About The Upside

We are a strategy and innovation partner for global brands that want to accelerate growth and progress with direction. All our work is centred around our core purpose to co-create better business growth.

Despite being a boutique consultancy, we punch above our weight. We have found ourselves competing against (and winning from) different kinds of companies, from the big management consultancies and established design firms to other, likeminded consultancy outfits. 

We’re also B-Corp certified, and our values run beyond the work we do, to our team and culture too. Our team comes from diverse experiences and backgrounds, and because of this we are not bound by legacy thinking and frameworks. To make a meaningful difference, we design fresh and dynamic ways that deliver on the innovation and growth opportunities of today.

As a young, ambitious company, our long-term goal is to build a strong, consultancy brand that’s known for re-imagining the consulting space for the modern age and solving complex problems for the world’s A-list brands.

About the work

No challenge we face is similar and in response our approach for each brief is tailor-made and flexible. While we don’t have a set rule book, every project is built on a set of principles that guide how we assemble teams, how we work with each other, how we think and how we create.

We frequently work as an embedded partner and are proudly collaborative. We don’t simply advise and leave. Most of our clients are legacy partners (we are proud of this!) who work with us on numerous long-term as well as every-day strategic and innovation challenges.

Our strategic services are built on deep consumer and cultural understanding and accelerate brand, marketing, and business design efforts. These are the 4 pillars of our offering:

Identify opportunities

What we do: Identify and define the frontiers influencing commercial and consumer behaviour to drive new value into the organisation

What we deliver:

• consumer & culture dynamics
• ecosystem audit
• market mapping, portfolio planning and analysis

Define direction

What we do: Create new methods of business and brand growth that lead to distinct and impactful platforms and offerings.

What you get:

• Business model validation
• Purpose, positioning and proposition design
• Brand and portfolio architecture
• Ecosystem and communication planning
• Editorial approach and framework

Fuel transformation

What we do:Designing ways of working and collective spirit that enable growth to flourish

What you get:

• New org formations / team design
• Embedding plans & stakeholder buy in
• Briefing and on boarding of partners

Data-driven decisions

What we do:Decoding the insights and patterns within data to direct next actions

What you get:

• Data management
• Technical solutions
• Data infrastructure

About the projects / output

To give a sense of the type of work we do, here are some highlights from projects which are currently in development or have recently finalised.

• We are helping the Google global brand team (based in California) transition from an advertising-led to a publisher-led model, developing their editorial and promotional strategy, supporting them on the analytics and measurement of their content and serving as an extension of their global brand team.
• We helped define a loyalty program for OVO Energy to help their members optimise their renewable energy consumption . From consumer research and insight, we developed a members club program; designing the reward structure, partnership approach and experience guidelines.
• Together with the global adidas women team, we are developing new ways for women to embed more sports into their daily lives. On the basis of thorough research with their core audience, we have identified the key barriers and put forward a range of new products, services and partnership. This has -among others- led to a global partnership between IKEA and adidas around products that facilitate sports in the home environment.

About the culture

We aim to be a home of liberated thinkers, and are a team of people who are able to span across disciplines, and have the ability to combine different viewpoints and pull on different capabilities. What brings us together are our values which we hold dear and precipitate throughout our work and interactions, team events and employee benefits program:

Create Better, Together

We leave ego at the door to be kind and collaborate – celebrating each other’s strengths, diverse backgrounds and knowledge to raise up as a whole.

Strong bodies, strong minds

We invest in the wellness of our minds, fitness of our bodies, and spiritedness of our energy – without sacrificing one for another.

Thinks 2 steps ahead

We don’t wait nor keep to the rulebook. We’re proactive by practice, finding opportunities before they knock.

About the role

We are looking for an experienced Strategy Director to join our team. 

This role sits on the crossroads of various marketing disciplines, from brand strategy, business strategy, digital innovation and organisational design. We don’t expect you to be a deep expert in each of these areas, but are looking for talent that can comfortably switch across some of these areas and thrive with a bit of ambiguity thrown in. 

You’ll be working across a number of brands, getting exposure to industries from tech, to fashion, FMCG and beyond.

In your role as a principal strategist, the aim is that you gradually evolve into the key contact and lead for some of our most important clients. This means that you’ll be tasked on both running and overseeing existing projects as well as nurture new projects and business from these accounts.

 

What you can bring to the party

Ultimately we need someone who gets how successful brands operate in today’s technologically and social driven world. It doesn’t mean you have to be a digital nerd but a very good grasp of how consumer behaviour is shifting will be critical. A fascination for business, technology and culture is a head start.

We need someone who is not a jargon monkey and who can articulate solutions in simple and precise ways. Who can write compelling arguments as well as present to a room full of executives.

You will need to bring a sound attitude to the team and be willing to truly get stuck into problems and navigate clever ways through them.

We tend to be drawn to people who aren’t cookie cutter, who have an interesting edge about them. We like a little flavour and character in the team. We all learn from each other and would love to equally learn from you. 

The formal bits

Experience

• At least 6-8 years experience in innovation consulting, marketing, strategy and planning (or similar)
• Managing and motivating more junior members of a team
• Forging relationships with key clients
• Charting an approach to solving a problem or project and managing it to delivery

Skills 

• Articulate storyteller (presenting arguments and strategies in engaging ways)
• Comfortable and natural presenter
• Deep understanding of how changes in culture, technology and commerce are impacting human behaviour
• Able to reframe problems revealing new ways to solve/approach them
• Able to synthesise data and articulate findings simply
• Able to articulate the business and organisational implications of proposed solutions
• Understand marketing and brand theory like the back of your hand
• Able to conceive and manage a project plan through to delivery, Including managing internal and external stakeholders

Responsibilities

• Be the project lead on projects of scale
• Manage a team (managing up and down)
• Lead and grow client relationships
• Design, prepare and lead collaborative workshops
• Explore, conceive, develop and implement new solutions, both short-term and long-term
• Develop and finetune set of strategic tools in key areas
• Write reports and presentations
• Craft, hone and evaluate marketing briefs