Director, Brand Marketing

Culture Kings•Costa Mesa, CA

2d•$150,000 - $170,000

About The Position

The Brand Marketing Director, USA will lead the evolution of Culture Kings and its portfolio of brands, including our 1P brands and MNML, within the U.S. market. This role is responsible for shaping how the brands show up in culture across product, storytelling, retail, experiences, creators, partnerships, and digital platforms — while ensuring marketing is strategically aligned to broader business and commercial priorities. This person is equal parts cultural strategist, brand builder, cross-functional leader, and operator. They have a deep understanding of streetwear, fashion, music, sport, and youth culture, with the taste and network to identify the people, partnerships, products, and cultural moments that matter. At the same time, they bring the structure, rigor, and accountability required to turn big ideas into well-executed, commercially impactful marketing. The ideal candidate is deeply embedded in culture but does not operate solely on instinct or relationships. They understand how to build authentic cultural relevance and how to build the processes, systems, and cross-functional partnerships required to scale that relevance into a meaningful business.

Requirements

8–12+ years of marketing experience, including leadership experience within streetwear, fashion, lifestyle, sports, music, retail, or culturally relevant consumer brands.
Cultural Fluency — Deep understanding of streetwear, fashion, music, sport, art, creators, and youth culture. Able to identify emerging cultural signals and translate them into authentic brand opportunities.
Cultural Network & Taste — Established relationships across creators, stylists, artists, athletes, musicians, tastemakers, and cultural communities. Strong instinct for identifying the right people, partnerships, and moments for the brand.
Strategic Leadership — Ability to develop a clear brand vision and translate it into actionable marketing strategies, annual roadmaps, campaigns, and measurable business objectives.
Operational Excellence — Highly organized and process-oriented with the ability to build structure in fast-moving environments. Strong project management skills and a demonstrated ability to establish clear processes, timelines, ownership, and accountability.
Cross-Functional Leadership — Proven ability to lead complex initiatives across marketing, creative, merchandising, product, ecommerce, retail, performance, and other business functions. Comfortable driving alignment across teams with competing priorities.
Go-To-Market Expertise — Strong experience taking products, campaigns, collaborations, and brand initiatives from strategy and planning through execution and launch.
Team Leadership — Experience managing, mentoring, and developing high-performing marketing and/or creative teams. Able to balance strategic leadership with hands-on involvement when needed.
Commercial Mindset — Understands how brand building translates into customer acquisition, retail traffic, ecommerce growth, conversion, and revenue. Comfortable working against KPIs and business targets.
Retail Experience — Experience working within retail-driven environments and understanding how brand, retail, ecommerce, and digital marketing work together to drive growth.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, communications, or related field preferred.

