Media & Digital Strategy Director

Champion Petfoods is expanding! We are excited to announce we are looking for a Media & Digital Strategy Director  to join our rapidly growing company. 

Champion Petfoods is an award-winning pet food maker with a reputation of trust spanning 35+ years. Founded in a small town in Alberta, Canada, Champion – with its ORIJEN® and ACANA® brands – is a key player in the global premium pet food industry across three major geographic regions. 

We would love to hear from you if you are passionate about personal and professional growth and see yourself as a key player contributing to our continued success as an award-winning company. 

Here's the Scoop – Summary 

The Media & Digital Strategy Director leads development and execution of the full-funnel media and digital strategy, ensuring investment is strategically allocated to build brand awareness, drive consideration and conversion, and accelerate business growth.

This role owns media and digital engagement strategy, investment governance, integrated planning, agency leadership, and performance measurement, while continuously evolving capabilities and thought leadership across digital touchpoints for pet parent engagement.

This position is a key enabler for expanding brand awareness and driving brand relevance, while working closely with team members in Content Operations, Ecommerce, Global Insights, and Mars Global Center of Excellence.

The Director ensures an integrated approach across the pet parent research and shopping journey, ensuring creation and delivery of metrics to meet business objectives.

The Media & Digital Strategy Director  works out of our Corporate office in Boulder (CO), Nashville (TN) or New York (NY) and works a hybrid schedule with 3 days in-person. 

What a typical day looks like: 

• Full-Funnel Media Strategy. Define the media engagement strategy across awareness, consideration, conversion and advocacy, translating brand and business priorities into integrated annual strategies.
• Digital & Emerging Media Transformation. Lead the organization in transformation towards a digital-first pet parent model; strengthening team capabilities across media platforms, insights, and effective GEO strategies.
• Investment Strategy & Governance. Own the allocation and governance of media investment across brands, channels and funnel stages, establishing clear principles for prioritization, optimization and ROI.
• Agency Leadership & Media Excellence. Lead media agency relationships, scopes of work and performance, ensuring access to best-in-class planning, buying, innovation, technology and measurement capabilities.
• Measurement, Performance & Optimization. Establish a robust measurement framework across the funnel, translating media performance into actionable insights and continuously improving effectiveness, efficiency and return on investment.
• Audience Intelligence, Data & Personalization. Build actionable audience intelligence and segmentation to sharpen targeting, personalization and media effectiveness across the pet parent journey.
• Search, AI & Digital Discovery. Lead Search, SEO/GEO and AI-driven discovery strategies to maximize brand visibility, relevance and authority across evolving digital journeys.
• Team Leadership & Capability Building. Build and develop a high-performing Media team, strengthening future-ready capabilities across Media, Audience Intelligence, Measurement, Search and AI.

What are we looking for? 

• 15+ years of progressive experience in Media and Digital Marketing, ideally within consumer products or DTC organizations.
• Deep expertise in full-funnel media strategy and planning, with strong knowledge across Brand Media, Retail Media, Search, Social, Video/CTV, Programmatic and emerging digital channels.
• Strong digital-first orientation, with demonstrated ability to evolve media strategies and capabilities in response to changing consumer behaviors, technology, GEO and new forms of digital discovery.
• Proven experience managing media investments, including budget allocation, governance and optimization across brands, channels and audiences to maximize effectiveness and ROI.
• Strong understanding of audience intelligence, data and measurement, with experience leveraging insights, segmentation and performance analytics to improve targeting, personalization and media effectiveness.
• Proven agency and partner leadership, with experience managing complex agency relationships, setting strategic direction and driving accountability, innovation and high-quality execution.
• Proven people leadership experience, with a track record of building, developing and inspiring high-performing teams while strengthening functional capabilities and ways of working.