Role Intent
The
Creative Strategist
leads defined workstreams within projects, ensuring strategic thinking is clear, structured, actionable, and connected to meaningful experience outcomes.
This role is responsible for independently leading key parts of the strategy process—from research and synthesis through to framework development, workshop facilitation, storytelling, and client engagement. You take ownership of your workstreams while collaborating closely with multidisciplinary teams to ensure strategy informs every aspect of the experience.
This is a hands-on strategy role. You are expected to actively contribute to the thinking, guide junior strategists, engage confidently with clients, and help translate business, brand, customer, and experience challenges into clear strategic direction.
This role is suited for strategists, designers, consultants, researchers, or experience thinkers with 3–6 years of experience in strategy, design, consulting, research, innovation, brand, experience design, or related fields who are ready to independently own strategic workstreams, facilitate discussions, and deliver high-quality strategic outcomes.
What You Do
1. Research and Discovery
- Plan and conduct qualitative and quantitative research activities across projects
- Lead stakeholder interviews, customer research, market analysis, audits, and precedent studies
- Identify meaningful behavioural, cultural, operational, and business insights
- Evaluate research findings critically and identify emerging opportunity areas
- Ensure research activities provide a strong foundation for strategic decision-making
- Translate research into clear evidence that informs experience design
2. Insight and Strategy Development
- Synthesize research into clear insights, opportunity areas, and strategic recommendations
- Develop strategic frameworks that connect customer needs, business objectives, and experience opportunities
- Define experience principles, value propositions, audience strategies, and success criteria
- Translate ambiguity into structured thinking and actionable direction
- Ensure strategic recommendations are evidence-based, relevant, and practical
- Protect the integrity of the strategic thinking throughout the project
3. Experience Strategy and Service Design
- Lead the development of customer journeys across physical, digital, and human touchpoints
- Develop personas, audience frameworks, ecosystem maps, and service concepts
- Define human outcomes alongside business objectives
- Shape experience strategies that influence service design, operational thinking, communications, digital experiences, and environments
- Connect strategic thinking across multiple customer touchpoints
- Ensure recommendations create meaningful customer and business impact
4. Workshops and Facilitation
- Plan and facilitate workshops, co-creation sessions, stakeholder interviews, and working sessions
- Structure discussions that help clients and project teams align around opportunities and decisions
- Capture workshop outputs and translate them into actionable strategic direction
- Encourage collaboration across disciplines and stakeholders
- Help build alignment around project priorities and experience vision
- Facilitate productive conversations that move projects forward
5. Storytelling and Strategic Communication
- Build compelling narratives that communicate strategic thinking clearly
- Structure presentations, frameworks, and strategy documents that connect insight to action
- Present work confidently to internal teams and clients
- Translate complex ideas into simple, persuasive communication
- Ensure recommendations are clearly documented and easy to understand
- Help clients understand not only what is being recommended, but why it matters
6. Project Leadership
- Lead defined strategy workstreams from discovery through delivery
- Take ownership of timelines, deliverables, and quality within your scope
- Coordinate with multidisciplinary teams to ensure strategy informs creative, digital, and spatial outcomes
- Proactively identify risks, dependencies, and opportunities
- Ensure strategic outputs are clear, actionable, and ready for implementation
- Deliver work that balances strategic ambition with project realities
7. Team Development
- Support and mentor Junior Creative Strategists
- Review work and provide constructive feedback
- Share knowledge, tools, and ways of working with the wider team
- Help create a collaborative and supportive project environment
- Contribute to raising the overall quality of strategic thinking across the team
- Lead by example through curiosity, accountability, and strong project discipline
8. Collaboration Across Disciplines
- Work closely with Communications & Digital to ensure strategy informs storytelling, content, and digital experiences
- Collaborate with Environments to translate strategic thinking into physical experiences
- Support multidisciplinary teams in connecting customer insight with design decisions
- Align business objectives, customer needs, and creative outcomes across disciplines
- Ensure strategy contributes to one coherent experience across every touchpoint
- Build strong working relationships across project teams
How You Show Up
You take ownership of your work and move it forward with confidence.