Responsibilities

Lead the development and execution of the U.S. brand marketing strategy, ensuring Culture Kings and its portfolio of brands show up with a clear, differentiated point of view across every consumer touchpoint.
Define and evolve brand voice, visual identity, cultural positioning, and marketing priorities across social, retail, digital, campaigns, product storytelling, experiences, and community.
Translate broader business priorities into clear brand marketing strategies, objectives, and annual roadmaps.
Identify cultural moments, consumer behaviors, product opportunities, and collaborations that can strengthen brand relevance and drive growth.
Ensure all marketing activity builds long-term brand equity while contributing to measurable commercial outcomes.
Act as a key cultural connector for Culture Kings in the U.S., continuously identifying emerging talent, communities, trends, and opportunities across fashion, music, sport, art, and youth culture.
Develop and maintain authentic relationships with artists, athletes, creators, stylists, tastemakers, and cultural leaders.
Lead strategic collaborations, partnerships, and co-op marketing opportunities that drive cultural credibility, visibility, and demand.
Build long-term relationships with key partners and talent, allowing authentic relationships and brand affinity to develop before scaling opportunities commercially.
Bring a strong cultural POV to the organization while ensuring partnerships ladder back to clear brand and business objectives.
Own the U.S. go-to-market process across key product launches, campaigns, collaborations, seasonal moments, and brand initiatives.
Establish clear GTM frameworks, timelines, milestones, owners, deliverables, and decision-making processes to ensure teams are aligned from strategy through launch.
Serve as the central marketing lead across cross-functional launches, connecting brand marketing, creative, merchandising, product, ecommerce, retail, performance, social, and operations.
Lead regular cross-functional planning and status meetings, ensuring teams have clarity on priorities, dependencies, decisions, and next steps.
Identify and resolve cross-functional blockers, escalating key decisions when needed and ensuring teams remain accountable to timelines.
Create greater consistency and efficiency in how marketing plans are developed, briefed, produced, approved, and brought to market.
Ensure every major launch has a clear strategic brief, integrated marketing plan, creative direction, channel strategy, activation plan, and measurement framework.
Partner with global marketing leadership to ensure U.S. priorities are aligned with global brand strategy while maintaining appropriate local cultural relevance.
Lead the development of 360° campaigns supporting seasonal collections, limited drops, collaborations, and key product launches.
Translate product stories into culturally relevant campaigns across digital, social, retail, experiential, creators, partnerships, and content.
Partner with creative leadership to develop strong campaign concepts and ensure creative output delivers against the strategic brief.
Work cross-functionally with creative, merchandising, product, ecommerce, retail, and performance teams to ensure marketing execution aligns with commercial priorities.
Establish clear campaign objectives, KPIs, timelines, budgets, and post-launch reporting.
Bring the brands to life through IRL experiences, retail activations, pop-ups, cultural events, and community programming.
Lead experiential strategies that deepen brand connection, create cultural momentum, and drive measurable business outcomes.
Ensure retail environments function as cultural hubs not simply transactional spaces.
Identify opportunities to connect retail, community, creators, partnerships, and content into larger brand moments.
Partner with digital, social, influencer and creative teams to ensure the brand's cross-channel ecosystem reflects both strong cultural storytelling and platform-native behavior.
Develop integrated organic and paid strategies where content, community, and commerce work together to drive awareness, engagement, acquisition, and conversion.
Ensure digital, social, influencer and creative teams are aligned to the broader brand calendar and GTM roadmap and have clear direction on how the brand is expected to show up across all key paid and organic channels.
Partner with performance marketing to identify opportunities to amplify high-performing content and campaigns while protecting brand integrity.
Partner closely with performance, ecommerce, CRM, and retail teams to ensure brand marketing contributes to customer acquisition, conversion, retention, and revenue growth.
Establish clear KPIs and success metrics across brand campaigns, launches, partnerships, creators, activations, and content.
Use data and insights to evaluate performance and inform future marketing strategy without compromising cultural relevance or brand equity.
Balance short-term commercial objectives with long-term brand-building priorities.
Develop marketing strategies that connect physical retail and digital channels into a cohesive consumer experience.
Partner with retail leadership to drive store traffic, launches, activations, events, and local market relevance.
Ensure key retail moments are integrated into the broader brand and marketing calendar.
Leverage Culture Kings' retail footprint as a key platform for cultural storytelling, community engagement, and brand growth.
Lead, manage, and develop the U.S. marketing and creative team, providing clear direction, priorities, expectations, and accountability.
Establish a high-performing team culture that combines creative ambition, cultural curiosity, speed, and operational discipline.
Set team priorities and resource allocation against the broader marketing roadmap and business objectives.
Develop talent through regular feedback, coaching, mentorship, and clear performance expectations.
Ensure marketing and creative teams are working collaboratively rather than operating in functional silos.
Build clear ownership across brand marketing, social, content, creative, influencer, partnerships, and experiential workstreams.
Partner with the VP of Marketing on organizational structure, talent development, hiring, and resource planning.
Build and continuously improve the operating rhythm for the U.S. marketing organization.
Establish scalable processes for annual planning, campaign development, GTM, creative briefing, production, approvals, launch, and post-mortem reporting.
Create visibility across the marketing calendar, priorities, budgets, deliverables, and team capacity.
Ensure projects have clear owners, timelines, dependencies, and decision-makers.
Drive accountability while maintaining the flexibility and speed required of a culturally relevant brand.
Identify process gaps and implement solutions that allow the team to move faster and execute with greater consistency.
Bring structure to a fast-moving organization without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
Own and manage the U.S. brand marketing budget, allocating spend strategically across campaigns, partnerships, activations, creators, content, and production.
Develop and leverage co-op marketing opportunities with key brand partners to maximize campaign scale, retail visibility, and marketing efficiency.
Maintain clear budget tracking and forecasting across marketing workstreams.
Drive accountability through clear KPIs, regular reporting, and post-campaign analysis.
Continuously optimize investment based on performance, strategic priorities, and business impact.