Please note, this role sits within our Creative network and not our Media network. We love all our strategists to get their brains across strategy in all its various forms, but this person must have a foundation of experience creating integrated work within a creative advertising agency.
Who We Are
Havas Creative Network operates where creativity, data, culture and technology meet up and say hello to each other. We built around our Village model united by a single ambition: growth, powered by desire.
Our global scale spans 23,000+ people across 72 Villages, powered by an operating model that fuses intelligence, creativity and technology into one connected ecosystem.
The Havas Creative Network Global Intelligence & Innovation team is Havas Creative’s global engine for strategy, intelligence and innovation, leading strategic client engagements and global pitches, and developing proprietary research, IP, methods, tools and products that help our teams and clients make better decisions and create better work.
Our work spans brand and creative strategy, intelligence, data and analytics, proprietary thought leadership, AI-powered intelligence products and new commercial propositions.
The role
We are looking for an experienced Global Head of Intelligence & Innovation to provide maternity cover, leading Havas Creative Network’s global Intelligence & Innovation function.
This is a senior strategic leadership role spanning brand and creative strategy, intelligence, global pitches, client growth, proprietary IP, innovation and commercialisation.
A significant part of the role will be leading strategy on major global and multi-market creative pitches and strategic client opportunities. You will work closely with creative, client and specialist teams to turn business challenges, cultural and consumer understanding, data and intelligence into compelling brand and creative strategies that inspire great creative work.
Alongside this, you will lead the Global Intelligence & Innovation team and its broader agenda, ensuring our intelligence, proprietary IP, products and emerging AI capabilities continue to strengthen Havas’s strategic and creative offer and create new opportunities for growth.
You will work closely with senior Havas leadership, global and local agency teams, strategists, creatives and clients, connecting the best of Havas’s intelligence, creativity, data and technology.
What we’re looking for
We are looking for an outstanding brand and creative strategy leader with strong intelligence, innovation and commercial experience.
You will bring:
- Significant experience in brand and creative strategy, ideally within a leading creative agency, integrated network or strategic consultancy
- A strong track record of leading strategy on major global and multi-market creative pitches and client engagements
- Deep experience developing brand positioning, creative strategy, audience strategy and cultural strategy
- The ability to move from a complex business or brand challenge to a clear, provocative strategic idea that inspires creativity
- Excellent strategic storytelling skills, with the ability to turn research, data, cultural and consumer intelligence into simple and compelling strategic narratives
- Strong understanding of research and intelligence and how it can be used to strengthen brand and creative strategy
- The ability to work closely and confidently with senior creative leaders, shaping strategy that creates the conditions for outstanding creative work
- Experience presenting and selling strategic thinking to senior clients and leadership teams
- Experience leading global and multi-market work, balancing a strong central strategic idea with cultural and market nuance
- Strong commercial thinking, with the ability to identify where intelligence, proprietary IP, data or technology can create value for clients and new revenue opportunities
- Experience developing or working with proprietary methodologies, strategic frameworks, research or intelligence capabilities
- A strong understanding of AI and emerging technologies, particularly how they are changing strategy, intelligence and creative development
- Experience leading multidisciplinary teams across strategy, research, intelligence, data, product, design and technology
- The ability to balance long-term vision and innovation with the practical demands of pitches, clients and delivery
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to operate with senior Havas leadership and teams across global markets
- A highly autonomous, proactive and entrepreneurial mindset, with the judgement and confidence to make decisions and move things forward
- Genuine curiosity about brands, people, culture, creativity, intelligence, AI and the changing world
Responsibilities
Brand & Creative Strategy
- Lead brand and creative strategy across priority global and multi-market pitches and strategic client engagements
- Interrogate complex business and brand challenges and identify the strategic opportunity at their heart
- Develop distinctive brand positioning, audience strategies, cultural strategies and creative strategies
- Turn consumer, cultural, competitive and category intelligence into clear strategic territories that inspire creative development
- Build compelling strategic narratives that connect the business challenge to human insight, brand opportunity and creative platform
- Work closely with senior creative leaders throughout the development process, ensuring strategy enables and inspires the strongest creative response
