Anthropologie Director of Digital Marketing and Paid Media

Urban Outfitters•Philadelphia, PA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Anthropologie is seeking a Director of Digital Marketing and Paid Media. This role begins as a 6-month maternity leave cover for our Sr. Director, Digital Marketing & Paid Media, with the intent to transition into a permanent Director position upon their return — anchored in building and leading a formal media planning function across the marketing organization. We're looking for someone who can step in quickly, lead with confidence, and leave the org stronger than they found it. That means two things in parallel: holding the team's strategic direction during a leadership transition, and building something that hasn't fully existed here yet — a rigorous, integrated media planning discipline that connects channel investment to business strategy, customer insight, and cross-functional priorities in a way that's consistent, documented, and scalable. Right now, media planning lives across marketing disciplines, with each function strong in its own right. The functions don't always speak a common language when it comes to how we plan, allocate, forecast, and evaluate. This role exists to change that. During Mat leave coverage, you'll manage three Sr. Managers who collectively oversee a 27 person team and every paid and outbound channel we run — paid search, SEO, display, paid social, affiliate, performance influencer, and brand outbound (email, app push, SMS.) You'll work on building the planning connective tissue that makes the whole marketing organization greater than the sum of its parts. This is not a channel expert role, and it's not a passive coverage role. It's a builder role, wrapped inside a leadership role, inside a coverage role. We need all three.

Requirements

8–10+ years in media planning, marketing strategy, or integrated planning roles, with meaningful experience managing managers — people who have run channel teams, not just channels themselves.
Deep, genuine expertise in media planning as a discipline — you've built plans, built planning processes, and built planning teams. You know what rigor looks like and how to install it in an org that doesn't yet have it.
Fluency across paid digital (search, social, display, affiliate, influencer) and outbound/lifecycle channels (email, push, SMS) — enough to integrate across all of them meaningfully, without needing to have executed in each one.
Experience working with measurement frameworks (MMM, incrementality, forecasting) from a planning seat — translating analytical outputs into planning and investment decisions, not building the models yourself.
Executive presence that's genuine and earned. You need to be able to walk into a senior leadership conversation independently and hold the room — bring clarity, defend trade-offs, and instill confidence.
Strong people-leadership instincts, specifically around coaching leaders through developmental gaps rather than just managing their output.
Experience helping strong individual contributors or channel managers grow into planning-oriented, executive-ready leaders.
Comfort with ambiguity and building from scratch — this role requires someone who is energized by the absence of a playbook, not unsettled by it.
Retail marketing experience and an understanding of how brand and performance work together across the customer lifecycle.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience standing up or formalizing a media planning function within a larger marketing organization.
Experience as a second-in-command or deputy leader within a scaled marketing team.
Background leading through a planned leadership transition or extended absence.

Responsibilities

Building the Media Planning Function: Establish media planning as a formal discipline within the Digital Marketing org — defining what a great media plan looks like at Anthropologie, building the frameworks and processes that produce it consistently, and creating a shared planning language across all marketing with groups that currently plan in parallel rather than together.
Developing integrated planning frameworks that connect paid, owned, and outbound channels into a single, customer-journey-oriented plan — from annual strategy through seasonal campaign planning through in-season optimization.
Building a knowledge-sharing infrastructure that makes it easy to surface, showcase, and discuss plans at every level — from tactical channel detail up to executive summary — so great thinking doesn't stay siloed within a channel or a team.
Establishing clear planning calendars, briefing processes, and cross-channel alignment rituals so planning is predictable, collaborative, and not recreated from scratch every quarter.
Building the bridge between what our Analytics team produces (MMM, incrementality, forecasting) and how the channel teams actually plan and allocate — closing the gap between measurement insight and planning decision.
Creating the standards for how we evaluate a media plan: what does good look like, what trade-offs are we making, and how do we know it's working.
Partnering with Finance and analytics on investment planning, forecasting, and reforecasting so budget decisions are grounded in a consistent planning view across all channel groups.
People Leadership & Team Development: Help to manage three Sr. Managers workflow, with each overseeing a portfolio of channels. Be a hands-on coach who assists in work prioritization based on business and executive leadership direction.
Strategy, Executive Communication & Organizational Continuity: Translate integrated media plans and channel performance into clear, confident business narrative for senior leadership — not just reporting numbers, but articulating the strategy behind them, the trade-offs made, and what we're learning.
Represent the org fully during the mat leave period: running the team, owning cross-functional relationships, and keeping senior stakeholders informed and aligned.
Cross-Functional Partnership: Work closely with Brand, Creative, Social, Merchandising, Analytics, and Finance to build plans that reflect shared priorities and earn organizational buy-in.