Orchard - Strategy Director (Health / Pharma)

We're looking for a Strategy Director to set the strategic standard across our Sydney health portfolio, lead the thinking on our pitches, and build the strategic frameworks the rest of the team works from.
This is a senior individual contributor role. There's no direct reporting line into it. Your influence comes from the quality of your thinking, the way you run a room, and what you leave behind for others to use.
You'll sit between the client's business problem and our integrated delivery. That means moving comfortably between a boardroom conversation with a senior marketing lead and a working session with UX, data, content and social planners. You'll be the person asking the question nobody else is asking.
Key function
The traditional and the obvious doesn't cut it for our strategy team. We're an uncommon bunch made up of UX-ers, CX-ers, data planners, CRM planners and social planners. We seek out insight from culture, people, behaviour, the economy and product truths, then combine that with our experience in digital communications to build strategies that hold up.
Data and evidence drive us. Delivering creativity is our end goal. Our philosophy (creating solutions that have an AFFECT to deliver outcomes that have an EFFECT) keeps every strategic direction clear and actionable.
The role works upstream, offering consultative, business-problem-led thinking to our clients, and downstream in campaign and digital communications planning alongside our social and content teams. You'll need to be credible in both.
Key responsibilities
Strategy
Partner with client marketing, medical, digital and commercial teams to diagnose the underlying business problem, going past the brief to find what's actually holding a brand or business unit back.
Translate complex and sometimes competing client priorities into focused strategic questions the agency can rally around.
Develop integrated strategies that connect brand positioning, communications planning, content ecosystems and digital experience, always anchored to a defined business problem.
Work with data, UX and CX to pressure-test solutions before they reach the client, so what we recommend is fit for purpose.
Convert complex analysis into simple, actionable direction that creative and technology teams can build from.
Facilitation and collaboration
Design and lead workshops, working sessions and strategy sprints that bring client stakeholders together across functions and get them aligned on a shared problem.
Act as a trusted advisor to senior client contacts (CMO, Marketing Director, Head of Digital and above), building relationships grounded in commercial understanding and strategic credibility.
Embed strategic thinking across brand, content, UX, data, social and CRM from the outset rather than bolting it on after the fact.
Share a point of view on market and industry openly, both to educate clients and to build trust.
New business and pitch leadership
Own the strategic approach on pitches. Shape the response, lead the thinking, and present it.
Identify organic growth opportunities inside existing health accounts and build the case for them with the client lead.
Bring an evidence-led argument to every pitch so we win on thinking, not volume.
Capability building
Build and maintain Orchard's strategic toolkit (frameworks, templates, research approaches, proprietary IP) so the whole team works from a consistent, high standard.
Raise the quality of strategic output across the Sydney team through coaching, review and worked examples.
Keep us current on developments across health, pharma and animal health. Regulatory shifts, market dynamics, emerging technology, and changing patient, HCP, consumer and veterinary expectations.
8+ years' experience in a strategic or planning function, ideally within a digital or creative agency.
Healthcare or pharmaceutical advertising experience is essential. Animal health experience is a strong advantage.
A mastery of your own strategic capability and a working understanding across the others, including but not limited to brand strategy, communications strategy, digital and CX.
A track record of turning complex business problems into inspiring and effective solutions.
The ability to work with data to develop insights and recommendations for clients.
Proven ability to lead, develop and present pitch-winning strategies.
Confidence facilitating client workshops that surface the real business problem in a dynamic and collaborative way.
Comfortable working independently and making things happen without a large team around you.
Some flexibility for US time-zone crossover, given our work with global health and animal health clients.
Genuine curiosity about culture, people, technology and what comes next.
Above all, the successful candidate will be someone with a strong work ethic driven by creative passion and positive energy, who thrives on a challenge and wants to grow with us.

Employment type
Full-time

Work arrangement
Hybrid