Director of Strategic Planning

Mower • Arlington Heights, IL • $103k - $158k / year • 8m ago

Mower is a fiercely independent, 100% employee-owned, full-service advertising, marketing, and public relations agency with team members located across the United States.

The Mower Strategy team is looking for a Director, Strategic Planning who will be accountable for translating complexity into clear, actionable decisions. This role requires the ability to evaluate competing priorities and recommend paths forward that direct, influence, and inspire both client and internal teams alike.

This is a special type of role that favors hybrid thinkers—those who can move comfortably between in-depth analysis and artistic expression. Those who understand that the most effective strategies have to be achievable… but they must be unforgettable too.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

Foundational Brand & Market Strategy

Lead comprehensive 4C audits (Company, Customer, Category, Competition) to establish strategic context and identify opportunity spaces.
Develop market, audience, and competitive positioning maps that clarify differentiation, tension, and white space.
Translate macro, cultural, and category insights into clear strategic choices—not just observations.

Brand, Positioning & Messaging

Define and evolve brand positioning, value propositions, and strategic territories.
Create message houses and narrative frameworks that ensure consistency, flexibility, and clarity across channels.
Ensure messaging ladders from human truth to business objective to creative expression.

Customer & Experience Strategy

Develop personas grounded in real behaviors, motivations, and needs—not demographic clichés.
Design end-to-end customer journeys that identify moments of influence, friction, and emotional impact.
Use journey thinking to inform channel roles, content strategy, and experience design.

Content & Nurture Strategy

Lead the development of content strategies that align brand narrative with customer needs across the funnel.
Define the strategic role of content by audience, channel, and moment—ensuring relevance, coherence, and performance.
Map client content gaps and make recommendations to editorial and other documentation that enhance a client’s publishing engine.
Partner with creative, media, public relations, research, analytics, and CX teams to ensure strategic intent is preserved from brief to execution.
Own demand generation or ABM strategy in collaboration with media, CX, and measurement teams.

Narrative Ownership

Translate strategic frameworks into clear, inspiring briefs that unlock creativity and guide execution.
Craft and deliver compelling strategic stories in presentations, workshops, and client engagements.
Ensure all strategic outputs connect back to a cohesive narrative that teams can understand, remember, and act on.

Leadership & Stewardship

Set the standard for strategic excellence and craft across the agency.
Mentor and elevate strategy teams across disciplines (Media Strategy, PR Strategy, etc.) by teaching both how to think and how to tell the story.

Educational Requirements & Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience.
10+ years of experience in agency strategy or a related marketing function.
Proven ability to synthesize insights from multiple sources and translate complexity into clear, compelling strategic direction.
Strong strategic judgment, with the ability to define problems, evaluate information, and draw sound conclusions.
Experience developing integrated marketing strategies, brand positioning, value propositions, frameworks, POVs, and thought leadership.
Demonstrated ability to craft and deliver persuasive presentations for senior and C-suite audiences, including leading pitch teams.
Confidence working independently, paired with a strong collaborative mindset.
Experience working across a range of business models (B2C, B2B, and/or B2B2C).
Comfort using AI as a strategic tool—paired with strong human judgment, curiosity, and critical thinking.

Nice to have (but not required):

Background in consulting, research, or related strategic disciplines.
Advanced degree or specialized training in strategy, marketing, or business.

Salary Range: $103,000 - $158,000 annually

*Salary differential is based on seniority, merit, education, training and experience.

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