Department: PR, Influence and Social Location: London Contract type: 12-Months Full Time/Part time: Full time Reporting into: Social Excellence Lead About Ogilvy: Ogilvy UK has been creating iconic ideas that deliver impact at scale for clients ever since David Ogilvy founded the company in 1948. The agency specialises in bringing together brand advertising, customer experience marketing, PR, influence and consulting, all fueled by Behavioural Science. Our world-class award-winning creative campaigns deliver solutions for clients including Sainsbury’s, Lloyds Banking Group, Madri, Unilever and Mondelēz International. Ogilvy’s influencer marketing practice is the largest globally and the agency also hosts the world’s biggest festival ofbehavioural science and creativity, Nudgestock – which is now in its 12th year. James Murphy is the CEO of Ogilvy Group UK, which includes Ogilvy UK and New Commercial Arts (NCA), a boutique creative agency he co-founded in 2020, recentlyacquired by WPP. The Role: This is an exciting opportunity at Ogilvy to play a pivotal role in elevating our social capabilities for 2026, helping us redefine our social and content offer and realize our new global ambition of ‘building social brands’. Ogilvy is seeking an experienced Social Strategy Director (FTC), responsible for setting the standard for social-first strategic thinking within the agency and exciting our high-profile clients about the opportunities of social. The ideal candidate is relentlessly curious about social, deeply immersed in culture, trends and conversation, and a thought leader who can challenge traditional thinking. Collaborating closely with clients, you'll gain a deep understanding of their businesses, target audiences, and brand values, translating this knowledge to develop inventive strategic solutions tailored to meet each client’s distinct objectives, to secure social buy-in and drive tangible outcomes. Your experience will span socially led campaigns as well as always on organic social and editorial thinking. As a mentor and leader, you'll guide and support junior team members in their professional growth, fostering an environment of collaboration and agility. You’ll advocate for diversity of thought and champion inclusive approaches. Your ability to lead, inspire, and collaborate with others will be integral to thriving in this ever-evolving industry. Key Responsibilities: Strategy leadership: Lead the development of best-in-class social strategies that are firmly rooted in clients’ overall business and brand objectives, incorporating the latest trends and best practices. Drive demand for the strategy department's services internally and externally (part of this will be through the consistent delivery of the teams’ exceptional strategic work). Client relationship management: Build and maintain strong relationships with clients to deeply understand their business, target audience and brand ethos, and formulate campaigns that resonate and yield results. Quickly and intuitively uncover client business challenges, mine for unique insights, and develop innovative social and content strategies that uniquely solve those challenges in social and build their brand. Team leadership & collaboration: Line manage a team of brilliant strategists and foster collaboration, curiosity and best-in-class delivery of strategy. Mentor the team through the development of their strategies, providing feedback and counsel. Offer mentorship and guidance to junior team members, cultivating their skills and fostering career growth. Partner with internal teams—creative, account, and media—to ensure campaign integration aligns with overall brand strategy. Craft briefs that distil that strategic thinking into clear direction for creative teams. Thought leadership & industry influence: Emerge as a thought leader both within the agency and the industry at large, sharing insights, trends, and best practices with teams and clients. This may involve contributing to group-level thought leadership as well as championing social-first thinking within the agency. Push traditional thinking and develop unique social narratives. Stay abreast of industry trends, platform updates, and emerging technologies to establish yourself to senior clients and agency colleagues as a thought leader in social. Social excellence & innovation: Support the Social Excellence Lead by contributing to the ideation, development and implementation of game-changing social initiatives. Think laterally about how to uncover unique insights by working closely with our in-house Marketing Science partners to test hypotheses. Stay updated on the latest trends, technologies, and tools in influence and social marketing, applying and scaling this knowledge to clients to enhance campaign performance. New business & pitch support: Contribute to new business pitches and proposals, infusing creative and strategic ideas to differentiate Ogilvy (this will be on an ad-hoc basis and dependant on resource). Requirements: We are open minded as to your background, and to whether you are a creative, strategist, creator or a blend of all those things. You might even be a two-person team, and we are open to that too. You don’t need to have worked in a big network agency, and we are not expecting you to have run a big team, but we are looking for an entrepreneurial spirit and someone who can seek out opportunities to make brilliant, stand-out work that drives fame for our clients and us. You will bring some great experience with brands and some of those would ideally be multi-national clients. Here’s some characteristics we’ll be looking for: Enthusiasm. This is first because it is the most important. We want people who radiate energy about the work and the impact they can have on it. Integrity. Our values are – Do the Right Thing, Do the Best Work of Our Lives, Do it Together. If all of those speak to you, you’ll love it here. Innovation. Social is a space of constant change, experimentation is a huge part of how we get better and we’d love you to be bold about innovating and trying new things. Collaboration. We want to hear about how you have succeeded with team-mates, clients, creators etc as much if not more so than what you have achieved alone. Cultural intelligence and inclusivity. You are culturally intelligent, champion diversity, and an inclusive culture and are supportive, inspiring and inclusive in the way you work and in the work that you produce. How we help you Thrive: 25 days annual leave 1 Volunteer Day Bupa Healthcare Enhanced Maternity, Adoption and Shared Parental Leave We have a Flexible Working Model with core working hours: 10am – 4pm A 1.5:1 Matching Pension Structure Wellbeing and Health: Up to £25.00 per month towards physical or online exercise class membership, Unmind membership, LifeWorks tool and annual eye tests and development budgets and Wellbeing incentives and activities throughout the year Season Ticket Loan and Cycle to Work Scheme Life Assurance Our ambition is to attract the very best diverse talent to Ogilvy, and to be the employer of choice in the UK. We want everyone to feel welcome when they join us, and once they’re here, for them to want to stay with us, grow their career, and to feel they belong with us. We are an equal opportunity employer and we’re committed to creating an inclusive, welcoming environment for everyone who wants to work at Ogilvy. For us, diversity, equity and inclusion is integrated into everything that we do. We believe that for creativity to flourish, everything about how we work must have diversity at its core. Your race, colour, ethnic, religion, gender, gender identity, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, have no bearing on our hiring decisions, but we encourage everyone to feel free to express their true selves in an environment we are consistently striving to make as inclusive as possible. We aim to facilitate an accessible and positive application experience for all candidates. If you require any adjustments from us to support you through the process or expect to require any adjustments to working conditions to be able to best perform in the role, please let us know. We are happy to consider all reasonable adjustments. If you live with a disability and you would like to take advantage of our offer of a guaranteed interview under the Disability Confident Scheme, please ensure you fill out our voluntary Equal Opportunities Questionnaire when applying.