Job Title: Associate Director, Integrated Marketing
Department: Marketing
Reports to: Senior Director, Marketing
Manages: Manager(s), Integrated Marketing
Collaboration: Daily collaboration across the marketing department, including collaboration with creative and content production, performance marketing, digital and social, game presentation and marketing operations; Regular collaboration across the organization including ticketing, corporate partnerships, community, communications and game operations.
Team Overview: Integrated Marketing is the heartbeat of the marketing department, building seamless and connected pathways to fans to drive engagement, promote business campaigns and convert revenue. Considering the full marketing mix with a spotlight on digital, social and performance marketing, the Integrated Marketing team is responsible for developing marketing strategies and executing detailed marketing plans, overseeing and implementing the campaign process end-to-end. As fan and channel experts, Integrated Marketing understands and implements the best ways to connect with fans based to reach business objectives and drive conversion.
Position Summary: The Associate Director of Integrated Marketing is responsible for leading the development and execution of Los Angeles Lakers marketing plans across a range of campaigns and business initiatives. This end-to-end role acts as a center point for the marketing team, spearheading plans to reach fans and drive business goals including ticket sales and sponsorship programming. This role is responsible for working cross-functionally to develop assets and tactics, considering all marketing touchpoints across paid, earned and owned. The ideal candidate is a strategic marketer, proactive planner, successful decision maker and results-driven collaborator who can simultaneously manage long-term and short-term projects across the marketing lifecycle. This role leads marketing campaigns throughout the year, with an emphasis on game-night promotions, tentpole campaigns and brand storytelling.
Essential Functions (Duties & Responsibilities**):
Campaign Planning and Implementation
- Develops and implements marketing strategies to drive business goals year-round for both on-court and off-court initiatives
- Builds, leads and actualizes cross-functional marketing campaigns to serve revenue drivers, celebrate basketball and drive a holistic narrative across the NBA season
- Generates strategic guidance to brief in concepts, develop creative messaging, build assets and ensure comprehensive content to promote individual game nights, key match ups and special NBA and Lakers moments to drive ticket sales and promote Lakers sponsors
- Collaborates seamlessly with creatives and production teams to deliver high-quality campaigns
- Manages agency and freelance support, as needed, to ensure timely delivery
- Ensures internal alignment and partner integration across all marketing campaigns
- Accountable for all marketing campaigns to be built with reasonable and achievable timelines and budgets, right-sized to achieve goals and deliver high-performing and engaging reach and conversion
- Partners with the NBA to maximize reach and opportunity and ensure alignment with league guidelines
Game Day Promotions and Performance Marketing
- Develops best-in-class game night promotions for a premium experience to drive ticketing, sponsorship activations and fan engagement
- Creates and implements a rinse and repeat, layered system for game day promotions, that recognizes storyline potential and considers the match up, while acknowledging the pacing of an 80+ game season with finite resources
- Leverages a range of platforms – email, web, app, social, broadcast – to drive awareness and conversion, working with channel experts to drive best-in-class marketing
- Drives tune in to support broadcast ratings and streaming
Corporate Programming Marketing
- Serves as the primary marketing point of contact for sponsor-related programming, overseeing ideation, development and execution of sponsor marketing assets
- Drives value to sponsors by ensuring marketing best practices are implemented across contracted tactics that balances optimized performance and sponsor needs
- Ensures pitched and final sponsor deliverables and content align with the Lakers brand
- Ensures contractual deliverables are translated into clear, executable plans and properly tracked
- Leads proactive planning, tracking and implementation of sponsor program execution deadlines
- Oversees sponsorship engagements across game day marketing
- Educates Corporate/Global Partnerships teams on marketing best practices, performance benchmarks and Lakers brand standards
Fan Growth and Engagement
- Develops and leads fan initiatives to support growth and engagement to drive revenue opportunities
- Leads Lakers fan club development, planning and execution to drive interest and acquisition that translates to revenue growth and supports an omnichannel experience for consumers
- Integrates international markets and tactics into Lakers campaigns where appropriate to drive international fan growth and engagement
- Manages agency teams to build and implement plans across Lakers China social platforms that optimize opportunities to drive growth across Greater China
- Maintains a strong pulse on trends, culture, and nuances that drive fandom across the world and brings innovative ideas to the table
Team Leadership
- Drives expectations for the highest quality work, delivered against organization goals
- Supports team development to continually improve quality and increase efficiency
- Partners daily with cross-functional teams to ensure effective project management and resourcing to meet deadlines and keep pace with the rapid nature of the business
- Perform other duties as assigned by executive management
**Responsibilities subject to change based on organizational needs and direction from management.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in marketing, advertising or related field; advanced and continuing education preferred
Previous Experience:
- Minimum 8-10 years in marketing, minimum 5 years in brand or integrated marketing
- Minimum 5 years people management experience
- Proven success launching and implementing integrated marketing campaigns for high-profile global brands
Technology Capabilities:
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Understanding of asset design and production requirements across platforms
- Project Management Software (Jira, Trello, Wrike)
- Microsoft Office (including Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, SharePoint)
Knowledge, skills, abilities:
- Demonstrated leadership skills in marketing with a deep understanding of marketing principles, analytics, service management, stakeholder alignment and fan engagement
- Ability to develop, guide and adhere to a strategic brief, translating business objectives and brand strategy into tactical fan engagement and marketing promotions
- Works at both a strategic level as well as operating day-to-day activities
- Proficiency in briefing creative needs with clear direction on fan takeaway and production requirements
- Ability to simultaneously manage multiple programs at varying scales with mixed deadlines
- Ability to work in a high-energy, fast-paced, dynamic environment and make quality decisions
- Comfortable managing effectively and staying nimble with changing information
- Can roll with the read and react nature of a team business and the sports landscape while still reaching business objectives
- Detail-oriented and a logical approach to problem solving
- Ability to bring innovative and creative activations to bear while working within mandatory parameters including league rules, short timelines and defined budget
- Ability to balance tactical innovation and continued relevance while embracing a legacy organization
- Understanding of sponsor program nuances
- A passion for basketball and sports business
Physical Demands: N/A
Location: El Segundo (offices M-F), downtown Los Angeles (Crypto.com arena for Laker home games), other occasional off-site events
Travel: Up to 10% of the time
Hours: This position requires continual attention due to the perpetual nature of the NBA season; after-hours time is mandatory; must be available to work evenings, weekends and holidays
The pay range for this role is $125,000 - $135,000 annually. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience and certifications. In addition to those factors, we consider the relative pay of our current employees in similar positions when making a final offer.
We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender identity, marital or veteran status, or any other protected class.