Senior Director, Global Brand Operations

Company Overview

Fanatics is building a leading global digital sports platform. The company ignites the passions of global sports fans and maximizes the presence and reach for hundreds of sports partners globally by offering innovative products and services across Fanatics Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles, and Fanatics Betting & Gaming, allowing sports fans to Buy, Collect and Bet. Through the Fanatics platform, sports fans can buy licensed fan gear, jerseys, lifestyle and streetwear products, headwear, and hardgoods; collect physical and digital trading cards, sports memorabilia, and other digital assets; and bet as the company builds its Sportsbook and iGaming platform. Fanatics has an established database of over 100 million global sports fans, a global partner network with over 900 sports properties, including major national and international professional sports leagues, teams, players associations, athletes, celebrities, colleges, and college conferences, and over 2,000 retail locations, including its Lids retail business stores. 

As a market leader with more than 18,000 employees, and hundreds of partners, suppliers, and vendors worldwide, we take responsibility for driving toward more ethical and sustainable practices. We are committed to building an inclusive Fanatics community, reflecting and representing society at every level of the business, including our employees, vendors, partners and fans. Fanatics is also dedicated to making a positive impact in the communities where we all live, work, and play through strategic philanthropic initiatives.

The Senior Director of Global Brand Operations holds a strategic leadership position accountable for optimizing the people, processes, and technology involved in creative endeavors. The Global Brand Operations team enhances operational efficiency through the utilization of tools and systems to refine and structure the creative production process, thereby increasing timeliness, capacity, and compliance. This ensures alignment between our creative projects and company objectives. In essence, the team focuses on maximizing operational capacity while minimizing operational overhead for our creative team—enabling the department to concentrate on creative work rather than logistics.

This role sits within the Global Brand Team and reports to the Global Head of Brand, fostering an environment conducive to collaboration, creative input, and transparency to enhance partner awareness and commitment to creative work.

As the Senior Director, you will design and delegate processes and practices to facilitate scaling to the next level of operational excellence, managing upwards of 100 creative vendor/contractors as we move away from an agency brand marketing model. You will own strategy by managing the roadmap, OKR planning, tackling high-priority projects, managing operations, and seamlessly delivering all campaign execution through team management to enable the brand org to operate efficiently and scale productively.

* This role may have the ability to work remotely.

Key Responsibilities:

• Through new and existing relationships, directs dozens of contractors/vendors simultaneously across photography, videography, editing, audio production, visual effects, visual design, and physical space design for creative productions globally.
• Lead plans to strategize, track, report out, and implement the goals of the Global Brand organization.
• Manage disciplines including strategic planning, forecasting, budget management, program management, project management, trafficking, resource management, business affairs, contracts administration, compliance, vendor management, and the tools and processes required to manage them.
• Support and collaborate with other creative teams, finance teams, and regionalized and international teams to ensure unified operational focus.
• Work with brand and creative teams across company partners to develop and maintain brand creative workflow guidelines and supporting documentation.
• Partner with the Finance & Strategy team to inform investment strategy and improve tracking, prioritizing, and reconciling budgets across all creative groups.
• Lead internal communication efforts, including organizing quarterly business reviews and weekly reports.
• Organize team-wide project intake and quarterly planning efforts for project prioritization and status visibility.
• Identify workflow gaps and guide the development and implementation of new processes to empower the team and scale their work.
• Determine appropriate KPIs to measure brand and creative project success and implement processes to track asset performance, asset usage/reuse, timeline projections vs. actuals, etc.
• Communicate cross-functionally to ensure marketing priorities and projects are successfully met and managed.
• Lead and empower the team, managing overall team success and individual career growth.
• Build a world-class project management/operations team that sets the standard for Brand Creative across the company, building dashboards, putting reviews in place, and setting OKRs.
• Transform creative planning processes for global brand campaigns, aligning key stakeholders on strategy including content and campaign prioritization.
• Establish brand, creative, and design execution processes and identify automation opportunities for improved consistency and efficiency.
• Align the marketing technology infrastructure through project management, implementation, governance, and roadmap development.
• Implement processes that minimize bad or incomplete data.
• Lead ongoing training and enablement for creative on processes and tech stack.
• Work closely with legal to ensure creative compliance and governance to regional regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.).
• Manage, build, and lead a strong team through coaching and developing existing members and acquiring new team members as needed.
• Design, implement, and administer cross-functional processes such as brand campaign planning, annual planning, program performance reporting, and budgeting.
• Develop and institute communications protocols, best practices, and processes to drive greater efficiencies within the creative team.

Professional qualifications:

• 15+ years of experience in digital/content/brand marketing and agency operations within a global organization.
• Hands-on experience with studio operations, camera operations, lighting, editing, and sound.
• Proven success managing large numbers of global contractors and vendors simultaneously.
• Exceptional communication, both verbal and written, including presentation and facilitation.
• Strong project management, planning, and prioritization skills.
• Demonstrated leadership to inspire teams and drive agile solutions.
• Ability to manage timelines, lead high-performing teams, and prioritize work effectively.
• Deep understanding of creative project lifecycles and industry trends.
• Strong organizational skills for managing budgets, vendors, and contracts.
• Highly developed cultural awareness for global communications.
• Fanatical attention to detail and resilience in managing diverse projects.
• Executive maturity and interpersonal skills for effective leadership.
• Comfortable in fast-paced environments, adept at problem-solving.
• Skilled at scoping and executing complex operational projects.
• Strong analytical skills coupled with the ability to rely on judgment.
• Master communicator with the ability to influence colleagues at all levels.
• Experience in building scalable solutions and collaboration across disciplines.
• Able to handle multiple priorities and drive action in dynamic settings..
• Proven track record in organizing and executing large-scale projects.

Fanatics is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

Tryouts are open at Fanatics! Our team is passionate, talented, unified, and charged with creating the fan experience of tomorrow. The ball is in your court now.

Fanatics is committed to responsible planning and purchasing (RPP) practices, working with its business partners across its global and multi-layered supply chain, to ensure that planning, sourcing, and purchasing decisions, along with other supporting processes, do not impede or conflict with the fulfillment of Fanatics’ fair labor practices.

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