Brand Strategy Senior Manager

About The Role

We are looking for a strategic and collaborative Brand Strategy Senior Manager to help shape the future of the John Lewis and Partnership brand. In this pivotal role, you will work closely with our Customer Strategy Lead and Strategic Category Planners to define our brand positioning and priority focus areas, ensuring our mid to long-term vision is seamlessly integrated into our Customer Plan.

By embedding deep customer insights, market intelligence and a strong understanding of channels into our communications strategy, you will partner with our creative and media experts to map out and deliver compelling campaigns that resonate with our audiences across every channel.

If you are passionate about translating commercial opportunities into impactful, brand-defining work that drives engagement and meaningful growth, we would love to hear from you.

Salary Band is £55.500K to £88.500K

Expected salary up to - We are looking for candidates up to £75K, depending on the experience you would bring to the role

Contract type - This position is a 12-month Secondment/Fixed Term contract

Working pattern/flexible working - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office and home based upon your personal needs, whilst balancing the needs of the business. We typically aim for around three days a week in the office for collaboration and attendance of key meetings.

Location - This role is based at our London Head Office campus in Pimlico.

Key responsibilities

In this pivotal role, you will partner with the Customer Strategy Lead to define the John Lewis and Partnership brand identity, embedding customer segmentation to shape our marketing and communications strategy.

Collaborating with Strategic Category Planners and the Planning lead, you will identify commercial opportunities and translate them into a compelling Customer Plan, using brand and commercial metrics and a deep understanding of market trends, competitors, and customer demand to drive informed decision-making.

Working closely with our in-house Creative Strategist and Media Lead, you will ensure our messaging effectively reaches key audiences across all channels, delivering high-impact content and campaigns that align with our long-term customer strategy.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need

• Experience developing and executing brand and communications strategies in a large organisation, ideally both brand and agency side.
• Direct knowledge and experience of brand and communications strategy as a domain, including how to develop and roll out a brand positioning and associated assets across owned and paid channels.
• Customer-centric but with strong commercial acumen. Ability to help shape a clear point of view and execute brand and category positioning that aligns with the broader Customer and Commercial Strategy.
• Experience of translating brand strategies into a clear and coherent Customer Plan to inform Content & Campaigns developed by Brand & Marketing teams
• Excellent stakeholder management with proven success navigating the priorities of commercial, creative and marketing teams to ensure collaboration and engagement throughout the process.
• A self-starter willing to tackle complex challenges - multi-category retail is exciting but it can prove complicated balancing brand, category, commercial and customer priorities across both a digital and physical retail estate.

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• Further qualifications in marketing or business
• Background in brand strategy and comms planning at a comms, media or creative agency
• Experience in roles within Fashion, Home, Technology or Beauty marketing
• Strong understanding of digital and content strategy with experience planning across both owned and paid media channels.

For internal use only:

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Closing Date:

September 15, 2026

Pay:

£55,500.00 - £88,500.00 Annual

Contract Type:

Temporary

Hours of Work:

35

Job Level:

Partnership Level 6

Where You'll Be Working:

London Central Office, 1 Drummond Gate, London, , SW1V 2QQ

About The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect.

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective.

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.

Important points to note:

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.

We also recommend that you apply as soon as possible as vacancies can close early if we see a high number of applicants.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.