- Bring together multiple sources of intelligence, from qualitative and quantitative research through to cultural and behavioural data, without allowing complexity to overwhelm the strategic idea
- Present and defend strategic thinking confidently with senior clients, pitch teams and Havas leadership
Global Pitches & Client Growth
- Provide senior strategic leadership on priority global and multi-market new-business pitches
- Help define the strategic approach at the beginning of major opportunities, identifying what we need to understand and where Havas can create a differentiated answer
- Bring together strategists, researchers, data specialists and other disciplines around a clear strategic direction
- Identify where proprietary Havas intelligence, tools and methodologies can create competitive advantage
- Identify where bespoke research, audience analysis, cultural intelligence or data can unlock a stronger strategic answer
- Support priority global clients on significant strategic challenges and growth opportunities
- Build strong relationships with senior clients, agency leadership and new-business teams
- Identify opportunities to turn strategic and intelligence engagements into deeper or longer-term client relationships
- Lead Havas Creative Network’s Global Intelligence & Innovation function, setting clear priorities and maintaining momentum against its established strategy
- Ensure intelligence is closely connected to the needs of strategists, creatives, clients and new business
- Work with senior Havas leadership to identify where intelligence can create the greatest value and competitive advantage for the network
- Lead and support a multidisciplinary team spanning strategy, intelligence, data, product, design and technology
- Connect intelligence, strategy, creativity, data and technology into a coherent global capability
- Represent Global Intelligence & Innovation with senior stakeholders across Havas and with clients
- Balance the immediate demands of pitches and clients with the longer-term development of the Intelligence & Innovation capability
Proprietary Intelligence, IP & Thought Leadership
- Oversee the development and evolution of Havas Creative Network’s proprietary intelligence, methodologies and strategic IP
- Ensure our intelligence and IP provide teams with distinctive perspectives and useful strategic tools rather than research for its own sake
- Identify important emerging consumer, cultural, brand and business questions where Havas should develop a point of view
- Guide major thought leadership initiatives, ensuring they have a strong strategic narrative and relevance for clients
- Identify opportunities to translate research and thought leadership into methodologies, tools, client propositions and new products
- Ensure proprietary intelligence is effectively integrated into pitches, client work and creative strategy
- Provide senior strategic direction for Havas Creative Network’s growing portfolio of AI-powered intelligence products and tools
- Work closely with the Product Director and specialist product team to shape product priorities and identify where investment should be focused
- Identify opportunities to turn proprietary intelligence, data and strategic thinking into scalable products and capabilities
- Champion experimentation with AI and agentic technology where it can materially improve intelligence, strategy and creative thinking
- Ensure innovation is grounded in genuine user, client and business needs
- Connect emerging technology with Havas’s proprietary data, intelligence and methodologies to create more distinctive capabilities
- Lead the commercial agenda for Global Intelligence & Innovation
- Identify opportunities to take established intelligence products and capabilities into more clients, markets and briefs
- Identify opportunities to embed intelligence into existing client relationships and retainers
- Develop opportunities for bespoke intelligence products and solutions around specific client and agency needs
- Work with Havas agencies and markets to turn global capabilities into relevant local growth opportunities
- Help shape propositions, commercial approaches and routes to market for intelligence products and services
- Build senior relationships across the network that create demand for Intelligence & Innovation capabilities
Team & Network
- Lead and support a multidisciplinary global team, creating clear priorities while giving specialists the autonomy to lead within their areas
- Build a collaborative culture that values strategic excellence, curiosity, experimentation and commercial thinking
- Lead and grow the global Creative Intelligence Community, connecting intelligence and strategy talent across markets and agencies around shared capabilities, learning and opportunities
- Build strong relationships with strategy and intelligence leaders across Havas Creative Network
- Connect global capability with local market expertise, ensuring cultural and market nuance informs our work
- Use the Creative Intelligence Community to drive adoption of global tools, products, IP and methodologies, while creating a feedback loop from markets into the global intelligence agenda
- Create opportunities for people across the network to contribute to global Intelligence & Innovation initiatives
- Ensure the team remains focused on creating work that is strategically excellent, creatively useful and commercially valuable
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