they consistently win transformative projects.
Gun Profile:
You’ve been serving in leading content strategy roles for at least 8 years on implementations where CS is a core component throughout the entire development process. You have significant agency or consulting experience that involved broad and deep client contact (financial services or automotive industry a plus). You have the seasoning and confidence to function as a truly independent leader within the CS discipline (heading teams as well as handling some deliverables yourself). Your thinking and working styles are amazingly versatile and flexible: you can shift gears on a dime between being strategic and being hands-on, you can work closely and effectively with all other disciplines as well as clients, and you can handle changing and ambiguous situations without losing sight of structured methodologies. You thrive in a high-pressure environment where you’re working on multiple projects at the same time. Your fantastic instincts about the interplay between great design and engaging content make you an invaluable partner with design teams. You’re great at coming up with inspired ideas that push the envelope, but your scientific approach ensures that your decisions are grounded in user research and analytics at all times. You are superbly self-motivated and excellent at inspiring team members, and you love a challenge!
(We don’t want to be off-putting to anyone who might be interested in this role, but we also don’t want to waste anyone’s time. So let us emphasize that this is not a content creation, content production, editorial, or writing role. The term “content strategy” gets bandied about a lot these days, and in some places has lost its meaning, but for this shop, we’re talking about a highly rigorous discipline. If terms like “taxonomy”, “governance”, and “ontology” send you running to Wikipedia, or you’re not adept at a data-driven, research-oriented approach to content decisions, this is not a fit for you.)
Nitty Gritty:
When these guys say Content Strategy Lead, they mean exactly that. You’ll be a “buck stops here” kind of player, with the utmost degree of autonomy. You’ll make decisions independently about scope, resourcing, planning and execution of CS for major client implementations. (Your boss, the Director of Content Strategy, is looking for someone who can take their projects and run with them, without hand-holding or day-to-day guidance.) And you’ll serve as leader and mentor to more junior content strategists.
As a Content Strategy Lead at this agency, you’ll play a major role in devising and implementing innovative sites and other products on multiple digital platforms. Never fear that you’ll be brought in after all the design and UI decisions have been made, leaving you with little elbow room to get the content right: you’ll be at the table right from initial client discovery, and your voice will most assuredly be heard, because you’ll be speaking with the authority of your own insight and experience, backed up by the agency’s proven methodologies (which you’ll be helping to evolve). Throughout each and every execution, you’ll deepen the agency’s relationship with its clients, providing them with ideas and inspiring them to think about their content in fresh new ways.
Net-Net:
The content strategy discipline is growing and gaining a higher profile at this agency, so to come in as a Content Strategy Lead is a tremendous opportunity. And you’ll be in world-class company: this is a shop that truly “gets” the art and science of web development for leading clients. All the various disciplines here — content strategy, UX, design, development, and the rest — are highly evolved players, each with critical roles in delivering the best work around.