Associate Director, Integrated Brand Campaigns

About the Role

We are seeking an Associate Director, Integrated Brand Campaigns to shape, activate, and optimize integrated brand campaigns that connect with our target audiences and drive measurable impact. This is a player-coach role-you will roll up your sleeves to design and execute campaigns while also coaching and enabling a small but growing team.

The Associate Director will oversee all aspects of campaign planning-audience definition, channel strategy, media planning, stakeholder engagement, activation, and performance optimization. With one direct report (Campaign Manager) and collaboration across the go-to-market organization, corporate and internal coms, this role is both hands-on and highly strategic.

Position Location: Chicago, IL (Hybrid - 4 days onsite per week)

Key Responsibilities:

Campaign Strategy & Development

• Develop and refine integrated brand campaign strategies aligned with company objectives and brand positioning.
• Define target audiences, market segments, and budget recommendations that inform campaign design.
• Partner with creative teams and agencies to translate brand narratives into compelling, multi-channel campaign concepts.

Channel & Media Planning

• Partner with performance marketing, digital, creative teams and agencies to select channels (paid, owned, earned, internal) that maximize reach and impact.
• Drive media planning and allocation recommendations in collaboration with performance marketing.

Activation & Execution

• Actively manage campaign briefs, creative development, and stakeholder reviews.
• Directly lead elements of campaign activation while guiding and enabling your Campaign Manager and cross functional partners to execute with excellence.
• Ensure campaign consistency across internal (employees, stakeholders) and external (clients, prospects, partners) audiences.

Performance & Optimization

• Monitor campaign performance through established KPIs and dashboards.
• Recommend optimizations in real-time to improve engagement, efficiency, and ROI.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Serve as a player-coach-contributing directly to campaign work while developing and mentoring your direct report.
• Act as a key partner to senior marketing, product, and commercial leaders, ensuring campaign alignment with business priorities.
• Collaborate closely with creative, content, media, and analytics Centers of Excellence.

Qualifications:

• 7-10 years of experience in brand marketing, campaign strategy, or integrated marketing roles.
• Proven track record designing and delivering multi-channel brand campaigns that balance brand and demand objectives.
• Strong understanding of media planning and channel selection across paid, owned, earned, shared and internal communications.
• Experience working within a matrixed, global marketing organization.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills, with ability to influence at senior levels.
• Strong analytical mindset; ability to interpret data and translate insights into actionable strategies.
• Prior leadership or management experience required; ability to both do and enable work.

Why Join Us?

This is a rare opportunity to build and scale a strategic campaign function at a leading global brand in financial services. You'll play a hands-on role in delivering integrated brand campaigns while also developing talent and scaling the function. As a player-coach, you'll help shape how we bring our challenger brand positioning to life in the market-unlocking growth, influence, and connection across diverse audiences.