Brand Strategy Director

About the role

Neon Nine is an independent agency of about ninety people, three floors above a print shop on Bonham Strand. We build brand platforms, launch campaigns and the occasional very stubborn rebrand for clients in retail, F&B, property and consumer tech — roughly seventy per cent Hong Kong, the rest Greater Bay Area and Singapore.

Strategy has been run for four years by one director and two planners. That director moves client-side in October, and rather than backfill quietly we would like to hand the practice to someone who intends to change it. You inherit two planners, a real research budget, and a standing seat at every new-business pitch.

You will sit beside our Executive Creative Director and disagree with him often — that is the job, not a side effect of it. The work we are proudest of has always come from a strategist who refused to hand over a deck of insights and disappear.

What you'll do

• Lead brand strategy across three to four retained accounts and act as strategic lead on every competitive pitch above HK$2M in fee value.
• Turn category, cultural and consumer research into one defensible proposition, then hold that line when a regional office pushes back at 9pm on a Friday.
• Own Neon Nine's published point of view on the Hong Kong consumer: quarterly trend readouts, a segmentation refresh every eighteen months, and our annual Lunar New Year retail study.
• Coach two planners on research design, discussion guides, and how to write a brief a creative team actually wants to answer.
• Pressure-test creative territories with the Executive Creative Director before anything reaches a client.
• Sit with the Managing Partner on scoping and pricing so strategy is sold as a paid product, never bundled away for free.

What we're looking for

• 10+ years in brand strategy or account planning, at least five of them agency-side in Hong Kong or a comparable Asian market.
• A portfolio of brand platforms you personally authored, with honest evidence of what happened after launch — not only the deck.
• Persuasive written and spoken English plus business-level Cantonese; you will present to founders who change language mid-sentence.
• Real command of qualitative work — you can moderate a Cantonese focus group yourself, or brief a fieldwork partner and recognise thin output when it comes back.
• Comfort holding a room of senior clients without a creative director standing next to you.

Nice to have

• Mandarin strong enough to run a two-day workshop in Shenzhen or Guangzhou.
• A stint client-side in retail, beauty or F&B, so you know what a marketing director is actually measured on.
• Published or spoken publicly on the Hong Kong consumer market — industry press, HKMA panels, university guest lectures.

What you get

• 20 days annual leave, rising to 25 after three years
• Discretionary bonus reviewed twice yearly
• Medical, dental and annual health screening for you and one dependant
• HK$20,000 a year for conferences, courses or research subscriptions
• Studio closes between Christmas and New Year, on top of leave