About The Role

The Athletic is seeking a contract Senior Strategist to lead RFP responses and proactive proposals. This role is ideal for someone who has experience identifying insights, inspiring ideas, and authoring proposals that help drive revenue for key advertisers.

Strategy is a team sport, and you will be an expert collaborator responsible for developing innovative, cross-platform marketing programs for advertisers in partnership with Sales, Planning, Program Management, Account Management, Editorial, and Creative teams. You will lead brainstorms, develop briefs, and create proposals that leverage compelling solutions for our advertising partners.

Success requires a passion for big ideas expressed through media, a love of advertising, and a high standard for creating visual presentations. Previous experience in strategy or integrated marketing at a media company is essential.

This is a maternity leave coverage between 10/12/26 - 3/25/27.

Responsibilities

• Develop a broad understanding of all of The Athletic's properties and media products.
• Develop packaging of ad products in advance of specific sports seasons and events including pricing, messaging, and promotion.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for RFPs and, in response, develop and present compelling proposals that detail customized digital/social/audio sponsorship solutions and work with Sales to close deals.
• Lead brainstorm meetings, manage information coming from various teams, maintain timelines and hit deadlines.
• Ideate, collaborate and project manage offerings across relevant departments to create integrated programs for clients.
• Creatively pull together all elements for pitch collateral (e.g., idea descriptions, screenshots, mock-ups, research, custom templates, etc.).
• Utilize research and data to articulate and support strategies and creative ideas.
• Attend sales calls to pitch advertising ideas when necessary.

Key Skills

• Research, Insights, and Creative Brief Development: You have used proprietary tools, third-party resources and/or desk research to uncover meaningful insights, human truths and whitespace opportunities that lead to a compelling way in for creative and media.
• Creative Briefing: You have participated in writing a creative brief, briefing creative teams, and being an inspiring strategic partner to creative teams.
• Media Strategy: You have participated in responding to client RFPs and making recommendations for how to use media to bring ideas to life in ways that meet clients' campaign objectives. You are familiar with the media landscape and eager to become an expert at guiding smart media decisions.
• Client Deliverable/Proposal Development: You are experienced in owning and creating client-ready visual proposals that are polished and inspiring.

Requirements

• You have 5+ years of cross-platform Advertising experience (ad sales marketing, creative strategy, integrated marketing)
• You have a deep understanding of the current social, branded content, digital, mobile and audio landscapes
• Experience working on RFPs in a media environment
• Strong ability to turn information into insights
• Capacity to distill research into industry/client-relevant implications.
• Desire to work in collaborative sales and marketing processes, including the interaction and strategy required in an advertising sales environment

The annual base salary range for this role is $80,000.00 - $85,000.00 USD. The total compensation offered for this position may vary based on factors such as education, experience, skills, and location.

For roles in the U.S., dependent on your role, you may be eligible for variable pay, such as an annual bonus and restricted stock. Benefits may include medical, dental and vision benefits, Flexible Spending Accounts (F.S.A.s), a company-matching 401(k) plan, paid vacation, paid sick days, paid parental leave, tuition reimbursement and professional development programs.

For roles outside of the U.S., information on benefits will be provided during the interview process.

We are excited to learn more about you and your experience. To keep our hiring process as fair and authentic as possible, we ask that you submit your own work and not use GenAI tools to generate substantive content during the application and interview process. If you are a candidate for a technical role, we will let you know what specific tools you are permitted to use for your technical assessment.