Freelancer Account Director, Content Strategy

Who We Are

Weber Shandwick is more than a leading global PR agency – we’re an engagement agency and we’re working in and around the cutting edge of the new media landscape. We’re storytellers, content creators, and we engage people IN the story. Our success is built on a deep commitment to client service and to our people. We embrace creativity and collaboration, and we engage stakeholders in new and creative ways to build brands and reputations.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR, COPY

If you’re reading this, you’re probably scrolling on your phone. Perfect. Let’s talk.

The Weber Shandwick Collective (TWSC) is looking for a Creative Director-COPY who lives and breathes the internet. If you have a running theory about the next big TikTok trend, can spot the next biggest creator or meme format before it’s viral, and obsess over how to break through in the new media landscape, you might just have found your calling.

This is a role for someone interested in working on some of the biggest brands in the world and crafting groundbreaking campaigns that spark joy, ignite shares, and earn a permanent spot in people’s lives. We want the kind of ideas that don’t just ride a wave, but that create one.

Let’s be clear: this is not the job where you’re cranking out uninspired visuals and the same old rinse-and-repeat ideas. This is the job, and the agency, where ideas meet cultural currency. Where you’ll create the campaign that everyone shares before lunch. Where ideas become award-winning work that’s discussed around the country.

So, let’s talk specifics.

What You’ll Do

• Create magic: You’ll drive ideation of attention-grabbing ideas. You’ll work alongside various disciplines from strategy to account to media relations and analytics (to name a few) to ensure your ideas feed algorithms and transcend platforms.
• Own the voice, balancing art and strategy: Be a guardian of the tone of voice of the brand and for each campaign you work on. Stay playful, but always purposeful. Your visuals and ideas won’t just entertain, they’ll deliver results.
• Be a builder: You’ll mentor and manage folks on our creative team—helping shape our next generation of creative talent imbuing them with a keen eye for storytelling and a focus on craft.
• Be the pulse of culture: Research platforms, subcultures, emerging media, and niche communities to unearth untapped opportunities. You need to know before anyone else what Gens Alpha and Z are doing on social channels, why brands are jumping all over a meme, what conversations are capturing the attention of journalists (and why) and who is poised to become the next big thing in the cultural conversation. These inputs will shape the ideas you develop and bring to teams and clients.

What You’ll Bring

• Obsessive curiosity: About trends, people, platforms, memes, and the mechanics of why certain things just work.
• A social media sixth sense: You know which platforms matter most, what kind of content works where, and how to surprise people in their scroll.
• Pop culture proficiency: From mainstream moments to niche internet corners, you stay plugged into what everyone’s talking about, and what they’re about to.
• Experience: 10 years copywriting experience, especially if you’ve worked on earned campaigns, digital campaigns and social-first campaigns or for culturally relevant brands. You’ll of course need to work quickly and accurately within all aspects of presentation software (PowerPoint). Bonus points for filmmaking, videography, editorial, animation, HTML.
• A sense of humor: If you can’t laugh at yourself (or at least at the internet), we’re not the place for you.

Why You’ll Love It Here (Other than the Snacks)

• You’ll work with some of the best creatives in the business, a team fueled by bold ideas, cultural insights, and enough caffeine to power a small city.
• You’ll have the freedom to experiment, fail forward, and redefine what “earned-first creativity” means.
• You’ll create work that matters to brands, to audiences, and to culture at large.

Final Thought (Because We’re Big on Storytelling)

This job isn’t just about understanding what makes good images. It’s about being the creative who reshapes how brands communicate in this endlessly scrolling, algorithm-ruled world. It’s about showing up every day with fresh ideas and a love for the craft. And maybe, just maybe, it’s about finally justifying all the hours you spend on TikTok.

If this sounds like you, let’s create something worth bookmarking.

Send us your portfolio, résumé, and a list of the accounts and trends you’re loving right now. Because if we’re going to shape culture, we want to know you’re already in it.

Cue the end slate. Let’s make some magic.

Salary range:  $143,000 USD – $190,000 USD

Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

Weber Shandwick is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Weber Shandwick recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.

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Who We Are

Weber Shandwick is more than a leading global PR agency – we’re an engagement agency and we’re working in and around the cutting edge of the new media landscape. We’re storytellers, content creators, and we engage people IN the story. Our success is built on a deep commitment to client service and to our people. We embrace creativity and collaboration, and we engage stakeholders in new and creative ways to build brands and reputations.

