Director, Marketing Planning

Director – Consumer Marketing, Planning and Insights | Manchester/London 

Join adidas Europe and shape the future of the sporting goods industry. For over 75 years, our European heritage has been a fusion of culture and innovation, driving global sports trends. Our offices, from Herzogenaurach to London, Berlin, Zaragoza, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Athens, Milan, Manchester, and Paris, are centres of creativity and collaboration.

You’ll be joining the UK business, with a workforce of over 350 people working across, Brand, Sports Marketing, Culture Marketing, Marketing Activations, Sales, Digital, Finance, HR & many more.

As a Director of Consumer Marketing, Planning and Insights you will work across both sport and lifestyle, managing a team that are focused on our consumer, be that scoping out who they are or building strategic plans of how our marketing effectively reaches them.

What you’ll do:

Lead and drive the respective UK and Ireland communications strategy of all integrated marketing activities in line with European strategy to build up brand and categories and to increase sales.

You’ll lead a team responsible for developing, maintaining and evolving a true understanding of our consumer, creating insights across categories and geographies that feed our brand teams and inform our creative briefs. 

Working with the insights you will drive the strategy and implementation of our media planning approach, across platforms and channels, ensuring that the adidas brand is easy to find and easy to mind.

You’ll lead the team in developing the strategy of our activation plans for sporting and cultural partners, ensuring that we maximise our sponsorship rights across the multiple channels of the brand in the UK, supporting our brand teams with insight and measurement.

The consumer marketing planning team manage annual marketing budget and help set the strategy for the season, working with Global and European colleagues to influence the brand calendar, while driving local relevance.  The team will also take control and leadership of ‘head office’ topics, bringing to life seasonal internal presentations on brand direction and strategies in front of the wider sales and marketing functions.

As well as being on top of consumer trends, the team will also keep a keen eye on marketplace trends, competitor activity and industry developments, becoming the font of knowledge for the wider department.

As a wider department, we produce a lot of brand work locally. The consumer marketing team will continue to explore and evaluate both creative and production partners to ensure that our work stays at the cutting edge in front of the consumer, building and cultivating the right relationships with the right balance of partners.

Skills you’ll need: 

• Comprehensive knowledge of the Gen Z culture and influencer landscape across the UK (entertainment, fashion, music, and sport)
• History of creating, adapting and aligning strategy for brand marketing in a complex matrix organisation
• Consumer insight and understanding
• A strong understanding of media buying
• 3+ years’ experience managing creative/production agencies
• Strong written communication skills
• Advanced organisational and stakeholder management skills
• An initiative-driven, creative, and trend-based mindset
• Strong analytical and presentation skills

Life at adidas:

We operate a flexible hybrid model with 3 fixed days in the office and the flexibility for you to choose where you work from home on the other 2 days. Additionally, we want to accommodate candidates wherever possible with one of our many different flexible working policies, whatever your situation, working around childcare, dependants, or other life commitments.

To ensure everyone feels welcome we endeavour to accommodate everyone at all stages of the application and interview process. Should you need it, please let your recruitment partner know and they will be more than happy to help.

Additional Benefits:

Leading pension scheme, performance related bonus, 25 days holiday + bank holidays, Bupa health insurance & Westfield cash plan, generous employee discount and Gym contributions for our London colleagues.