Buddy Media
Creative Strategist
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Company Description
Buddy are your creative partners, making smart social commercially undeniable. We exist to bridge the gap between creative and performance, helping brands move beyond just content and into work that drives real commercial impact. From always-on social to large-scale campaigns and talent partnerships, we build social ecosystems designed to perform. Combining creative thinking, cultural relevance and media precision to deliver results that actually matter. We don’t just create content. We create work that converts.
About the Role
We’re looking for a Creative Strategist to join Buddy on an initial fixed-term contract, working across an exciting mix of existing clients and new business opportunities. We’re looking for someone who is obsessed with culture, creativity and human behaviour. Someone who can spot an interesting human or cultural truth, understand why people behave the way they do and turn that thinking into a clear creative opportunity. Sitting at the intersection of strategy and creative, you’ll help us get from client challenge to brilliant idea, uncovering insights, defining creative territories, writing inspiring briefs and working closely with our creative teams to bring those ideas to life. You’ll need to be as comfortable getting under the skin of a new audience or cultural behaviour as you are interrogating a client brief, shaping a pitch deck or sitting alongside creatives to push an idea further.
This is a hands-on role for someone who doesn’t just want to write strategy, they want to influence the work that comes out the other side.
What You'll Be Doing
Insight & Cultural Strategy
- Dig into audiences, culture, categories and competitors to uncover insights that can unlock creative thinking
- Turn research and data into simple, compelling human truths and creative opportunities
- Identify emerging behaviours, communities, passions and cultural shifts relevant to our clients
- Find the tension in a brief and articulate it in a way that gives creatives somewhere exciting to go
- Bring a strong understanding of social culture and how ideas travel between platforms, communities and the real world
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Creative Strategy & Briefing
- Interrogate and unpack client briefs, identifying the real business, audience and creative challenge that sits behind the ask
- Translate client briefs into clear, inspiring creative briefs that give creative teams a single-minded problem to solve
- Develop insight-led strategic and creative territories in response to client challenges
- Build clear strategic narratives that take clients from challenge → insight → tension → opportunity → proposition → creative
- Distill complex client asks, objectives and requirements into a focused creative springboard without losing sight of the commercial objective
- Write briefs that balance clarity and creative freedom, giving teams enough strategic direction to inspire great work without prescribing the answer
- Develop single-minded propositions, creative provocations and strategic platforms
- Brief creative teams directly, ensuring everyone understands not just what the client has asked for, but the human problem we are trying to solve
- Work closely with creative teams throughout the process, helping interrogate and develop ideas while ensuring they remain connected to the original insight, client brief and business challenge
- Challenge expected category thinking and help unlock ideas that feel distinctive, culturally relevant and ownable
Social, Creator & Experiential Thinking
- Understand how a central creative idea can translate across social, creators, influencers, partnerships, experiential and paid media
- Help identify the communities, creators and cultural spaces brands can credibly participate in
- Think beyond individual pieces of content to consider behaviours and participation mechanics that can make ideas travel
- Ensure ideas are built for the way people actually consume, share and engage with content today
New Business & Pitches
- Work alongside our client services, business development and creative teams on new business opportunities
- Lead research and insight development for pitches
- Help shape the strategic story and creative springboard
- Build compelling pitch narratives and decks
- Confidently present strategic thinking to clients
- Help us demonstrate not just what an idea is, but why people will care and why it will work
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Cultural & Social Leadership
- Lead on insight generation for the agency, bringing fresh thinking and inspiration
- Stay ahead of cultural trends, platform updates and shifts in audience behaviour
- Help position Buddy as a strategically-led, culturally relevant agency
Creative Effectiveness
- Ensure creative thinking is connected to clear consumer behaviours and commercial objectives
- Consider the role of attention, participation and conversion when developing creative strategies
- Work with media and performance teams to understand what is working and feed those learnings back into future creative
- Help Buddy continue to bridge the gap between brand-building creativity and performance
What We're Looking For
- 4-5+ years experience in a strategic role within a creative, social or integrated agency
- Deep passion for social media, culture and audience behaviour
- Strong experience working on influencer and talent-led strategies
- A proven ability to turn insight into impactful creative thinking
- Confident presenter, able to communicate ideas clearly and persuasively
- Strong problem-solver with a proactive, solutions-focused mindset
- Ability to work at pace and thrive in a fast-moving environment
- Comfortable working independently and owning strategic outputs
- A natural collaborator who enjoys working across teams
- Commercially aware, with an understanding of how strategy drives results
What Sets You Apart
- You believe the best creative work starts with understanding people, not platforms
- You know how to turn insight into ideas, not just slides
- You can connect culture, creativity and performance in a way clients understand
- You’re excited by building a modern strategy function from the ground up
- You understand that the best social strategies don't just generate engagement - they drive behaviour
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