Recess Studios is a brand agency built to challenge the expected. With offices in Portland and New York, we deliver end-to-end brand solutions, foundational development, consistent application across every touchpoint, and strategic amplification that drives impact. Our multidisciplinary team imagines worlds, crafts honest narratives, and creates experiences at the intersection of culture and commerce. We prize Good Honest Work by Good Honest People, building lasting partnerships through clear standards, tidy operations, and results that exceed expectations.
JOB OVERVIEW
The Strategy Director at Recess studios plays a pivotal role in leading brand, communications, and go-to-market strategies for a wide range of clients while fostering the growth and development of the strategy team. This position is ideal for a visionary leader who blends rigorous analysis, strategic thinking, and creative insight to craft compelling strategies that resonate with audiences, shape culture, and drive measurable business results. In addition to guiding client work, the Strategy Director will develop team members, cultivate a culture of excellence, and inspire cross-disciplinary collaboration to ensure the agency consistently delivers breakthrough ideas.
The Strategy Director leads the strategic vision for the function, the work, and the team. This role turns client goals into a clear problem to solve, a target outcome, an audience choice, and rules for the work. It starts with superior assessment and becomes a plan to confront the problem, secure client alignment, and define the metrics that mark success.
You will build a strategy discipline that operates at an A grade without founder involvement. That means creating a single source of truth that concentrates effort, making explicit choices about outcome, audience, and path, respecting the plan with discipline and partnership, adjusting when new facts demand it, and communicating change immediately. You will mentor strategists, raise the diversity of thought in the room, and set a standard of excellence in the details.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Lead the strategy function end to end. Own the standards, tools, rituals, and decision rights for how we diagnose, brief, plan, and measure.
- Make the plan the single source of truth. Align the client to outcome, audience, path, and KPIs. Log changes fast and keep partners informed.
- Manage and grow a team of strategists. Set clear goals, coach craft, run structured reviews, and uphold an A level bar across all outputs.
- Reduce founder dependency. Run weekly governance and approvals so strategy decisions move on time and with clarity.
- Establish annual goals for the strategy team and run timely performance reviews against those goals.
- Partner with Project Managers to load balance work across the team and protect delivery speed and quality.
- Establish and maintain senior client relationships. Lead working sessions and run key meetings when needed.
- Work independently to drive strategic development for key accounts and pitches. Push work forward without oversight and remove roadblocks for the team.
- Review team outputs for accuracy, logic, and readiness. Ensure briefs, frameworks, POVs, and decks are complete, on time, and on strategy.
- Translate research into narratives and frameworks that clients adopt. Use primary and secondary sources, social listening, cultural analysis, and data to shape clear decisions.
- Craft tight creative briefs that state the problem, target outcome, audience choice, and rules for the work. Present briefs in person or virtually and gain commitment.
- Provide guidance to Creative, Account, Experiential, and Production to keep work on time, on scope, and on margin.
- Develop regular performance reports that connect back to the briefed KPIs. Use results to inform future work and strengthen the plan.
- Draft clear, concise Keynote presentations that convey strategy and the path to results.
- Develop and write up strategic concepts for content, activations, seeding, partnerships, and experiences.
- Recruit and cultivate diversity of thought on the team. Create room dynamics and habits that surface strong ideas and reduce groupthink.
- Stay current on category, consumer, cultural, and channel shifts across brand, digital, social, influencer, and experiential. Turn signals into actionable opportunities.
QUALIFICATIONS
- 8+ years in brand, communications, or experience strategy within a creative or integrated agency, including leadership of major pitches and programs.
- Briefing and storytelling with executive client presence. Able to simplify decisions and earn alignment.
- Research and analytics: qual and quant methods, social and cultural analysis, data synthesis into frameworks, KPI trees and basic dashboards, fluency with modern planning and presentation tools.
- Team leadership and systems: set standards, coach craft, run structured reviews, and manage performance. Build and maintain the tools and rhythms that keep work moving without founder involvement.
- Cross-functional delivery with Creative, Account, Experiential, and Production to land work on time, on scope, and on margin, with strong accuracy and change control.
- Commitment to diversity of thought with effective room facilitation that improves decision quality.
BENEFITS
- Salary Range: $140,000-$160,000
- Flexible PTO
- Flexible WFH
- Competitive company holiday policy
- Health Insurance
- Dental Insurance
- Vision Insurance
- 401k with Company match