Leo Toronto is looking for a Senior Strategist with proven experience with Financial Services clients to join our team. Working closely with other senior members of the team including a Business and Creative lead, this role will be ideal for a design oriented strategic thinker from a ‘non-traditional’ agency environment. You seek out collaboration (share early and often), think outside the box strategically and believe creativity in all forms has the power to transform human behaviour.

Responsibilities

Creative

· Has the ability to marry creative thinking with considered strategic thinking

· Brings broader thinking and a fresh perspective to the task at hand

· Has the ability to bond with the creative department as well as client service

· Is passionate about ideas – both an idea-generator and idea-facilitator

· Has an insatiable thirst for the holy grail creative brief & briefing

· Aids in fostering an environment for creative excellence and effective work regardless of the medium

Strategic

· Has strong human intuition & curiosity, and encourages objectivity

· Thinks ahead with strong long-term brand vision

· Is the steward of ‘brand idea’ thinking - helps lead the team to this idea by thoroughly examining all aspects of the brand, its consumers, and the cultural environment in which it exists

· Is highly regarded for his/her strategic contribution to the client business

· Has the respect of clients and they seek out the planner’s opinion

· Can communicate the logic of strategy with creative intuition

· Is able to reduce strategic complexities and drive the strategic process

· Seeks opportunities to put brands on the consumer radar in the ever shifting cultural & media world order

Research

· Constant student of the cultural zeitgeist in which brands live and connect with consumers – knowledge shaping and sharing

· Has a strong sense of a variety of research techniques and their relative appropriateness for the task at hand

· Is able to drive the research process

· Has strong research interpretative and analytic skills

· Utilizes data (qualitative or quantitative) to fuel imagination, using research as a place to start from, not as an end in itself.

Qualifications

· Education in a relevant field

· 4+ years of relevant agency experience

· Proven experience with integrated strategy for Financial clients

· Experience working directly with clients, other strategy members of the team

· Collaborative and team-oriented approach to work

· Strong desire to do important and interesting work, with a design thinking approach

· Has solid communication skills;

· Delivers high level thinking to each project;

· Is a convincing & inspirational presenter

· Communicates articulately, across all levels

· Is collaborative with client service, creatives & with clients

· Protrudes a courageous optimism and hungry, striving state of mind