Group Director, Connections Strategist

Horizon Media•New York, NY

3d•$180,000 - $220,000•Onsite

About The Position

Blue Hour Studios is a social-first agency that makes brands magnetic through work that gets shared, remixed, and talked about. We create at the intersection of culture, content, creators, and commerce to help brands turn distinct cultural relevance into demand. Headquartered in New York and Los Angeles and backed by Horizon Media, we connect creativity and media to drive real business impact. We’re seeking a Group Director, Connections Strategist to lead how ideas move through culture, platforms, creators, and media. This role sits at the intersection of strategy, creative, social, influencer, and media, shaping not only what gets made, but how ideas are architected, connected, and scaled across the full communications ecosystem. This is a senior role – that will be embedded with our client in Boston, Massachusetts – for a planner who thinks social-first, understands how ideas live and grow on platforms, and can connect that thinking to broader campaigns. You will define communications plans, shape strategic narratives, craft provocative insight-led briefs, and ensure social creative and media work as one system.

Requirements

A senior communications or connections planner with 8–12+ years of experience in integrated communications, or connections strategy at an agency or brand.
Deeply fluent in social media, creators/influencers, content ecosystems, platform behaviors, and cultural dynamics.
Experienced in architecting multi-channel communications systems that connect creative, media, and social into one coherent strategy.
A strong strategic storyteller who can structure complex thinking into clear, persuasive narratives.
Comfortable leading senior client conversations and influencing cross-functional leaders.
Fluent in the relationship between brand, communications planning, media strategy, and performance.
Equally big-picture and hands-on. You can define the system and help teams build it.
Curious, culturally plugged in, and energized by how ideas move through the internet, not just how they look in a deck.

Nice To Haves

Experience working across multiple markets or regions is a plus.
Comfortable working in extremely fast-moving, cross-functional environments where strategy needs to be both rigorous and pragmatic.

Responsibilities

Communications Planning & Connections Strategy Act as a senior strategic partner to clients, helping them navigate complexity and connect brand ambition to how work shows up in culture.
Partner closely with Creative, Social, Influencer, and Media teams to ensure social-first thinking is baked into the work from the start.
Lead the development of integrated communications and connections strategies that define how ideas will earn attention, travel through culture, and drive impact across paid, owned, earned, emerging, and influencer channels
Turn audience insights, cultural signals, and platform behaviors into clear strategic opportunities and provocations that guide creative, media, and influencer activation.
Write communications briefs for major campaigns that frame the strategic challenge and inspire strong ideas across creative, media, social, and creator ecosystems.
Help ensure that social acts as the starting point and connective tissue across all touchpoints.
Social-First & Creator Fluency Bring deep understanding of social platforms, creators, content formats, and community dynamics into every planning decision to show teams how ideas should be expressed differently across platforms while maintaining a cohesive brand story.
Ensure influencer and creator strategies are integrated into the communications system, not bolted on.
Partner with social, influencer, creative, and media leads to ensure creative x media truly sing as one connected system.
Optimization & Performance Connection Ensure social creative is activated in an optimal way (i.e., right content for right media placement)
Define learning agendas and measurement frameworks that connect communications strategy to brand and performance KPIs.
Translate data and behavioral insights into actionable creative and media recommendations that improve effectiveness.