Master Brand and Membership Strategist

Role: Master Brand and Membership Strategist

Contract:3months

Pay: £500 per day via Umbrella, inside IR35

Location: Manchester, Hybrid

We’re looking for a strategic thinker to define and evolve our brand promise, customer value, and membership proposition—ensuring clarity, distinctiveness, and consistency across all customer touchpoints. This role will be a critical partner to marketing managers, ensuring all marketing activity builds long-term brand equity while driving short-term outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

Brand Strategy & Positioning

• Develop and refine brand promise, tone of voice, and messaging frameworks.
• Work with stakeholders to develop propositions and proof points into potential messages within the brand platform.
• Create and manage the long-term Master Brand plan.
• Ensure alignment of brand and customer strategy with company purpose, customer insight, and commercial priorities.
• Translate brand positioning into creative and campaign planning (including campaign-ready guidance).
• Evolve brand strategy in response to results, trends, and cultural shifts.

Brand Architecture & Guidelines

• Define and evolve brand architecture to support multiple tiers (e.g., own-label, value ranges, sustainability).
• Create and manage brand toolkits, ensuring consistency across visual identity and verbal expression.
• Act as the guardian of brand promise across internal teams and external agencies.

Customer Insight & Competitive Context

• Partner with research and insight teams to understand customer perception, need states, and emotional drivers.
• Define target audiences at brand level.
• Monitor competitor brand activity and macro consumer trends to shape brand evolution.
• Bring a forward-looking perspective to keep the brand relevant in culture and category.

Strategic Enablement

• Support marketing managers by creating strategic briefs and input into campaign plans, ensuring strong brand linkage.
• Shape upstream thinking on new propositions, categories, partnerships, or brand activations. Identify growth opportunities.
• Help define the brand role in key customer journeys and long-term planning cycles.

Internal Collaboration & Influence

• Collaborate closely with marketing, creative, product, commercial, and agency teams.
• Contribute to brand training and alignment sessions across the business.
• Translate strategy into usable guidance for non-brand teams, helping them “live the brand” in their work.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• 5+ years’ experience in brand strategy, planning, or marketing strategy (agency or in-house).
• Strong grasp of brand building principles and how to apply them in commercial contexts.
• Excellent skills in insight synthesis, positioning development, and storytelling.
• Familiarity with creative development processes, agency collaboration, and how propositions translate into creative output (advertising and/or content).
• Confident influencing at all levels, with ability to simplify the complex.
• Experience working in large consumer-facing organisations with multiple stakeholders.

Desirable

• Background in FMCG, retail, or supermarket environments.
• Experience in brand architecture, sub-brands, and/or own-label strategy.
• Strong understanding of customer segmentation, research techniques, and behavioural insight.
• Experience in agile ways of working and/or matrix environments.

Behaviours & Attributes

• Strategic thinker with a strong sense of customer and cultural empathy.
• Passionate about building brands with purpose and consistency.
• Curious and insightful, loves digging into research and trends.
• Collaborative, persuasive, and trusted as a strategic partner.
• Balances creativity with pragmatism; can think big but act commercially.