The Role

Are you a strategic thinker who loves uncovering truths, shaping brave ideas, and charting the path forward for iconic brands? We’re looking for a VP of Strategy to join our team in Toronto who brings curiosity, clarity, and creativity to every challenge — and who thrives at the intersection of culture, data, and human behaviour.

As part of our national senior leadership team, you’ll help guide the strategic vision for both local Canadian clients and global marquee brands, working alongside world-class creatives, and business leaders. This role is ideal for someone who is energized by big-picture thinking yet grounded in real-world impact.

Our goal is to create work that earns a place in people’s lives. We have one key value: Truth. The truth about people, the truth about businesses, and the truth about our world – no matter how uncomfortable or unexpected or hard to get to that truth may be.

You will help us live up to our driving philosophy of TRUTH WELL TOLD and help us tell new stories for our clients and for our own brand MCCANN.

The Ask

For our MCCANN VP of Strategy, leadership manifests across:

Our People

Find, develop, align, and inspire talent: our talent is our biggest asset. We must cultivate an environment of generosity, learning, possibilities, bravery, and smarts that's equal parts inspirational and efficient/actionable. Create and cultivate a pipeline of talents working with your HR people, which helps for hiring and reputation.

Our Product

Lead strategic development team's product, pushing for strong insights and strategies that manifest in great work that impacts MCCANN’s brand and our clients' brands/businesses, and, ideally, culture at large. Sometimes this means aligning the right talent to the right project, product, or initiative at the right moment of impact. Sometimes this is about ensuring excellence and inspiring thinking. Sometimes it is about jumping in yourself to be the strategist and drive ideas.

Our Process

Contribute to our shared strategic approach, Truth >> Impact, by contributing to the methods and tools that drive holistic strategic excellence and development.

Our Place

Drive the triumvirate partnership/way of working within the office and across the brands (strategy, business, creative). Calibrate the right teams to ensure strategic excellence and presence.

Our Promotion

Be the industry voice/face of strategic leadership. Get involved in the local industry, and work with your local Communications leads to identify key speaking engagements to raise the strategy and MCCANN’s profile in general. As mentioned above, under 'people,' work a pipeline of talent, creating a natural 'buzz' about strategy amongst the local strategy community.

What You Will Do

The VP of Strategy for MCCANN will be required to:

Develop strategies and major market initiatives for the brand.
Infuse your brand, digital, social, comms, data, and experiential expertise into the briefing process to keep the brand at the forefront of culture.
Take ownership of the quality of the creative brief and briefing process.
Partner closely with your counterparts in Creative, inspiring fresh, original ideas that are rooted in culture and human and business insight.
Develop strong working relationships with your counterparts in Business Leadership and with Clients, forming the basis of trust and action to move those creative ideas from theory to reality.
Advance thought leadership pieces.
Ensure use, adoption, and learning of proprietary strategic tools.
Promote the use of data & other insight tools.

Who You Will Be

To be successful in this role, you will have demonstrable previous relevant experiences and skills with the following:

Key Skills

Market Research – Produce groundbreaking new findings based on the evaluation of complex data.
Ideation – Create new approaches for delivering information that expands the team's ability to engage with others.
Competitive Analysis – Develop empathic thinking to produce content that makes meaning for our clients.
Presentation – Present to the highest levels of an organization and effectively persuade others.
Strategic Planning – Realize true change through strategic work that has a broad organizational impact on creative deliverables.
Strategic Partnership – Provide strategic advice to senior-level clients on any part of their business that can have a direct and positive impact.

Other Characteristics Of a MCCANN VP Of Strategy

Bachelor's degree in a relevant area required (not necessarily advertising).
10+ years of agency experience required.
A track record of brilliant thinking that leads to unexpected, genuinely creative work.
Culturally plugged in; nimble, inspired, and scrappy gatherer of information.
Crisp-thinker and communicator – verbally, visually, and in writing.
Proactive & self-motivated.
Strength of conviction for your thinking, well balanced by an open ear and mind.
See strategy as a team sport, drawing on your expertise and others in brand, digital, social, comms, data, behavioral and experiential strategy… and whatever comes next.
Curious, Human, Operates with Generosity, Integrity, Bravery in the pursuit of creativity that moves the business.
An ambidextrous strategic thinker and do-er.
But with a passion/specialty – not a bland generalist.
Curious with a desire to have ideas, but with a grounding in reality.
An even-keeled mix of when to provoke and when to stabilize.
A hunter of opportunities for creativity and an ability to spark it.
Global citizen, local action.
Strong organizational skills – leadership, management, process.
Intelligent and intellectually curious.
A strong work ethic.
Energetic.
Able to move in and interact with a diverse range of internal and external constituencies.
Entrepreneurial and comfortable working within an unstructured, evolving environment.

The Company

McCann Canada is committed to a diverse workforce as an Employment Equity employer (Women, People with Disabilities, Aboriginal Peoples, and Visible Minorities) and aims to maintain an inclusive and equitable workplace where employees feel valued, respected, and supported. If you require an accommodation, we would be happy to work with you to meet your needs.

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McCANN Canada

Open Positions

VP, Strategy