Director, Sponsorship Strategy, Sports - Brand Consulting

About the role

The CAA Brand Consulting Sponsorship Strategy Director will play a key role in some of our most high-profile client work and new-business initiatives. This position will lead the development and 'sell-in' of data and insight-driven Sports sponsorship strategies across the entire sports ecosystem.

Responsibilities

• Develop and deliver overarching strategic vision grounded in data for client assignments, defining and prioritizing initiatives that directly support marketing/business goals and brand KPIs
• Work with Account teams around client briefings to qualify opportunities, shaping campaign deliverables and go-to-market strategies
• Partner closely with our Insights and Analytics teams to build and apply insight and data-driven personas, segmentation models, customer journeys and measurement frameworks
• Interpret category and consumer trends to inform cultural marketing, partnership, campaign and communication strategies, determining the roles of media and creative and ideal touchpoints needed to drive desired outcomes
• Create overarching partnership strategy, including creative platforms and narrative, defining the role of partnerships within the broader brand and marketing ecosystem
• Create partnership portfolio analyses to identify the strategic role of partnerships and ensure alignment with overarching strategy, including partner selection, rights and asset utilization
• Create activation strategies to meet brand objectives/targets and design integrated campaign approaches across channels and touchpoints
• Develop ideas for optimizing existing activations to improve effectiveness, efficiency and cultural relevance
• Act as a bridge between internal teams – Account, New Business, Data, Insights, Creative – facilitating optimal team outputs while balancing efficiency and effectiveness
• Brief and collaborate with internal and external partners (e.g. client’s IMC teams)
• Develop and apply ownable positioning for brands within Sports, informing brand role, partner selection, rights and asset utilization, and creative activation
• Proactively pitch innovative ideas, new partners, new channels, and test and learn opportunities
• Cultivate relationships across CAA to find and promote new opportunities for clients

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Communications, Statistics or similar discipline
• 8-10+ years of experience in brand, integrated communications, or connections planning
• Expertise in interpreting consumer research and data (quantitative & qualitative) and applying to solutions-based client strategies
• Exceptional verbal and written communication skills
• Strong analytical skills, ability to think critically and work collaboratively on fast moving projects
• Prior proven ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, while being extremely detail-oriented
• Ability to influence, persuade and lead broader teams
• Excellent understanding of the composition and application of creative briefs
• Experience communicating and providing consultation and advice to clients, including running brainstorms, strategy and innovation workshops
• Proven ability to travel and attend work events outside normal business hours on an as needed basis
• Global experience or experience working on multi-market accounts
• Knowledge, passion and curiosity on all things sports and the surrounding culture
• Ability to confidently present plans, thought leadership and ideas to a senior leadership audiences (internal and external)
• Experience working on new business pitches, to support when opportunities arise