Director of Strategy

Job Description

Who We Are

Horizon Sports & Experiences (HS&E) is a full-service sports marketing agency that connects brands and properties with fans through the power of sport, culture, and storytelling. We develop integrated marketing strategies, experiences, and partnerships that drive impact for our clients across the sports and entertainment landscape.

What You’ll Do

We are seeking a dynamic, collaborative, and forward-thinking Strategy Director to lead strategic development across key accounts and new business efforts. This role will be instrumental in shaping insight-driven marketing strategies that connect brands with sports audiences in meaningful, innovative ways.

The ideal candidate is equal parts brand strategist, cultural analyst, and storyteller—someone passionate about the fusion of insights and creativity to develop comprehensive and impactful strategies.

Reporting to the SVP Strategy, the person in this role will work as part of a highly collaborative team of sports and brand marketing experts based in NYC.

Responsibilities

We’re looking for someone who has a passion for understanding consumer behavior, dissecting client challenges, gleaning unique insights, and developing game-changing solutions. Someone who is comfortable working across a variety of projects and topics, and who approaches every opportunity with the goal of making the work better – more insightful, more organized, more impactful.

• Lead the creation and stewardship of integrated marketing strategies for clients, collaborating internally with account teams to identify brand goals and explore the art of the possible
• Uncover consumer, category, and cultural insights to inform sponsorship strategies, partnership positioning, campaign planning, and activation ideas.
• Distill information into informative briefs, compelling narratives, and concise strategy documents that clearly articulate the business challenge and guide the ideation and planning of actionable solutions
• Support account teams as partnership strategies are brought to life, to ensure the ongoing development of sponsorship tactics, activations, creative assets, etc continue to ladder back up to strategic framework
• Partner with Account, Creative, and Experiential teams to ensure strategies are translated into breakthrough work
• Conduct data analysis (or work closely with Data & Analytics resources) to ensure recommended plans are both rooted in data-driven insights and measurable over time
• Develop comprehensive measurement frameworks to help clients track and understand the impact of their sports marketing investments across a variety of objectives and KPIs
• Contribute to new business development, including supporting on RFP responses, building capability presentations, and helping to evolve agency narrative and go-to-market
• Build case studies that showcase the agency’s impact on client business and how those experiences can help influence prospective clients
• Develop and deliver high-quality presentations that masterfully communicate complex topics into terms that can be easily understand by various audiences, both internally and externally
• Keep a strong pulse on fan engagement, media, and innovation trends across the sports and entertainment landscape that can help inform strategic planning
• Contribute to the agency’s thought leadership strategy by leading proprietary research, identifying new topics to be explored, developing trend reports, and crafting new IP strategies for the agency in the marketplace
• Mentor and manage junior strategy team members; foster a culture of curiosity and insight

Who You Are

• Team-spirited and collaborative to achieve client objectives
• Ability to work in a dynamic, fast-pace environment, working on multiple partnerships and activations at a time
• Proven leader, experience managing a team
• Passionate in the live events landscape and a desire to innovate and keep up with trends
• Tremendous organizational skills, attention to detail and ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and competing priorities
• An innovative thinker, concepting creative ideas for various activations
• A strong writer, listener, communicator and presenter
• Solutions oriented and proactive problem solver with foresight and the ability to develop creative solutions
• Experience with sponsorship measurement techniques
• An advocate for and supporter of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Minimum 5+ years of experience in brand/partnership strategy, marketing, or planning—preferably at a creative, media, or sports marketing agency.
• Deep understanding of the sports, media, and cultural landscape, with a strong point of view on where things are headed.
• Proven experience developing strategies that drive brand relevance and business impact, with a determined ability to turn data, insights, or challenges into a compelling story or strategy
• Exceptional communication skills—both written and verbal; able to distill complex ideas into clear, compelling narratives
• Strong presentation skills with a demonstrated ability to communicate clearly and with confidence, whether pitching ideas on a white board or presenting recommendations in a boardroom
• Strong experience with audience segmentation, consumer journeys, brand positioning, and sponsorship strategies
• Experience and comfort with research tools (e.g., GWI, YouGov, MRI Simmons, Nielsen, social listening platforms, etc)
• Comfort level taking an independent “first pass” at authoring pitch materials, strategic frameworks, process documents (with or without existing examples)
• Desire to champion a culture of accountability with a proactive, solutions-oriented approach that thrives in a fast-paced agency environment
• Entrepreneurial spirit and strong time management skills in order to effectively prioritize and juggle multiple workstreams
• Proven leadership skills with a track record of inspiring and influencing colleagues, clients, and partners at all levels to achieve strategic excellence
• Highly collaborative and confident working across teams and clients

Certificates, Licenses and Registrations

No requirements for certificates, licenses and/or registrations

Physical Activity and Work Environment

Occasionally the employee might be asked to perform minimal physical activity in support of onsite event execution

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The statements herein are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by employees and are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of responsibilities, duties and skills required of personnel so classified. Furthermore, they do not establish a contract for employment and are subject to change at the discretion of the employer.

Horizon Media is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.  We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

Salary Range

A successful applicant’s actual base salary may vary based on factors such as individual’s skill sets, experience, training, education,  licensure/certifications, and qualifications for the role.  As an organization, we take an aptitude and competency-based hiring approach.  We provide a competitive total rewards package including a discretionary bonus and a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, retirement savings plans, company paid holidays and unlimited paid time off (PTO), mental health and wellness resources, pet insurance, childcare resources, identity theft insurance, fertility assistance programs, and fitness reimbursement.