Brand Strategist / Strategic Planner (Agency-Side)
Sample Resume & ATS Keywords
Job-board sources for this title disagree widely — PayScale at $75,438, Indeed at $92,322, Salary.com at $107,491, ZipRecruiter at $118,841, and Glassdoor at $125,313, nearly a 66% spread — with the senior Strategic Planner title running higher still at $158,334. This role sits firmly in strategy and positioning, with no engineering or product-roadmap component, which matters for ATS matching since some brand-strategy postings get miscategorized alongside product-management roles. The example below shows a fictional candidate keeping positioning, insight, and creative-brief work distinctly quantified and clear of that overlap.
All sample resume content on this page is original and illustrative — fictional candidates, realistic numbers. Use it as a pattern, not a template to copy verbatim.
Sample Brand Strategist / Strategic Planner (Agency-Side) resume summary
What a parseable, keyword-complete professional summary looks like for this role:
Brand Strategist with 6 years developing brand positioning, consumer insights, and creative briefs for agency clients across consumer and financial-services categories. Leads competitive audits and message-hierarchy development, translating research into creative briefs that have supported 9 successful new-business pitches. Skilled in Brandwatch, GWI, and Kantar for consumer-insight research.
Sample achievement bullets that pass ATS screening
Each bullet follows the pattern recruiters and parsers reward: exact keywords, a specific action, and a quantified outcome.
- Developed brand positioning and message hierarchy for 12 client engagements over 4 years, translating strategy into creative briefs used by agency creative teams.
- Led competitive audits using Brandwatch and GWI data for 5 client categories, identifying whitespace positioning opportunities adopted into final brand strategy.
- Supported 9 new-business pitches with original brand strategy and positioning work, contributing to $6.4M in newly won agency billings.
- Repositioned a legacy financial-services brand based on consumer-insight research, supporting a 16% lift in unaided brand awareness within 12 months.
- Conducted quantitative and qualitative consumer research using Qualtrics and Kantar for 8 client engagements, informing brand-architecture recommendations.
- Built brand-architecture frameworks for 3 multi-brand client portfolios, clarifying sub-brand relationships and reducing internal brand confusion.
- Presented strategic recommendations directly to C-suite client stakeholders across 6 engagements, with 5 recommendations adopted into final campaign briefs.
- Mentored 2 junior strategists on consumer-insight research methods and creative-brief writing.
ATS keyword bank for Brand Strategist / Strategic Planner (Agency-Side) resumes
From our 2026 research into recruiter sourcing behavior for this role. Recruiter and ATS searches match exact strings — carry the terms your real experience supports, in the wording the posting uses.
| Keyword group | Terms recruiters search |
|---|---|
| Titles & variants | Brand Strategist · Strategic Planner · Senior Strategist · Brand Planner |
| Credentials | Account Planning Group (APG) training · MRS/Insight Association research training · MBA (preferred) |
| Platforms & software | Brandwatch · GWI (GlobalWebIndex) · Qualtrics · Kantar |
| Channel/discipline vocabulary | brand positioning · brand architecture · consumer insights · competitive audits · creative-brief development · message hierarchy |
| Quantified outcomes | strategies developed · pitches won · brands repositioned · campaign results influenced |
Brand Strategist / Strategic Planner (Agency-Side) resume formatting: do this, not that
Do
- State brand-positioning and brand-architecture outcomes explicitly, distinct from creative execution — strategists are judged on the thinking, not the design.
- Name your consumer-insight research tools — Brandwatch, GWI, Kantar, Qualtrics — as searched keywords.
- Quantify new-business pitch support and its contribution to won billings; strategy work is frequently judged by its pitch-win impact.
- Keep resume language clearly in strategy and positioning territory to avoid ATS miscategorization against product-management postings.
- Include competitive-audit and message-hierarchy work as standalone bullets — they're distinct deliverables recruiters search for separately.
Don't
- Don't use language that echoes product-management vocabulary (roadmap, feature prioritization) — it can trigger the wrong ATS category match.
- Don't state 'developed brand strategy' without naming the specific deliverable (positioning, architecture, message hierarchy, creative brief).
- Don't omit pitch-support contribution if you've done it; it's one of the most heavily weighted outcomes for agency strategists.
- Don't rely on one salary source when negotiating, given how widely reported pay for this title diverges — check the range across at least three sources.
- Don't leave research methodology unnamed; 'conducted research' is far weaker than naming the specific tool or methodology used.
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