Virgin Music – Account Lead, Commercial Marketing (US)

Title: Account Lead, Commercial Marketing

Business Unit: Capitol Music Group
Work Location: New York or Los Angeles
Department: Virgin Music
Reports To: SVP/Head of Commercial Marketing

Job Summary:

Virgin Music is looking for a superstar Account Lead/Manager to join our industry leading Commercial Marketing team Account Managing some of the company’s biggest Commercial Accounts like Spotify, Pandora and others.  This role will build go-to-market commercial release plans, seek, create, and execute various commercial opportunities and creative release strategies while nurturing important relationships with our commercial accounts, artists, and label partners. This role will work in tandem with various Virgin/Capitol/Universal Music Group departments under the direction of the SVP/Head of Commercial Marketing, Virgin Music. The successful candidate will have exceptional relationship management skills, be proactive, results orientated, a strategic thinker with an analytical mind, can handle large amounts of work in a fast-paced environment and serve as an advocate for Virgin’s artists and label partners. 

Job Functions: 

• Relationship Management: develop and maintain strong relationships and work specifically with DSP/Streaming service programmers (Spotify, Pandora among others) to drive storytelling and strategy while collaborating with the corresponding playlist/genre leads by utilizing plot, marketing, cultural capital, and data to deliver on targets/goals/plans while supporting/supplying necessary asset collection and pitch administration. Attend regular in-person and video meetings and taking partners to shows (when safe to do so). This is an essential part of the role and relationship management skills are key.
• Partner Account Manager:  Represent Virgin Music repertoire as the Account Lead across various commercial accounts while ensuring an ongoing knowledge base of all best practices, personnel, and opportunities across the key commercial accounts this role is responsible for. This role will serve as the primary and secondary account support for various key accounts, managing the partner relationships, release strategies, long lead planning + music playbacks, ongoing campaigns and account best practices while pitching for and securing on going opportunities for our Artist and Label partners. 
• Label Relations:  Work directly with Virgin Music’s labels to identify opportunities for their release schedule, educate and advocate account best practices, create account and label call agendas and ensure goals are being met via key performance indicators, reporting and Virgin Music team communications
• Streaming and Commercial Marketing Strategy: Create dynamic and engaging release plans and campaigns (including experiential events) that drive successful commercial results
• Data Analysis: Provide daily and in depth strategic analysis and recommendations on consumption, listener behavior and account performance 
• Label Meetings: Be available for all label meetings to communicate release performance, provide strategic recommendations, build plans both with labels and partners and ideate/strategize
• Digital Marketing Strategy: Work with the label’s digital and marketing departments to ensure that our partners are building creative, innovative campaigns that engage fans utilizing pre-existing platforms and new technologies
• Artist Relations: Liaise directly with labels, managers, and artists in the lead up to, and during a release cycle and any in-person/virtual events to ensure smooth execution 
• Product Forecast/P&L/Budgeting:  This role will also oversee physical releases into some physical retail stores including Urban Outfitters. Working with the team to project sales potential and monitor/advise on best product cost structures resulting in reasonable marketplace valuation at retail while providing maximum profitability margins with built in per-unit marketing funds.
• Product Production:  Liaise with production teams on projecting sales, pricing, and forecasts 
• Commercial Promotions:  Through a series of reporting, keep a watchful eye on stock levels, title performance and suggest opportunities to further exploit or eventize revenue generating moments for our artist’s repertoire across our commercial partners.
• Culture Driven Focus:  Know of, be immersed in, and speak eloquently to the pulse/relevance within the culture of the scene, conveying what is meaningful for the account, their consumers, our artists, and benchmarking artist/manager expectations.
• Virgin Music “branding”/visibility: Act as a “face” to Virgin Music, maintaining a presence at concerts and events, often multiple times a week.

Skills/Experience/Requirements: 

• Previous Account Management, Project Management, Radio, Promotions, Digital Marketing or Publicity Experience within the music industry 
• Must have exceptional relationship management skills with existing music industry relationships and ability to collaborate with all teams across the business
• Analytically minded with the ability to read data and trends. Must be goal orientated and extremely organized
• Can handle extremely large workloads and multi-task in a very fast-paced, high volume music environment is critical to this role and a must
• Experience strategizing and executing campaigns, as well as pitching proposals for prospective clients (please be prepared to provide examples of or discuss campaigns you’ve worked on)
• Must be tech savvy with deep understanding of current & forthcoming technologies and general market trends
• Candidates should be creative, innovative, results oriented with strong attention to detail, and resourceful. 
• Must be incredibly organized, able to prioritize and multi-task under pressure
• Must be proactive, have a ‘can do’ attitude and be willing to attend multiple live shows throughout the week
• Must be passionate about music! 

Preferred Experience:

• 4+ years’ experience in music industry sales or marketing with experience in the music streaming space. 
• Project Management Experience 
• Existing relationships with labels and/or existing contacts at commercial/marketing platforms

Education:

• College degree preferred 

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