Director, Brand Marketing (Financial Services)

WE HAVE CREATED A WORLD WHERE ART AND SCIENCE ARE BEST FRIENDS

Known is a modern marketing company engineered for the unprecedented opportunities and challenges facing marketers today. We are about 500 people strong, pairing PhD data scientists with award-winning creatives, strategists, engineers and expert research teams to produce some of the most innovative and cutting-edge creative work in culture. We believe that when creative truly collaborates with science, strategy, and technology, amazing things can happen. 

Our clients span the leading brands in finance, technology, media, CPG, real estate, and many other categories. These partnerships have earned us multiple awards and recognition: Emmys, Clios, Effies, Cannes Lions Awards, ProMax Agency of the Year, and most recently, Digiday’s Most Innovative Media Agency.

We couldn’t create this award-winning work without seeking out and hiring the best talent. What does it mean to be a Knowner? We are curious innovators, knowledge-hunters who are constantly challenging ourselves to do better and be better for our clients, for our team and for our world at large. Our offices around the U.S. are open and while most of our people work in a hybrid setting, we are a distributed workforce with a number of Knowners working remotely.

Our Strategy team is at the heart of Known’s mission to bring ground-breaking customer insight, strategic consulting, media planning/buying and creative work to our clients.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT US, LET'S TALK ABOUT YOU

About the role:

We are seeking an experienced Brand Marketing Director to provide guidance and strategic direction for one of the agency’s largest financial services clients. In this role, you will report to the VP, Head of Brand Marketing, working in a client-facing capacity and partner closely with our Account Lead to develop sound business strategies to achieve growth for our client. 

The ideal candidate will have the ability to distill complex information (data, research, insights, industry best practices) into narratives and frameworks that are easily digestible and actionable. This will include determining how the corporate positioning is properly expressed across core lines of business both internally and externally in order to achieve and maximize business goals and impact. 

We imagine you have a minimum of 8 years working either in an advertising or performance marketing agency in a strategy/planning role in support of a financial services client, or in-house at a financial institution.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

There are 4 key areas of focus for the role:

1. Understand the Competitive Landscape

• Build a thorough understanding of the competition and client opportunities within the competitive set and provide recommendations on how to bolster knowledge where necessary.
• Develop thoughtful client-facing POVs based on competitive and industry activity
• Own competitive monitoring and analysis, as well as insight identification and articulation
• Identify research opportunities to close knowledge gap and/or achieve client goals, i.e., Quant, Qual, Segmentation, Desk Research, Academic, Industry, Best Practices

2. Understand the Audience and Their Needs

• Identify latent needs and ownable white space by understanding attitudes, practices and behaviors of the target audience(s) and translate into bespoke brand strategies, actionable insights and customized customer journeys
• Organize the business portfolio of brands, products and services in a brand architecture that helps audiences access and relate to a brand 
• Tell clear, crisp stories that leverage data and insights and land an inspired solution
  

3. Client Partnership

• Lead and contribute to presentations and client engagement opportunities to ensure objectives, both large and small, are understood and met 
• Build rapport and trust with clients at different levels of the organization
• Collaborate on the development of client briefs at the onset of projects to set goals, timing and the ideal process for working with various client stakeholder groups
• Author case studies at the completion of projects for internal, external and client use
• Join business development presentations with new partners within the client organization and helping to prepare for those meetings
  

4. Internal Alignment

• Form solid partnerships with team members from all represented internal Known teams and external agency partners 
• Review, pressure test and elevate the work of other strategy team members in order to prepare their work for clients

Required outputs & deliverables: 

• Thoughtful, detailed and well-researched slides to assist clients in seeing our strategic vision and rationale
• Value proposition definitions and positioning articulations and ownable territories to explore in research
• Messaging recommendations
• Research gap analyses, research recommendations and POVs
• Ongoing audience insight generation
• Brainstorming session facilitation

WHAT YOU HAVE DONE/WHO YOU ARE

• Deep experience and understanding of the Financial Services industry, business models, trends, lexicon, etc. 
• A passion for understanding our partner’s needs and becoming their trusted advisor.
• Deep empathy for consumers, our partners and our teammates.
• A desire to change the way things have been done in marketing and brand strategy.
• Excitement to partner across practices including: client experience, data scientists, insights and creatives across our offices.
• Highly motivated with a history of high integrity.

SOME OF OUR PERKS

• Unlimited paid time off
• Long Term Incentive Plan (LTIP)
• 401k with company matching and no vesting period
• Annual bonuses
• Vacation bonus
• Generous medical plan
• Paid parental leave
• Charity perk
• Company-wide events and retreats

ONE LAST THING TO ASK YOURSELF

All this might sound great, but you’re probably still wondering, “Would I be a good fit for Known?” or “Would Known be a good fit for me?” Our culture is propped up by four values that we aspire to every day: We are one team. We see the good. We never stop learning. There’s always a better way. At Known we are setting out to build something more than just a company. We are building a legacy filled with exceptionally talented people with a kaleidoscope of backgrounds, experiences, and origin stories who feel encouraged and empowered to bring their whole selves to work, and to partner with us in molding and shaping our culture through our values.

Known is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against employees or qualified job applicants on the basis of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or locally protected class.

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