Careers at MGA Entertainment

Company Summary: MGA Entertainment, a consumer entertainment Products Company headquartered in Chatsworth, California, manufactures innovative lines of proprietary products for the toy and consumer electronics market.  The company also licenses its IP in such areas as apparel, home décor, stationery and sporting goods. The MGA family includes award-winning brands such as LOL Surprise, Little Tikes®, Project MC2, and Zapf Creation®. For more information please visit www.mgae.com.

MGA Entertainment Mission & Values: Our Mission is to entertain children around the world and become part of their childhood and future generations. Our Values serve as a compass for our actions and describe how we behave in the world. For us, Creative Innovation is our way. We are passionate about everything we do. We are about solutions and “can-do” is our belief system. When we say it, we do it – we are always accountable. We recognize the unlimited potential of employees and power of teamwork. Collaboration is crucial.

Our Workspace: Join us at our brand new headquarters, designed for our employees.   Our space focuses on health, wellness, and eco-friendly values: on-site gym, free yoga and Pilates, smoke-free campus, green vehicle charging stations, bamboo Zen garden and more.  

The Opportunity: The Sr. Director, Global Brand Management, LOL Surprise! will lead the strategy and execution of our Tentpole & Halo Partnership segments, with VP oversight.  This candidate is a collaborator with a proven ability to influence multiple stakeholders across the business – Entertainment, Licensing, Social, PR, Experiential, Global Sales Force & Retail Marketing.  

The candidate will lead a team that works closely with Design, Sales, & Consumer Group to ensure the Tentpole & Halo businesses are on-strategy, on-brand, and on-time.  This leader is a strong relationship builder with peers, and a strong manager with ability to coach and mentor, train and develop within a fast-paced environment. 

Position Requirements

Education/Experience:

• Kids and/or Family marketing, Toy experience required
• 10+ years of brand management, retail buying or marketing experience
• 5+ years team leadership and management, having led a team of 3+ direct reports
• Bachelor’s degree preferred in Business, Marketing or related discipline
• Brand Lifecycle experience required
• Diversified experience and proven success across big and small companies, start-up entrepreneurial required

Skills/Knowledge/Ability:

• Thorough understanding of the toy market, kids content & family entertainment landscape
• Ability to direct a business from all aspects: consumer marketing, brand building, financial, and sales
• Discipline to define and deliver against clear goal metrics each season 
• Build strong teams and prioritize people investment to promote from within
• Builds strong relationships and support cross-functional teams 
• Strong presentation skills: ability to understand the audience, ability to tell a story
• Ability to create and drive process as needed to drive efficiencies in our workflow

Authority:

• This role reports to the Global Vice President
• This role will be supported by multiple direct report(s), Senior Brand Manager, Manager(s), and/or ABM(s)

Key Result Areas and Activities:

1. Brand Management 
2. Manage teams that own Tentpole and Halo segments (avg 2-3 per season) 
3. Define & drive strategies for Tentpole & Halo to support Franchise goals
4. Ensure integrity of brand positioning, age target, audience segmentation and key attributes to  ensure product, packaging, marketing communication, licensing and retail deliver on insights-based alignment across all legs of the franchise
5. Deliver brand message with authority through compelling storytelling; present to internal and external stakeholders on behalf of the brand, including proven ability to perform with upper management executives, and C-suite
6. Ensure global perspective to key areas of brand management and team support follow thru. Escalation to VP for key business impact issues

1. Brand & Retail Marketing Strategy 
2. Together with Design, create tentpole segments that can be scaled to maximize content storytelling, licensing programs, PR messaging, community engagement, and retail moments 
3. Own strategy of key toy ads, ensuring strong partnership with Consumer Group to align on final deliverables and timing 
4. Own relationship with Entertainment and content creation team for short and long form content
5. Strategically support Sales and Retail Marketing for key account activations and how they align to 360-consumer plans

1. Category Management 
2. Based on insights from team and cross-functional resources, identify and build strategy to capture growth/innovation opportunity in future product lines
3. Together with counterpart, lead the seasonal brand planning process; i.e., slot planning, white space opportunity analysis, product wave planning, price point analysis, NPD competitive data analysis
4. Drive the team to regularly track competitive retail landscape, marketing activations, sales performance & future kids entertainment slates 
5. Manage down and up insights to leadership and team bench strength depth of knowledge on category dominance in retail, e-commerce and creative advertising activations of key competitors

1. P&L Management, Budget, Retail Sales & Financial Analysis
2. Maintain complete awareness of brand financials including inventory, forecasts etc. and understand implications to marketing investment, ROI and key activations. Manage up details to influence executive level decision making for P&L impact
3. Proven ability to analyze POS point of sales data with understanding of regional, store level data when necessary to determine trends and key performance indicators and business drivers. Ability to synthesize data to exec summary elevator pitch to management
4. Build financial quotas by item as part of new season development, along with insightful data points research, historical, and competitive to justify financial growth targets for Sales, Supply & Demand Planning 
5. Demonstrate decision-making abilities around investment alternatives that mitigate risk and maximize return. Identify issues and propose potential solutions. Work with leadership on total Girls portfolio management and brand contributions for larger business impact

1. Cross-Functional Team Leadership
2. Identify and remove barriers for the team, elevate to VP as needed
3. Be the Brand authority on all things LOL-related for cross-functional partners: Sales, Retail Marketing, Licensing, Supply & Demand, Marketing Services, Entertainment, etc.  
4. Partner with counterparts to facilitate regular information sharing across the business as it pertains to: brand performance, key highlights, upcoming beats, etc. 
5. Be a leader and a team player, solution oriented with forward momentum and a sense of urgency to pull cross-functional players together to deliver on time and on budget

1. Marketing Team Leadership 
2. Expertise in managing, coaching and mentoring direct reports 
3. Build teams through training and development; invest in bench strength and ability to promote from within 
4. Operate with best in class examples for Girls Marketing, building repeatable processes and continuous improvement 
5. Demonstrate executive presence and strategic leadership ability to represent the team at the highest level, including direct interaction with Founder/CEO