Brand Partnerships Director

Working Schedule

• Brand Partnerships Directors work full-time. Their duties involve overtime for travel and meetings with potential brand partners and marketing teams. 

Typical Duties

• Thoroughly understand the company’s current range of products and services
• Oversee research and marketing departments responsible for brand collaborations
• Build a pipeline of new partners, including branded content and deals with YouTubers and social media influencers 
• Do market research into customer bases, including niche markets
• Cultivate limited or long-term strategic relationships with other brands
• Nurture existing brand partner relationships and mitigate or resolve conflicts 
• Propose creative upsells and terms to renew existing partnerships that are working
• Attend design and marketing concept presentations and proposals for dual-branded products and services
• Approve pitch desks meant for external audiences (i.e. brand partners)
• Establish quarterly and annual revenue goals and help ensure they are met
• Review sales figures and offer ideas for maximizing profits and growing revenue
• Lead the implementation of feasible business solutions when problems arise
• Provide status updates to company leadership on new products/services 
• Use customer relationship management systems, as needed

Additional Responsibilities

• Approve copy for press releases. Discuss updates with media via interviews 
• Help to educate consumers on new product/service features and capabilities
• Attend industry trade shows and read industry-related news
• Stay up to date on the latest in branding and marketing

Soft Skills

• Attention to detail
• Collaboration
• Creativity
• Energy
• Enthusiasm
• Entrepreneurial mindset
• Goal setting
• Initiative
• Leadership
• Networking
• Organized
• Persuasive 
• Proactive
• Problem-solving
• Prospecting
• Quality assurance
• Relationship building
• Resourcefulness 
• Strong communication skills 
• Teamwork
• Time management

Technical Skills

• Management skills 
• Business, marketing, and sales acumen
• Knowledge of direct sales and social media 
• Deep familiarity with the specific industries involved
• Familiarity with intellectual property rights and legal agreements 
• Knowledge of social trends

• Companies and corporations which sell products or services to the public

There’s no magic crystal ball that marketers use to predict what will be popular or not. However, there is market research, which is increasingly sophisticated thanks to digital tools and the vast amount of big data available. Brand Partnership Directors must understand and use all available resources to determine which companies they should cozy up with. Fortunes can be made—or lost—from a single alliance. 

When energy drink maker Red Bull teamed up with mini action camera company GoPro, both sides won big (Red Bull reportedly raked in “hundreds of millions of US dollars in revenues” in the first six months of the partnership, while GoPro “generated US$32.26 million in profit by the end of that year.” The two brands complimented each other perfectly, with both appealing to many of the same target consumers. 

However, some deals fall apart due to unforeseen circumstances, such as LEGO’s decades-long collab with Shell which collapsed after Greenpeace protested the gas giant’s Arctic drilling plans. Brand Partnership Directors have to think several steps ahead to anticipate a possible backlash from the public, especially in an increasingly politicized market environment where consumers demand social and environmental responsibility from the brands they buy from.

Consumers have always been finicky, but in today’s era of digital connectedness, news travels faster than ever. A single miscalculation can make or break a company virtually overnight, which is why brands go to such great pains to understand their target buyers and try to cater to them. 

But when a brand partners up with another brand, it can’t really control its partner’s actions. Thus, both brands assume a tremendous reputational risk when they collaborate, because any poor public perception of one can tarnish the rep of both. 

As mentioned above, brands are keenly aware of how the public grades them based on social and environmental actions. A positive example from 2021 is Budweiser’s decision to skip paying millions for a Super Bowl ad and reallocate the funds “to a purpose-driven effort” in support of COVID-19 vaccine awareness (through a partnership with the Red Cross and Ad Council).

Future Brand Partnership Directors may have loved graphic design and social media when they were younger—and probably always will! They might have also been in awe of great commercials and marketing campaigns that inspired them to get into the business. 

While most consumers probably don’t think much about the “behind-the-scenes” of brands and branding efforts, the people who get into this field often paid attention to such details, reading news about lucrative deals between brands. 

They might have also been film, music, or sports fans intrigued by the amounts of money that celebrities haul in through brand endorsement collabs and investments (such as tennis star Serena Williams’ ambassadorship deal with Tonal at-home gym equipment maker).