Director (Melbourne)

Role Overview This role offers the opportunity to build strong, trusted relationships with leading Retail and FMCG clients. You will deliver insights programs that drive clients’ most critical commercial decisions. As a senior leader, you will oversee the full lifecycle of strategic programs, from opportunity identification (segmentation, demand landscapes, and growth pathways) to executional optimisation (category, channel, shopper, retail and loyalty strategy), through to performance measurement (brand, comms and customer experience). The role requires the experience and confidence of a seasoned Research Director, skilled in designing and leading high impact insights programs, crafting compelling and strategic client presentations and distilling complex information into clear, actionable recommendations. Central to this role is the ability to translate insight into tangible business outcomes, unlocking opportunities for client growth.

The role will include:

Developing client relationships that thrive and endure. Working alongside clients to define their key business challenges and translating these into research studies that answer those challenges.

Deeply immersing yourself in clients’ businesses to establish a credible base of knowledge from which to build.

Delivering sharp, commercially grounded insight through debriefs, workshops and storytelling presentations that influence client decision‑making and inspire action.

Advancing our offer in the Retail and FMCG space, contributing to the development of industry‑leading approaches, frameworks and methodologies.

Strengthening Fiftyfive5’s capability, contributing to our culture, ways of working and collective growth.

Identifying opportunities to expand our offer within client organisations, including end‑to‑end Accenture Song solutions.

Representing Fiftyfive5 within the wider industry and within the Accenture Song team, championing our expertise and collaborating across the Products Client Group.

The Team Our Melbourne office is full of momentum, energy and ambition. The team is passionate about their craft, committed to delivering excellent work for clients, and genuinely supportive of one another. People feel empowered to create opportunities, shape the growth of our Melbourne offering, and celebrate each other’s successes along the way. You’ll work on a wide variety of business challenges, with particular focus on:

Opportunity Identification, including market segmentation, demand landscapes, cultural trends and U&A studies

Category, Channel Shopper, Retail & Loyalty Strategy

Pricing, Volume Forecasting & Modelling

Performance Measurement, including brand & communications tracking

Key industries you will primarily work across are:

Retail & FMCG

Including a broad range of clients to keep things interesting.

Qualifications and Experience Industry experience: 15 years plus market research and insights consulting experience.

Additional experience/requirements: Briefing and proposals: Accenture Song.

Takes complex briefs from clients

Pitches proactively to existing clients for new briefs

Responds creatively and develops compelling written proposals and pitches for any client brief

Acts as sounding board to internal team/clients on proposal development

Aware of the full Fiftyfive5 and Accenture Song offer and how it can be applied across various client issues

Recognised by clients as an expert in Retail and FMCG

Confidence in discussing and applying methodologies

Recognised by clients as being able to advise on a range of potential approaches

Advanced qualitative and/or quantitative expertise, including strong shopper and category research capabilities, with the ability to integrate methods to deliver cohesive insights for clients

Designs sophisticated research approaches, tailored to a wide spectrum of client challenges, leveraging advanced methodologies and innovative techniques

Leads complex, multi‑method (can also be multi‑market) programs, including performance measurement studies, ensuring consistency, rigour and quality across all phases

Provides a clear strategic point of view on methodology, advising clients on the ‘why’ behind design choices and positioning approaches within the broader business context

Builds comprehensive, fit‑for‑purpose methodologies to best address client needs and commercial objectives

Accurately scopes and costs complex projects, balancing methodology with commercial efficiency to ensure profitable program delivery

Why Join Fiftyfive5 Our focus from the start has been to build an exceptional team, foster a culture that inspires and supports our people, and deliver outstanding work that unlocks opportunities, shapes strategy, builds capability, and drives meaningful growth for our clients.

Work with the best: You will collaborate with some of the best consultants and practitioners in the industry. Our senior experts are hands‑on across projects, accelerating your learning, sharpening your thinking and supporting your development.

Diverse expertise at your fingertips: In addition to your day‑to‑day you will have the opportunities to work alongside specialists in cultural insights, trends and commercial forecasting, advanced analytics, CX, and performance measurement. As part of Accenture Song, you will also gain access to broader capabilities in brand strategy, creativity and customer experience delivery; bringing even more tools to solve our client’s commercial and societal challenges.

Breadth and scale: Our work is diverse, giving you the opportunity to build skills rapidly across a broad range of project types, sectors and business need areas. Being part of Accenture Song also means you can access unparalleled platform, technology and tools, project management support, design and creative talent, data operations, and extensive secondary data sources, industry expertise and case studies.

An inclusive and supportive culture: Fiftyfive5, part of Accenture Song is genuinely a great place to work. We embrace a non‑hierarchical, diverse and inclusive culture. We prioritise wellbeing and provide a range of benefits to support our team both personally and professionally.

Training and development: We embed continuous learning across consulting skills, methodology, technology and leadership. We offer core consulting training via the Fiftyfive5 Way, tailored programs like Quant & Qual School, and TQ training including GenAI fluency. Our managers and leaders additionally have access to leadership coaching and business skills development.

#J-18808-Ljbffr