Senior Media and Digital Marketing Manager

More than 100 years ago, a young Frank C. Mars started making candies in his Tacoma, Washington kitchen. From that simple beginning, his son Forrest built Mars into the mature company it is today, first by creating the MILKY WAY® bar with his father and later by expanding the business overseas and diversifying into new categories like pet care and food. Today, the Mars family of Associates is 80,000 strong in 78 countries around the world.

Build and drive a superior digital and emerging media capability for Mars Petcare US that supports our overall media strategy and increases the effectiveness of Petcare US media spend. With the media landscape continuing to change and fragment this role is essential to successfully bring our brands to market in a more complex and volatile media world. New and more pro-active strategic and tactical media approaches are needed to increase the marketplace impact of our communication investments and best connect to our consumers in meaningful ways.

* Provide media leadership in support of all brands, pro-actively moving forward Mars Petcare US digital media capability agenda. This includes: * Pioneering media innovation in the areas of branded entertainment, product placement/integration and new digital mediums (e.g., addressable TV, interactive TV) to deliver break-through reach and impact. * Participate in annual planning sessions and provide guidance on budget investment and media focus. He/she must have strategic planning experience as well as expertise and mastery of the digital landscape. * Responsible for building the media capabilities of Petcare US marketers, with the goal of developing great partners for our media agencies. * Understand and help translate compelling consumer insights into Strategic Brand Communication plans and execution, ensuring differentiation and deeper consumer connections. * Partner with global counterparts on best practices, learning agendas and implementing Mars media framework. * Collaboration is key to this role as he/she will be working with multiple Mars Business Units, Marketing Teams, and Agency Partners. * Pro-actively seek communications innovation and value creation in support of our Brands’ strategies over the near term and annual planning horizons. * Jointly ensure that all media programming as well as media planning and buying services are delivered at the best possible price in the context of driving effectiveness as a primary goal. This includes developing and implementing: * Price standards and media forecasts to enable the annual and medium term planning processes (analyzing media markets & trends) * Media buying strategies in conjunction with partner agencies * Monitoring of media buying performance * Metrics and compensation systems for planning and buying services * Continuous optimization of our media planning and buying processes to establish and institutionalizing best practices vis a vis benchmarking with other Mars’ units, CPG organizations, industry associations and agencies to achieve: * Collaborative communication planning processes between media, creative and other marketing agency partners to ensure integrated/total communication planning for each brand. * Corporate media portfolio management and strategic alliances to manage risk and to leverage opportunities. * Jointly manage overall agency relationships with key media partners, acting as central liaison and administrative contact for procedures, policies, reporting, controls, price standards, forecasting, fees and annual reviews. This includes ensuring stronger working relationships and connectivity between media and creative agencies. * Develop and implement the media tools, metrics, modeling capabilities by working closely with the Marketing Research team to balance our marketplace communication approach between efficiency/exposure and effectiveness/engagement. This also includes ensuring full leverage of available tools (i.e., MCA, Fusion, Innovest and Tardiis) to successfully translate the efficacy of insights mining, strategic value targeting and media inventory optimization into communication implementation. * Lead and manage a team of traditional and digital media managers and specialists to provide robust capabilities supporting and education to the Mars PetCare brand teams.

**Minimum Qualifications:** * 8 year(s) of experience in media planning/buying/analysis within a digital agency * Demonstrated success as “change agent” within media environment * Expert competencies in latest media planning skills, tools and metrics * A record of success in influencing others in a service provider role * Ability to drive digital media + creative integration * Ability to create and drive seamless digital media and e-commerce integration * Ability to foster collaborative, productive relationships between key agency and brand team partners * Ability to partner with teams from around the globe to facilitate media, communication and best practice sharing * Ability to work with media peers in other Mars/Wrigley segments to learn and share best practices * The knowledge, skills, and abilities typically acquired through the completion of a bachelor's degree program in a related field, or equivalent work experience. * Successful completion of a drug and background screen * Ability to travel approximately 20% of time **Preferred Qualifications:** * 10+ years experience * Advanced degree preferred