SVP, Growth Audiences

WE WELCOME REMOTE U.S.-BASED CANDIDATES 

The SVP, Head of Growth Audiences sets the audience system that powers experience-led strategy across dentsuX. Reporting into the EVP, Head of Activation, this role ensures a single, actionable view of priority audiences is translated into planning, activation, and measurement decisions, enabling clearer experience choices and stronger business outcomes for clients. 

This leader defines what “good” audience work looks like across the agency by setting standards, frameworks, and governance. The focus is not on audience segmentation as a standalone output, but on ensuring audience insight shows up in client deliverables as clear experience decisions: who to prioritize, what to say or do, where to show up, and how to prove impact. 

This role sits at the intersection of strategy, media, data, analytics, and technology and acts as a critical partner to senior client and agency leadership. The SVP, Head of Growth Audiences is both a trusted client advisor and a change leader, responsible for institutionalizing new ways of working across dentsuX.  

Key Responsibilities:

Audience System Ownership & Strategy Leadership 

• Own the end-to-end audience system, including audience definitions, priority tiers, and signal taxonomy used consistently across planning, activation, and measurement. 

• Define and maintain audience governance, including how audiences and signals are created, updated, documented, approved, and deployed across channels and over time. 

• Ensure audience work translates into clear experience choices, with explicit implications for messaging, channel roles, journey design, and test-and-learn priorities. 

• Establish standards that demonstrate how priority audiences directly drive growth, performance, and experience outcomes, with clear mechanisms for validation, learning, and ongoing evolution. 

Strategic Partnership & Experience Integration 

• Act as a strategic counterpart to the Strategy team, ensuring audience insight shapes strategic platforms, growth narratives, and experience frameworks from the outset, not as a downstream input. 

• Help shift the organization from campaign-led thinking to consistent, consumer-centric, experience systems. 

• Ensure audience insights are embedded within strategy and experience outputs, rather than delivered as isolated deliverables. 

• Serve as a senior strategic voice with internal and external stakeholders, translating complexity into clear, actionable direction that informs decision-making. 

Organizational Transformation & Ways of Working 

• Drive a meaningful organizational shift, positioning audience work as a shared operating system rather than a specialist function. 

• Establish true shared ownership across planning, activation, and measurement teams, partnering end-to-end from audience definition through deployment and learning. 

• Create common standards, shared language, and clear guardrails to guide decision-making across teams. 

• Define and implement new operating rhythms, including shared planning moments, activation readiness checkpoints, and measurement readouts that continuously inform and evolve the audience system. 

• Lead through change by coaching teams through ambiguity, iterating in-market, and continuously improving how audience work shows up in client deliverables. 

Talent, Capability & Influence 

• Build, lead, and mentor senior growth audience talent. 

• Advance the growth audiences capability through thought leadership, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration across dentsu X and the broader dentsu network. 

• Create clarity and alignment within a matrixed organization, enabling teams to operate with confidence, accountability, and speed. 

Qualifications:

• 15+ years of experience leading audience strategy, growth strategy, experience strategy, media, or data-driven marketing within complex organizations. 

• Deep expertise in developing and governing audience systems, including audience definitions, prioritization frameworks, identity, signals, and measurement implications. 

• Demonstrated ability to translate audience insight into clear experience and growth decisions that shape messaging, channel roles, journey design, and test-and-learn agendas. 

• Strong fluency across the media, data, and technology ecosystem, with the ability to navigate platform constraints, addressability considerations, and signal availability. 

• Proven experience operating as a senior strategic partner to strategy, activation, and measurement teams within a matrixed agency or consulting environment. 

• Executive-level storyteller and advisor, skilled at translating complexity into compelling, actionable narratives for senior client and internal stakeholders. 

• Demonstrated success leading teams through ambiguity, organizational change, and new ways of working. 

• Experience building, leading, and mentoring senior talent and establishing standards that enable teams to operate with clarity, accountability, and speed. 

• Ability to travel up to 25% as required to support client, team, and business needs (including travel for new business pitches). 

What Success Looks Like:

• Audience insight is embedded within strategy and experience outputs, not delivered in isolation. 

• Experience planning provides clear guidance on what to do, where to focus, and why. 

• Planning, activation, and measurement teams operate from a shared audience system. 

• dentsu X is recognized as a partner that connects audience understanding to meaningful experiences that drive growth. 

The annual base salary range for this position is $163,000-$235,000. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law. Additionally, this position is eligible for discretionary incentive compensation.  

Benefits available with this position include:  

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance, 

• Life insurance,  

• Short-term and long-term disability insurance, 

• 401k,  

• Flexible paid time off, 

• At least 15 paid holidays per year, 

• Paid sick and safe leave, and 

• Paid parental leave. 

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, in accordance with its plans and policies.  For more information regarding dentsu benefits, please visit www.dentsubenefitsplus.com. 

To begin the application process, please click on the “Apply” button at the top of this job posting. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and qualified candidates will be contacted for next steps. 

At dentsu, we believe great work happens when we’re connected. Our way of working combines flexibility with in-person collaboration to spark ideas and strengthen our teams. Employees who live within a commutable distance of one of our hub offices, currently located in Chicago, metro Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York City, are required and expected to work from the office three days per week (two days per week for employees based in Los Angeles). Dentsu may designate other Hub offices at any time. Those who live outside a commutable range may be designated as remote, depending on the role and business needs. Regardless of your work location, we expect our employees to be flexible to meet the needs of our Company and clients, which may include attendance in an office.

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