Group Planning Director

We’re Curiosity.

An independent creative solutions agency in Cincinnati that lives and breathes the power of being strategically curious. We ask insightful questions to uncover surprising perspectives. Because in a world with no definitive answers, the more curious you are, the more solutions you reveal.

About the Role

At Curiosity, Strategic Planning is the point of the spear.

Our Vision is as simple as it is ambitious: To set the highest standard for strategic planning by turning curiosity into connection and connection into creativity that moves people.

Our Mandate: Expose truths that make exceptional work inevitable.

All of that informs our mission to chart the course to fascination. In a world where ads are ignored and brands are misattributed, we exist to find the most fascinating way a brand can enter the lives of its audience by questioning the unquestionable.

The Group Planning Director is the highest expression of that mission. This is the role that partners with Head of Strategy to set the standard for how strategy is done at Curiosity and how we stay competitive in the industry. You will be the strategic voice that makes clients lean in, pitches land better and our work harder to ignore.

Who You Are

You are the rarest of strategists. At this level, you do so much more than lead the work. You set the standard and act as the strategic conscience of your team, your clients and the agency.

You’ve arrived at the role where craft is assumed, and clarity in thinking is a given. The clients who need you most are the ones who don’t yet know what they need, and your job is to see it before they do, frame it in a way that moves them to action and lead a

team in executing on that vision. Strategy at this level is indistinguishable from leadership.

You are no longer measured by the quality of the thinking alone. You’re measured by the quality of the thinking you enable across accounts, the department and disciplines. The standard you set becomes the standard everyone else chases.

You move fast. You speak convincingly. Everything you do is compelling. At this level you don’t have the luxury of time. You read the room quick, form a perspective that keeps things moving forward and deliver it with the kind of authority that stirs people to move.

Your presence raises the ceiling for everyone around you. Your influence is agency- and industry-wide. Your responsibility extends beyond your accounts. It now includes the health, direction and reputation of the entire Strategic Planning practice inside and outside Curiosity. Inside, you are shaping how strategy is done. You mentor Planning Directors with honesty, specificity and high expectations.

Outside, you shape thinking on stages (written and spoken), in pitches and in thought leadership.

The work is still everything. Despite the scope and scale of this role, you never fully leave the work. When the highest-stakes brief lands, you’re in it. When a pitch needs to be won, you’re the one who makes the team believe it can happen. When a client relationship needs stability, you bring that. When the work needs saving, you’re the one who finds a way to save it. You are a difference maker, and everyone recognizes that in you.

The Responsibilities

Hold the standard for everyone:

• Challenge assumptions and lead across disciplines so the entire picture makes sense.

• Act as a triumvirate with account and creative leaders to ensure positive direction of client activity.

• You are the bar. Every brief, every briefing, every pitch gets measured against what you’d accept, so know what you accept.

• Spot where the practice is slipping and fix it without making it a moment.

• Build habits and rituals that make great strategy the default.

Be the most compelling person in any room:

• Walk in with a point of view every time and be ready to defend it.

• Make complex ideas feel simple and simple ideas feel profound.

• Deliver thinking that is bold, differentiated and unmistakably Curiosity.

• Speak with the kind of conviction that drops the mic and opens doors.

• Lead client business and orchestrate business-winning pitches.

• Inspire and enable colleagues and clients to take leaps with research and insight that becomes fundamental to a client’s business.

Build and protect a world-class planning team:

• Recruit, develop and retain exceptional planners at every level.

• Coach the team with the same rigor and candor you would want applied to yourself.

• Create the conditions where planners do the best work of their careers, not because of the pressure but because of how you them lead through it.

• Hold the team to a standard that’s motivating, not punishing.

Put Curiosity’s thinking on the map:

• Drive the thought leadership agenda.

• Position the department as a recognizable voice beyond the agency walls.

• Ensure strategy is seen internally and externally as one of Curiosity’s sharpest competitive advantages.

• Influence senior client sin experimenting with new channels, ideas, content and technology.

Never leave the work behind:

• Lead a project commanding attention and action to get the best from everyone.

• Push creative ambition by making the strategic foundation so strong that bold ideas feel inevitable.

• Protect the work with informed ferocity and strategic perceptiveness.

• Drive effectiveness measurement and lead award submissions.

• Show recognized expertise linked to the proven value of ideas.

Build the tools that make strategy a competitive advantage:

• Identify gaps in how the practice operates and partner with Head of Strategy to pioneer new ways of working and “selling” the idea

• Productize Curiosity’s strategic thinking by turning repeatable approaches into named, sellable IP that clients actively request and the industry recognizes.

• Commission and steward original research that establishes a point of view the market (or client) doesn’t have yet.

• Partner with leadership to find revenue-generating applications for the practice’s intellectual capital (strategy as a product vs just a service).

• Ensure the tools you build outlast you by making them documented, teachable and embedded in how the department works