Freelance Strategy Director, CX

We are currently seeking a Freelance CX Strategy Director to be based out of our Chicago studio. Could this be you?

About us

As a company with studios across the globe, we power up the best minds from 31 teams in over 22 countries to create a unique skillset for each client. We spark ingenuity with global creative sprints that cross time zones and borders and spur on the best of our talent. That includes exceptional brand consulting and strategic design, brilliance in experience, retail and workplace design, and competition-smashing motion design. We are part of the WPP group.

The role

This role is for a world-class CX thinker / doer to work with some of the very best in the industry to focus and guide brand-building projects across the entire customer journey from initial brand identity development throughout the entire brand ecosystem.

We're looking for someone who is profoundly human-centric; a leader who inspires and a team player who knows the work only happens when people work together. This role will be embedded throughout the Landor & Fitch process and report to the Executive Director, Brand Experience Strategy.

If you're someone who is enthusiastic about deeply understanding and explaining customer, brand, product, category and culture we should meet. You will need to show us how and where you've applied your insights and strategic vision and why it drove business success.

You Will

You will focus on building deeper strategic client partnerships and growing potential partnerships through creative solutions.

You'll be bringing CX strategy to the table, developing custom ideations for our biggest clients, and connecting insights to brand experiences, product & service innovations, and activation / company culture strategy.

We are looking for a team leader who is capable of empowering cross-functional teams to develop inspiring and scalable innovations and experience strategies for clients. The role will rely heavily on principles of design thinking to drive innovation in omni-channel brands, and other related commercial fields. The ideal background for this candidate will be a proven working history & deep knowledge in customer-journey-based innovation and experience design, with a strong business and operational backbone in how both B2B and B2C brands work, and psychological insight into how humans behave across digital and physical brand ecosystems. This role will involve managing design-thinking driven deliverables and workshops with diverse teams of client stakeholders (including C-suite) and internal and external contributors to co-create strategies that increase customer engagement and improve customer experience – and in the end, the client's bottom line.

The successful applicant will also be responsible for leading a team to build, lead and analyze workshop outcomes, develop customer experience storyboards, map operational workstreams, build digital experience concepts, model service design programs and identify business requirements to bring them to scale. The candidate will manage the development of these deliverables in parallel with other disciplines.

• Define the opportunities, insights, and frameworks for the Design Team to act on that result in increased awareness, revenue growth, client identified KPI improvement, and engagement for the brand.
• Beginning to end partnership with the Design Team as we develop and elevate brands throughout all touch-points, including Physical, Human, and Digital experiences.
• Define the strategic vision and contribute to overall brand growth.
• Crafts compelling storylines and informed brand experience strategies grounded in consumer insight and data.
• Works with (and coordinates work with) internal or external partners in customer insights, digital design, service design, prototyping and other key fields as needed
• Develops and facilitates workshop approaches, agendas, exercises to motivate groups of stakeholders to co-create common vision around future-state retail customer experience
• Analyzes and articulates the Customer Experience work in a visual and written form – developing clear business vertical or workstream requirements for digital, service, interior, communications, marketing etc.
• Encourages and supports team development and practice growth – pushing boundaries into new services lines and value for clients we partner with
• Leads research into best-in-class customer experience programs, customer insights, retail trends and technology.

So, what are we looking for?

• 8+ years experience driving brand experience, retail strategy, design thinking or innovation consulting, go-to-market campaigns in a digital/interactive/mobile/web environment.
• 4+ years experience Track record of building cases for, managing and communicating strategic initiatives to both key stakeholders and diverse internal creative teams.
• Demonstrated ability to problem solve using Customer Experience design-thinking methodology - integrating service, operations, digital and experiential design with help from brand, marketing, and other tools
• Knowledge of cross-channel customer journey mapping techniques and storyboarding
• Excellent communication skills among peers, client stakeholder and other disciplines.
• Ability to simultaneously tackle multiple projects and challenges with enthusiasm.
• Passion to rapidly build expertise on new businesses and industry verticals.
• Excellent public speaking and presentation skills.
• Ability to work in cross-functional teams in high pressure situations.
• Demonstrated knowledge of design-oriented research and customer insights methodologies
• Demonstrated experience communicating broad strategic initiatives to key stakeholders.

Finally - our commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:

We believe diversity brings creativity, which is at the heart of everything we do. We are actively engaging in creating an environment free of discrimination, where our people and their uniqueness can shine and be celebrated. We're working to set a standard for the industry as a whole, creating a culture of equity and belonging. We may not be perfect, and we know there is work to do, but we regularly check with our teams and Employee Resource Groups on how we are doing, using their insight to frame our thinking and actions, so we can all do better, working as one Landor & Fitch.