Strategy Director

The Role

You are equal parts strategist and leader. Excel at creative thinking as well as structuring work and teams. You manage up and down. You navigate all of these dualities to deliver exceptional brand work.

Your Responsibilities

1. You identify, curate and refine outstanding brand strategies in collaboration with the leadership. You know how to realize and frame them expertly. You encourage and nurture all of this in your team, teaching them to do the same.

2. You you mange your time effectively across a range of active projects — leading your team and crafting strategies yourself. You champion world class brand strategies and identities and do whatever is required practically or creatively to make them a reality. You can direct experienced collaborators, ensuring that they deliver outstanding work. You work towards becoming a valued advisor of the client’s business.

3. You collaborate intimately with the team around you, learning from your directors and teaching practical skills to less experienced staff.

4. You construct great client presentations and can present work eloquently.

5. You collaborate intimately with the Design team, drive verbalizing creative territories and ensure the strategy carries through the creative phases of work.

6. You demonstrate excellent prowess of branding and deliver work for the most impactful companies of today and the founders defining tomorrow.

7. You demonstrate ownership of your role and can both take and action feedback from your manager to progress within it. You can deliver actionable feedback and valuable support for any member of your team.

8. You have a strong awareness of the time and team required to produce excellent work. You are able to successfully manage your own time, your team's time, calendars and meetings to deliver work within scope.

9. You have a willingness to work in person in our Berlin studio, be an active part of our studio’s culture and are open to travel globally, from Stuttgart to San Francisco.

10. You have a great understanding of Figjam, Pitch and Notion

Our Responsibilities

1. We will ensure you have meaningful and regular access to your manager to support your personal development and career trajectory.

2. We will actively reward performance with promotions, pay increases and a discretionary annual bonus of up to 10% of salary to all employees.

3. We ensure Koto is an equal environment for all its employees.

4. We will support you in taking family leave and offer significant paid maternity and paternity.

5. We will actively encourage you to take 25 days holiday yearly, in addition to DE bank holidays (on average 10), one additional holiday day per year (capped at 5 additional days), and a studio closure between Christmas and New Year.

6. We will contribute an additional 15% (Entgeltumwandlung) to anyone wanting to engage in our company pension scheme.

7. We deploy a monthly ‘employee wellness’ benefits package via Juno of €80 per month.

8. We offer access to YCN and fund relevant training opportunities to any employee looking to develop themselves and career.

9. We reward five years of service with €5,000 and five days holiday. We reward ten years of service with €10,000 and four weeks holiday.

10. We will give you the opportunity to work from any the five Koto studios globally, with appropriate planning and application.

Our Culture

At Koto we encourage our team to be ‘rationally optimistic’ about the potential of our work, our clients, their businesses, and the power of brand.

We pursue the best briefs, want to inspire meaningful work, and for those interested provide an opportunity to make the work of their lives. We are actively cultivating leadership, culture and spaces to encourage this.

We work in person with an optional WFH day on Friday, and an additional two weeks remote a year. We believe this produces the best work, mentoring opportunities, collective learning and culture.

We encourage autonomy in each member of our team, allowing them to manage their own time, hours and personal commitments appropriately to complete work.