Associate Director, Consulting – Foresight, Brand & Innovation Practice

Job Title: Associate Director, Consulting – Foresight, Brand & Innovation Practice

Job Location: Flexible within the US for the right candidate ( Remote or Hybrid)

About Kantar:

Kantar is the world’s leading data, insights, and consulting company. We understand more about how people think, feel, shop, share, vote, and view than anyone else. Combining our expertise in human understanding with advanced technologies. Kantar’s 25,000 people based in more than 100 countries help the world’s leading organizations succeed and grow. Nobody knows people better than Kantar. We provide insight and inspiration to help our clients, our people and society to create and flourish in an extraordinary world.

About the team:

Kantar Consulting is a specialist growth consultancy. We help clients find new sources of growth through strategic foresight, brand strategy, cultural insight, and innovation. We help brands understand the current and future needs of consumers and guide them in how to meet those needs and make meaningful connections. Our clients span the Fortune 500 across diverse sectors (think: Clorox, Coca-Cola, Sanofi, Google, and Samsung)

About the role:

We pride ourselves on being an engine of futures thinking. The Associate Director will be a significant force in driving our business and project teams forward, taking the lead role in projects that use strategic foresight, trends, cultural insight, and innovation to help our clients unlock new sources of growth.

As an Associate Director within our consulting team, you will be among an eclectic mix of strategy, brand and innovation specialists and a small team of futures experts with unparalleled global expertise and proprietary knowledge, foresight tools and techniques. We are looking for an exceptionally talented, passionate, and experienced foresight specialist with an ability to use innovative approaches to help clients anticipate change to identify and unlock future opportunities that can drive successful business, brand, and innovation strategy.

What do we look for in an Associate Director?

• A big picture thinker – with a strong ability to provoke and inspire clients to think differently about how to drive growth for their industry, business, category, or brand
• An insatiable curiosity, open-minded and willing to learn – always on the lookout for innovative ideas and inspiration – a keen interest in wider culture, business as well as social technological, economic, environmental, and political change
• A creative problem-solver; able to think both analytically AND creatively and bring a fresh perspective by connecting the dots in unexpected ways
• Collaborative, yet independent and proactive – comfortable with sharing thoughts and opinions to build on ideas
• Interested in brands, innovation, and business futures – how they connect with people, how they communicate, how they sell and how they can evolve
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills; you will need to build effective relationships internally and with clients, and have a desire to contribute to wider thought leadership
• Revenue generation to drive new business and consistently deliver profitable solutions
• An ability to lead, mentor and train teams to deliver excellence

KEY OUTCOMES

• Build and lead client relationships up to senior level, establishing yourself as a credible expert in strategic futures and foresight with an ability to articulate engaging points of view on macro trends, brands, innovation, and new business models
• Lead projects from brief to delivery, driving teams to deliver to time, quality, and budget successfully. This will involve leading areas of project work as well as guiding junior team members
• Contribute to the winning of new projects with clients. This includes scoping client questions, writing proposals and supporting client pitches

SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS

• 6 – 8 years of professional experience
• BS/BA degree in the social sciences, business, marketing, or related disciplines, though other relevant subjects are also welcome; advanced degrees are a plus
• Able to tackle complex challenges and consider multiple viewpoints as well as fresh research
• Excellent interpersonal skills and a desire to collaborate with others
• Excellent writing and presentation skills; the ability to tell a story and defend a point of view
• Demonstrated track record of client relationship management and helping senior team members with the new business development (prospect assessment, proposals, pitches)
• Ability to take initiative and to work both independently and within a team
• Excellent organization and time management skills with the ability to multi-task and superior attention to detail
• Experience designing, conducting, and analyzing qualitative or quantitative research is desirable, but not a requirement
• Excellent knowledge of Microsoft Office, particularly Excel and PowerPoint

ESSENTIAL CAPABILITIES

• Industry experience: Demonstrable experience in a management or growth strategy consultancy, brand, or innovation agency with a particular focus on foresight, trends agency or similar
• Client / Account Management: Experience of managing mid-sized accounts independently, and playing a key role on larger global accounts with experience of proposal writing, pitching and a track record of new business development
• Project / Budget / Team Management: Strong project leadership skills and experience of efficiently managing project budgets and teams
• Futures Theory: Evidenced experience of strategic foresight led methodologies (horizon scanning, scenario planning, trend forecasting, consumer insight, brand strategy and innovation)
• Delivery of strategic outputs: Experience of writing independently with limited senior input. Managing and motivating project teams to deliver high quality work on time and on budget with well-developed strategic implications and clarity about the application of strategic foresight and futures thinking alongside human and cultural insight to a client’s business challenge
• Strategic thinking: Proven strategic thinker, able to derive strategic recommendations for clients that will make a positive difference to their business. Able to demonstrate powerful thinking about brands, companies, and wider macro issues
• Storytelling: Experience of multi-disciplinary approaches (using a mix of source materials: qual, quant, industry content, macro reports, trends etc.), pulling out strategic implications and recommendations, and finding compelling and visual ways to present a story

BONUS CAPABILITIES

• Subject Matter Expertise: Authority on topic areas such as technology, sustainability, or wellness
• Semiotics/Cultural Insights: Experience helping distill where culture is headed and how this shows up visually through emerging design, fashion, branding, and other visual media
• Trained Facilitation: Experience of moderating / facilitating business strategy, growth strategy and/or innovation strategy workshops

Kantar Benefits

We provide a comprehensive, highly competitive benefits package, including

• Medical plans with comprehensive, affordable coverage for a range of health services
• Health Savings Account/FSA
• Dental, Vision and benefits to cover unique healthcare needs
• Wellness Program
• 401k with matching
• Tuition Reimbursement, Commuter benefits
• Unlimited PTO

At Kantar we have an integrated way of rewarding our people based around a simple, clear and consistent set of principles. Our approach helps to ensure we are market competitive and to support a pay for performance culture, where your reward and career progression opportunities are linked to what you deliver. We go beyond the obvious, using intelligence, passion and creativity to inspire new thinking and shape the world we live in. Apply for a career that’s out of the ordinary and join us. We want to create an equality of opportunity in a fair and supportive working environment where people feel included, accepted, and are allowed to flourish in a space where their mental health and wellbeing is taken into consideration. We want to create a more diverse community to expand our talent pool, be locally representative, drive diversity of thinking and better commercial outcomes.

At Kantar, the diversity of our employees provides a richer environment for our employees and broader depth and breadth of thinking for our clients. Kantar is committed to inclusion and diversity; therefore, we welcome applications from all sections of society and do not discriminate on the basis of age, race, religion, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, marital status or any other legally protected characteristics.