Account Director, Influencer Strategy

Responsibilities:

• Build social influencer strategies cross-functionally to align strategic efforts and priorities, and able to develop strategic outputs with little to no oversight
• Collaborate closely with strategy, creative, paid and larger integrated agency teams to deliver program initiatives
• Effectively knows how to drive an influencer marketing program forward and manage a team to ensure influencer contracts are negotiated and content is delivered swiftly and on time
• Lead end-to-end influencer procurement process from influencer recommendations, content reviews, content posting and reporting
• Maintains strong connections with talent and management agencies to ensure quality relationships, reliability and quick turn asks
• Spearhead high profile activations and campaigns for some of our top tech, consumer, and CPG clients
• Provide expert counsel to clients and colleagues on social/digital/influencer best practices
• Lead a high-performing team; mentor and develop junior team members

Qualifications:

• 8+ years of experience, preferably within an agency environment
• Is comfortable working in a team setting, is not an independent contributor
• Strong understanding of the overall media and social landscape, with an emphasis on digital experience
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills, with ability to develop relationships with influencers, creators, agencies, and other partners
• Deep expertise in managing influencer programs
• Strong knowledge of social platforms, including paid amplification and campaign optimization
• Strong understanding of marketing funnel analytics & KPIs
• Familiarity with a broad set of social, media and influencer analytics tools
• Detail-oriented, multi-tasker with excellent time-management skills
• Strong written, verbal communication, negotiation and presentation skills
• Experience leading a team is an asset
• Bonus if you have experience in the B2B and LinkedIn influencer space

Is this you?

Be a driver of culture: Must have true passion and understanding of pop culture and are part of the community (be it music, gaming, fashion, food, internet culture, etc) This job is the intersection of creative, strategy, marketing, technology, content creation and production; your energy must be driven by your lifestyle. You must influence creative ideations: from the ideas presented, to the influencers selected, to the content created, all the way down to the language used in post copy.

Have high cultural competencies: Understand the role and importance of diversity, equity & inclusion (DE&I) You must be culturally vigilant with the ability to understand, communicate with and effectively interact with people across cultures. 

Have “Gravitas” in the influencer space and skin-in-the-game:  Deep understanding of the influencer landscape is required. Proven ability to build, speak and grow relationships with change agents and cultural makers (celebrities, influencers, artists, thought leaders) directly or via their agents. You must be open to a public-facing role; willingness to speak publicly about influencer trends when opportunities present itself to the WS Influencer Team.

Know how to identify and manage diverse vendors and partners: in an industry where technologies (saas platforms, AI, managed services, etc) are popping on the daily, at high volume, no less, you must have experience working with RFPs and meeting with leading tech companies to understand their services and identify their uniqueness (and keep up with their ongoing changes in our WS influencer database)

Be ready to lead at any moment: working with your leads, you will learn to “step up to the plate” and lead effectively in the client’s and agency’s best interests while also helping to cultivate, mentor and coach mid to junior staff members on the influencer team.

Hustle: identify influencer opportunities (organic or new) to ensure influencer marketing continues to be a strong marketing discipline and revenue driver on your assigned account or at Weber Shandwick.

Think like a lawyer: you understand how important it is to be in compliance with best practices (FTC updates, platform requirements), continuously build our excellence by

partnering with DXTRA legal and finance to ensure risk and liabilities are reduced and tamed for every campaign you touch.

Have experience building engaged audiences: on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Clubhouse and other distribution platforms.

Know how to build a story: you will build client presentations that tell smart, compelling stories, never “rinse and repeat” which requires you to be highly motivated, energetically-charged and inspired at all times.

Be curious, always: You are willing to learn a little bit of everything, and open to take on anything.

Hourly range: $100 USD – $125 USD

Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

Weber Shandwick is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Weber Shandwick recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.

#LI-GH

Who We Are

Weber Shandwick is more than a leading global PR agency – we’re an engagement agency and we’re working in and around the cutting edge of the new media landscape. We’re storytellers, content creators, and we engage people IN the story. Our success is built on a deep commitment to client service and to our people. We embrace creativity and collaboration, and we engage stakeholders in new and creative ways to build brands and reputations.

Vice President – Corporate

We Are Seeking:

The Weber Shandwick Chicago office is currently seeking a Vice President to support several clients in our growing Corporate/Enterprise Practice. The ideal candidate will have experience in brand and reputation building communications, managing executive visibility, media strategy and team leadership. The candidate will have the opportunity to drive a broad range of corporate reputation campaigns across a variety of clients, while leading a team of practitioners and collaborating with Weber Shandwick’s network to develop strategic and creative client work

What You Will Be Doing:

• Develop and grow positive relationships with clients, maintaining the company’s reputation in terms of delivery and quality
• Provide strategic counsel to clients where possible, being able to assess problems and define logical and effective solutions for clients
• Lead the delivery of high-profile accounts across multiple markets
• Execute client programs to support media relations, corporate event and executive visibility programs
• Work successfully with partner agencies as part of a client integrated agency team, both internally at WS and externally
• Work effectively with finance colleagues to deliver accurate quotations for all client projects or new business work
• Write well-structured, persuasive content and help train other team colleagues to do the same
• Contribute innovative ideas for the client and new business work, inspiring ideation amongst team members

 Qualifications:

• 9+ years public relations experience, corporate PR background desired
• Past experience working in an agency or in-house role coordinating with agency partners
• Experience working on Corporate reputation campaigns across industries
• You are both a creative and a strategic thinker, and a natural team leader
• Needs to have a track record in client service to senior level clients
• Strategic media relations knowledge
• Experience working with C-suite executives on executive visibility programs
• BA or BS in Communications or related degree

Salary range $116,000 USD – $155,000 USD 

Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

Weber Shandwick is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Weber Shandwick recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.

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