Senior Strategist - 12 Month FTC

Informa Festivals marks an exciting new chapter in B2B events, bringing some of the world's most influential creative, technology and business festivals together. We’re combining prestigious brands like Cannes Lions, Black Hat, Money20/20 and London Tech Week with cutting-edge marketing intelligence platforms and advisory services to deliver unmissable experiences and insights.

Our festival-led approach reimagines traditional B2B events, creating powerful, immersive experiences that drive innovation and industry advancement. Building on decades of expertise and powered by Informa's international reach, we're shaping the next generation of business festivals.

We’re part of Informa, a global business with a network of trusted brands in specialist markets across more than 30 countries, and a member of the FTSE 100 who are #3 in Glassdoor's Best Places to Work 2025 UK list. 

LIONS Advisory is the Advisory arm of the LIONS business. LIONS operates across four key pillars - Events, Intelligence, Advisory and Learning. Our collective goal at LIONS is to help businesses harness creative effectiveness for growth, and our activities encompass world renowned expertise and platforms: the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, WARC, Contagious, Effie Worldwide and Acuity Pricing. The ambition of the LIONS Advisory team is simple: to be the world’s best creative Advisory service for marketers across the world, fuelling cultures of creative effectiveness that deliver business growth. We are a 30-strong, multi-regional team working across strategy, commercial, marketing and operations, focused on delivering a world-class service to our clients. Our client list includes some of the largest, most influential and most successful marketing organisations in the world.

The LIONS Division is part of Informa Festivals, home to Informa’s experience-led events. Across five global and fast-moving markets, Informa Festivals inspires and celebrates business with events that deliver unique experiences, immersive activities, high-impact content, powerful connections and personal enrichment. Informa plc is a FTSE 100 company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. 

We are looking to recruit a Senior Strategist into the Creative Capabilities team within LIONS Advisory. This role is a 12-month fixed term contract. 

Creative Capabilities strategists work to make creativity a practical reality in the day-to-day lives of our clients. We do this through the creation of tools, training, tentpole moments and tempos. Creative calibre is the single most important actionable lever for delivering advertising profitability, and Creative Capabilities strategists - through hands-on support and multi-faceted programmes – build creative muscle memory within client organisations. Creative Capabilities strategists work exceptionally closely with strategists from the other capability teams (Insight & Intelligence; Research & Effectiveness) and with LIONS Advisory colleagues across commercial, operations and marketing. 

Key accountabilities:

• Leading high-value creative transformation projects and programmes within client organisations in order to drive commercial outperformance.
• Working hand-in-glove with LIONS Advisory strategists & commercial leaders and with senior, sophisticated clients in order to deliver solutions that meet the specific needs of our client’s marketing communities.
• Delivering interactive training sessions, facilitating workshops, and presenting LIONS Advisory content.
• Using LIONS Advisory intelligence platforms (The Work, Contagious IQ, WARC) in order to fuel our work and bring an expert perspective to client organisations.
• Collaborating closely with commercial and operations colleagues within LIONS Advisory to ensure that projects are delivered profitably, to a high standard, on time.
• Working with senior strategists within LIONS Advisory to innovate and evolve our offering.
• Helping to mentor more junior members of the LIONS Advisory team, both within the Creative Capabilities team and across the other capabilities teams (Insight & Intelligence; Research & Effectiveness)
• Supporting the Head of Creative Capabilities, where required, in the day-to-day management of the Creative Capabilities team.

This list is not exhaustive and there may be other activities you are required to deliver.

Skills, experience & qualifications required:

• Experience in strategy, planning, brand management or marketing capabilities.
• Experience of advising brands on creativity and creative effectiveness, with in-depth knowledge of the key evidence-based literature on the topic.
• Advanced knowledge of the advertising, marketing and media ecosystem.
• A strong interest or desire to share knowledge, to teach, and to make complex concepts more easily and better understood.
• Empathetic mindset and excellent listening skills with an ability to understand and manage multiple stakeholders.
• Exceptional and clear communication skills - whether writing, presenting or facilitating - that can inspire and motivate client teams.
• Experience of / healthy appetite for leading large-scale and long-term projects.
• A pro-active, self-starting, can-do attitude that motivates and inspires others.

If you don't meet every single requirement, we'd still encourage you to apply.

We work hard to make sure Life at Informa is rewarding, supportive and enjoyable for everyone. Here’s some of what you can expect when you join us. But don’t just take our word for it – see what our colleagues have to say LifeAt.Informa.com

Our benefits include:

• Freedom & flexibility: colleagues rate us highly for the flexibility and trust they receive and most of us balance time in the office with time working remotely
• Great community: a welcoming culture with in-person and online social events, our fantastic Walk the World charity day and active diversity and inclusion networks
• Broader impact: take up to four days per year to volunteer, with charity match funding available too
• Career opportunity: the opportunity to develop your career with bespoke training and learning, mentoring platforms and on-demand access to thousands of courses on LinkedIn Learning. When it’s time for the next step, we encourage and support internal job moves
• Time out: 25 days annual leave, rising to 27 days after two years, plus a birthday leave day and the chance to work from (almost!) anywhere for up to four weeks a year
• A flexible range of personal benefits to choose from, plus company funded private medical cover
• A ShareMatch scheme that allows you to become an Informa shareholder with free matching shares
• Strong wellbeing support through EAP assistance, mental health first aiders, a healthy living subsidy, access to health apps and more
• Recognition for great work, with global awards and kudos programmes
• As an international company, the chance to collaborate with teams around the world

We’re not solely focused on a checklist of skills. We champion energy and ambition and look for colleagues who will roll their sleeves up, join in and help make things happen. If it sounds like a match and you have most – although not all – of the skills and experience listed, we welcome your application.

At Informa, you'll find inclusive experiences and environments where all perspectives and backgrounds are welcomed. As part of this approach and our diversity and inclusion commitments, we are also formally an Equal Opportunities Employer. This means we base decisions on relevant qualifications and merit and do not discriminate on the basis of key characteristics and statuses, including all of those protected by law. Ask us or see our website for full information.

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