Senior Manager, Local Media

The Senior Manager, Local Media turns the VP’s unified media vision into high‑impact geographic market‑level strategies and activation plans across NAOU. The core objective of this role is to utilize data to de‑average markets locally, identifying unique local dynamics and tailoring plans that heighten brand relevancy and resonance
. This leader drives localized media planning, investment, and execution across paid, earned, owned, and shared channels, balancing upper‑funnel brand building with lower‑funnel commerce outcomes.

The role partners closely with Brand, IMX, FLM/Commercial, and agency teams to ensure our local media ecosystem is audience‑led, data‑driven, and tied to business objectives. The Sr. Manager embeds robust measurement and governance across all local plans and champions innovation in areas such as retail media networks, geo‑targeted digital, shoppable formats, and AI‑powered optimization.

• Translate national media strategy into market‑specific connection plans across priority DMAs/store clusters, de‑averaging national assumptions to reflect local consumer, competitive, and retail realities.
• Build integrated omni‑channel local plans across paid (TV/CTV, audio, OOH, programmatic, social, search),
  earned (PR, influencers, organic social),
  owned (web/app, CRM/loyalty), and shared (retail partnerships, shopper touchpoints).
• Balance upper‑funnel brand equity goals with lower‑funnel commerce and conversion tactics, ensuring platform‑specific creative and flighting.

• Develop local budget allocations and channel mix recommendations based on opportunity sizing, historical performance, and local market signals.
• Lead day‑to‑day activation with agency partners: trafficking, pacing, quality control, brand safety, and compliance.
• Monitor in‑flight performance and reallocate spend to maximize ROI and impact
  ; surface optimization recommendations and implications for future cycles.

• Leverage 1st/2nd/3rd‑party data and unified data platforms to refine local audience strategies (e.g., geo‑segmentation, propensity scoring, look‑alike modeling).
• Identify high‑value local cohorts, media consumption patterns, and retailer/shopper contexts to personalize messaging and placements.
• Craft clear, data‑grounded briefs for agencies, challenging legacy assumptions and piloting new channels/formats for hard‑to‑reach audiences.

• Set market‑level KPIs and success metrics (e.g., ROAS, incremental sales lift, brand lift, foot traffic), ensuring tracking and tagging are in place.
• Partner with Marketing Analytics/Insights on MMM, MTA, lift studies, and competitive spend analyses tailored to local activation.
• Lead post‑mortems: diagnose strategy/creative/execution drivers, codify learnings, and feed a continuous test‑and‑learn loop.

• Serve as the bridge between media and Brand, IMX, Creative, FLM/Commercial, to embed local media into broader plans.
• Translate business priorities (e.g., driving trial among a new cohort or supporting a key customer initiative) into actionable audience‑first local media briefs.
• Maintain tight feedback loops during execution, sharing performance updates and rapidly reflecting business context changes (budgets, promos, inventory) in market plans.

• Provide clear strategic direction to agency teams; uphold high standards in planning rigor, creativity, and operational excellence at the local level.
• Evaluate agency performance against benchmarks and recommend resource adjustments where needed.

• Scout and pilot hyperlocal platforms and partnerships (e.g., CTV geo‑addressable, dynamic DOOH, local creators/influencers, shoppable/social commerce integrations).
• Champion AI‑powered tools for local budget allocation, audience expansion, and creative personalization; set hypotheses and measurement plans for each pilot.
• Scale successful innovations across markets; document learnings from unsuccessful tests to sharpen future efforts.