Director, Strategy

Allied Sports launched in 2019 with a singular mission – to lead modern marketers in the undeniable shift from Sponsor to Storyteller™. Today, we are an independent, full-service agency operating from the Allied Global Marketing network. Led by industry veterans with a rookie spirit, our award-winning team helps buyers and sellers in sports find, negotiate, and activate high-performing partnerships. Sports Business Journal named Allied Sports one of the Best Places to Work in Sports in 2023 and 2024, and Front Office Sports named the agency among the Best Employers in Sports for 2024. At Allied Sports, we let our values speak louder than our value proposition. We begin every weekly all- company meeting by reinforcing the organizational values that define what it means to be Allied. - Driven – All grit, no quit. We love what we do and use that drive to help our clients win every day. - Versatile – Built for change. We strive for continuous improvement; progress, not perfection. - Meticulous – Do the corners because details matter. Little things done well make big things happen. - Real – We lead with transparency and vulnerability to empower teammates who feel heard and seen. - One – We, not me. We always put team first and find every opportunity to reward the assist. **Opportunity** Allied Sports is recruiting a Director-level strategist to join our growing Partnership Solutions team, an internal center of excellence that cross-functionally supports the agency’s Partnership Development and Partnership Marketing verticals with strategy, analytics, big ideas, and creative design. Reporting to the VP Brand Strategy, the person in this role will work as part of a highly collaborative team of strategic storytellers. **Responsibilities** We’re looking for someone whose favorite questions are “Why?” and “What if?”. Someone who has a passion for understanding human behavior and employs empathy at all stages of the process. Someone who is comfortable getting outside their comfort zones and who approaches every project with the goal of learning something new. Insights get you excited and crafting solutions and big ideas gets you out of bed in the morning. - Employ a resourceful and curious approach to brand, fan, category and cultural research in building briefs, business cases and strategic recommendations for clients. - Prepare insightful, inspiring creative briefs and concise strategy documents that clearly guide the ideation and planning processes. - Lead the creation and stewardship of sports strategies for client business, collaborating internally with account teams to identify brand goals and explore the art of the possible. - Develop and champion insight-led platform and activation ideas that transform partnership rights into culturally resonant moments – both proactive ideation as well as ideas based on specific client briefs. - Develop and deliver high-quality presentations that masterfully communicate complex topics into terms that can be easily understood by various audiences. - Build case studies that showcase the agency’s impact on client business and how those experiences can help influence prospective clients. - Keep a strong pulse on fan engagement, media, and innovation trends across the sports landscape that can help inform strategic planning. - Work closely with our Data & Analytics team to ensure recommended plans are measurable, and creatively uncover data-driven insights that lead to effective solutions. **Qualifications** - **8–12** years of experience - Natural curiosity and a determined ability to turn observed data into a compelling story about what behavior is driving it. - Effective use of superior writing skills to influence and persuade others to take action, with the keen ability to shape a document elegantly using all available tools and tricks. - Comfort level authoring client-facing materials, including strategic frameworks and recommendations, channel & communication strategies, creative ideas, proces…