You bring clarity to complexity and connect research, insight, and strategy into meaningful experience outcomes. You work independently while collaborating openly with others, knowing when to lead, when to listen, and when to seek input.
You show up with:
Strong ownership and accountability
Strategic curiosity
Structured thinking
Confidence in client interactions
Clear communication
Strong facilitation skills
Collaboration across disciplines
Initiative and problem-solving
Attention to detail
Commitment to continuous learning
You understand that strategy succeeds when it creates clarity, builds alignment, and leads to meaningful action.
What Good Looks Like
Research is insightful, relevant, and well structured
Strategic thinking connects customer needs with business outcomes
Frameworks, journeys, and recommendations are actionable and easy to understand
Workshops build alignment and generate productive outcomes
Clients trust your thinking and engage confidently with your recommendations
Junior strategists feel supported and continue to develop
Teams work collaboratively around a shared strategic direction
Risks and opportunities are identified early
Strategic outputs consistently support better design and business decisions
You contribute positively to project quality and team capability
What This Role Is Not
This role is not limited to executing tasks assigned by others.
It is not focused solely on producing presentations or documentation.
It is not about waiting for direction before taking action.
The Creative Strategist is expected to independently own workstreams, contribute original thinking, and actively move projects forward while supporting the wider team.
Collaboration
You will work closely with:
Creative Strategy team, leading defined strategy workstreams and supporting project delivery
Communications & Digital, ensuring strategy informs narrative, content, and digital experiences
Environments, ensuring strategy translates into spatial and physical experiences
Clients and stakeholders, facilitating discussions, presenting work, and building alignment across projects
You help ensure strategy connects people, business, brand, and experience into one coherent direction
Qualities
You should demonstrate:
Strong ownership mindset
Confidence communicating with clients and teams
Structured and analytical thinking
Curiosity and empathy
Strong facilitation capability
Clear storytelling
Collaborative leadership
Initiative and problem-solving
Adaptability under pressure
Commitment to continuous improvement
Skills and Qualifications
3–6 years of experience
in strategy, design, consulting, research, innovation, or related fields
Degree or equivalent in Design, Business, Psychology, Anthropology, Communications, Marketing, Social Sciences, Experience Design, or a related discipline
Proven experience contributing to end-to-end strategy projects
Strong research, synthesis, and insight development capability
Experience developing customer journeys, personas, experience strategies, and service design outputs
Experience planning and facilitating workshops
Strong storytelling, presentation, and communication skills
Ability to build strategic frameworks and narratives independently
Comfortable working across multidisciplinary teams
Proficiency in Keynote, Google Slides, Miro, Notion, or equivalent collaboration and presentation tools
Portfolio demonstrating clear thinking, structured outputs, and real project impact
Additional Strengths (Plus)
Experience across multiple sectors or industries
Experience contributing to business development or proposals
Knowledge of behavioural science, design research, or service design
Ability to translate strategy into digital, spatial, or operational experiences
Strong visual communication skills
Interest in organisational transformation and experience innovation
Commercial Expectations
Maintain 85% billable utilisation
Deliver work that meets both creative and commercial expectations
Take ownership of defined workstreams, ensuring quality, timeliness, and value to the client
Support project teams in delivering successful strategic outcomes
Growth Path
Success in this role is defined by the ability to
independently lead strategic workstreams
, facilitate client conversations, and consistently deliver clear, actionable strategy that shapes meaningful experiences.
Progression is based on:
Leading increasingly complex phases of work
Strengthening strategic judgment and client influence
Developing deeper facilitation and storytelling capability
Supporting and mentoring junior strategists
Driving stronger multidisciplinary collaboration
Contributing to project quality and broader team capability
Progressing toward broader strategic leadership as a
Senior Creative Strategist
Eight Inc. is a creative collective specialising in experience design. United by the belief that design defines human progress, we create value for companies by designing experiences that transform the way they interact with their customers and employees.
We design physical and digital spaces, communications, products and services that connect with people on an emotional level, and that builds deeper relationships that deliver long-term value.