Director - Media Planning & Strategy

At DICK’S Sporting Goods, we believe in how positively sports can change lives. On our team, everyone plays a critical role in creating confidence and excitement by personally equipping all athletes to achieve their dreams. We are committed to creating an inclusive and diverse workforce, reflecting the communities we serve.

About the role

The Director defines and owns the Media Planning Team's long-range strategy, ensuring it is aligned with DMN's commercial objectives, annual OKRs, and the broader commerce media landscape.

Responsibilities

• Strategy and Long-Term Planning
  • Build and maintain strategic storytelling frameworks that govern how DMN positions its media products to brand partners, including audience narratives, channel value propositions, and performance proof points.
  • Define annual priorities and key results for the Media Planning function, cascading them into team-level goals and tracking progress rigorously throughout the year.
  • Establish DMN's point of view on emerging media planning trends, audience strategies, measurement methodologies, and competitive positioning, incorporating this perspective into plans and client conversations.
  • Communicate the team's strategic direction and performance to internal leadership weekly, flagging risks, surfacing opportunities, and advocating for resources and tooling investments.
• People Leadership and Team Development
  • Set clear performance expectations and development plans for each team member, conduct regular 1:1s and formal reviews, and recognize and reward high performance consistently.
  • Recruit and onboard top media planning talent, emphasizing candidates who combine strong analytical instincts with the ability to build compelling narratives around data.
  • Identify skill gaps across the team and design or source training, tools, and experiences to close them, focusing on retail and commerce media fluency and storytelling craft.
  • Build a team culture that values intellectual rigor, creative problem-solving, and collaborative client service to attract strong talent.
  • Manage execution responsibilities and workload of direct/indirect reports to achieve functional deliverables on time and with quality.
  • Develop talent through coaching, feedback, exposure, and stretch assignments to meet career goals and organizational priorities.
  • Establish strategic staffing and succession plans; deliver on proposed staffing objectives.
  • Drive the talent selection process in alignment with the company’s talent philosophy for open positions; ensure all direct reports are appropriately trained and onboarded.
  • Drive engagement by creating a motivating climate, focusing on teammate feedback (e.g., Engagement & Pulse results), and partnering with leadership to implement necessary changes.
• Media Strategy and Plan Quality
  • Establish and enforce standards for high-quality plans, including how audience data is surfaced, channel recommendations are structured, performance projections are modeled, and narratives tie objectives to outcomes.
  • Review and provide substantive feedback on plans before client delivery to ensure strategic alignment, error-free content, and positioning to generate brand confidence and investment.
  • Build reusable planning templates, data-driven benchmarks, and storytelling frameworks to enable efficient and consistent planning without sacrificing strategic depth.
  • Stay informed about brand and category-level trends to ensure plans reflect real market dynamics, not just channel inventory and audience availability.
• Tooling, Product, and Process Influence
  • Maintain a clear perspective on tools and product features that improve planning quality and efficiency, advocating for these investments through structured product partnerships.
  • Collaborate with product and engineering teams to scope, prioritize, and test new planning capabilities, audience tools, and data visualization features, representing the planner’s perspective in the product roadmap.
  • Establish standard operating procedures for plan development, approval workflows, version control, and client handoff to scale as the team and portfolio grow.
  • Identify and eliminate friction in the planning process.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Partner with Sales and Account Management to ensure plans are produced on client timelines, responsive to commercial context, and positioned to close business and retain investment.
  • Collaborate with Analytics and Reporting to ensure performance measurement methodologies, attribution approaches, and reporting frameworks are accurately reflected in plans and client expectations.
  • Engage with the Monetization team to incorporate new inventory, audience, and targeting capabilities into plans as soon as they become available.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree.
• 7–10 years of experience in media planning, media strategy, or a related discipline, with at least 5 years in a people management role.
• Demonstrated ability to build data-informed media strategies and translate quantitative analysis into compelling, accessible narratives that drive executive and client alignment.
• Deep familiarity with the retail and commerce media landscape, including sponsored products, onsite display, offsite programmatic, CTV, and social channels, and how brands evaluate their value.
• Proven track record of developing media plans that win business and deliver measurable performance outcomes against advertiser objectives.
• Experience influencing cross-functional teams and stakeholders without direct authority, building productive relationships across Sales, Account Management, Analytics, and Product.
• Strong presentation and communication skills, with the ability to distill complex planning rationale into clear, persuasive narratives for senior audiences.
• Analytical proficiency: comfortable working with audience data, reach and frequency models, performance benchmarks, and campaign measurement methodologies.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience at a retail media network, commerce media platform, or major publisher, with direct exposure to first-party audience data activation and closed-loop measurement.
• Familiarity with media mix modeling (MMM), multi-touch attribution, and incrementality testing, and the ability to apply these frameworks to plan structure and sales.
• Experience working with or alongside media agencies, with an understanding of how brands and agencies evaluate media investment decisions in a retail media context.
• Background in media planning tools, audience analytics platforms, or data visualization tools, with a track record of advocating for and adopting technology that improves team output.

Virtual Requirements

To protect the integrity and security of our hiring process, we ask that candidates do not use AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) during interviews or assessments. Cameras must be on during all virtual interviews. Offers are contingent upon a satisfactory background check, which may include ID verification.

Pay

Targeted pay range: $127,000.00 – $237,800.00. This is part of a competitive total rewards package that may include incentive, equity, and benefits. Individual pay is determined by factors such as experience, location, and internal pay equity.

Benefits

DICK'S Sporting Goods complies with all state paid leave requirements and offers a generous suite of benefits. To learn more, visit www.benefityourliferesources.com.