Brand Strategist - Freelance

Location: Remote, with occasional London meet-ups
Commitment: 2+ days per week
Contract Type: Part-time, freelance contract
Salary: £400-£475 day rate
Timings: Start ASAP with work allocated as strategy briefs arise

About Brand Hackers

Brand Hackers are fractional marketing teams for brands with big dreams. We build bespoke teams from our >25 full time Brand Hackers and a tight-knit group of freelancers who’ve worked at the top of their game. Together, we help brands scale with the right mix of pace, pragmatism and creative flair.

You can read lots more about what we do on our website.

The Role

We’re building a bench of exceptional freelance Brand Strategists to plug into projects as and when strategy briefs land.

Our work typically starts where things are unclear.

• The positioning isn’t cutting through

• The growth has stalled

• The team is doing lots, but it’s not compounding

Your role is to step into that ambiguity and create clarity.

This is not a “write a nice brand book” role. It’s about using insight to diagnose the real problem, define a sharp strategic direction and make it usable for the team.

Projects might include:

• Brand positioning and messaging development

• Go-to-market strategy and launch planning

• Customer / audience insight work

• Proposition development and portfolio structuring

• Strategic input into rebrands or step-change growth moments

You’ll most likely work as a Project Lead with support of execs to deliver a strategic backbone for our cross-functional teams to then execute against to drive real growth.

What You’ll Be Doing

Leading insight-driven strategy work:

• Designing and running qual & quant insight projects to uncover real opportunities

• Conducting customer research, stakeholder interviews, competitor and category analysis to identify the tensions, gaps and opportunities that unlock growth

Turning insight into clear strategic direction

• Developing sharp, differentiated positioning grounded in real insight

• Creating messaging frameworks, propositions and brand platforms

• Defining clear strategic choices (what we do and what we don’t do)

Shaping go-to-market and commercial strategy

• Translating brand strategy into clear go-to-market or plans

• Defining how strategy shows up across channels, campaigns and touchpoints

• Ensuring strategy is rooted in commercial reality (not just brand theory)

Creating compelling strategic narratives and collaborating across teams

• Building decks that tell a clear, persuasive story

• Bringing founders and teams on the journey

• Leading or supporting workshops, presentations and key decision moments

• Managing senior stakeholders and navigating ambiguity

• Working closely with creatives, growth and social teams to bring strategy to life

• Writing clear, inspiring briefs that unlock better execution

What You’ll Need

• Significant experience as a Brand Strategist, Strategy Director or similar working with consumer brands (FMCG / DTC / lifestyle preferred)

• A track record designing and running qual & quant insight project (customer interviews, surveys etc) and ability to synthesise messy inputs into clear, powerful insights

• Ability to connect brand thinking to business outcomes

• Exceptional storytelling skills and ability to structuring thinking into clear narratives and land ideas simply and persuasively

• Comfortable parachuting into new brands quickly

• Able to operate autonomously with minimal oversight

What Success Looks Like

• Multiple brand strategy initiatives delivered smoothly, on time and to a consistently high standard

• Insight projects reveal something genuinely new and useful

• Brand strategies are clear, differentiated and unlock growth opportunities

• Founders obsessed with you and aligned with strong point of view and plan of action

• Strategy that is actually used by teams and easy to implement (not sits in a deck)

What We Can Offer

• Flexible freelance work that fits around your schedule

• Support from a lead Brand Hacker who’s got your back

• Access to tools, templates and a wider crew of Brand Hackers

• Membership to Up World while you work with us

Many of our freelancers go on to work with us again (some even go full-time!)