Director - Marketing & Brand Strategy
Remote / Annual / Full time
The Best Friend's Mission is to do nothing short of making history by bringing about a time when there are No More Homeless Pets. Our goal is that every animal shelter in every community in the country be no kill.
The fact is, we have a great culture, populated by fun, dedicated, and brilliant people. But we're always looking for talented people who can help us make history, and that's where you come in. If you want to be a part of history and end the killing of pets in shelters, apply today for one of our open job opportunities!

Location: Remote
 

Hiring Range: This position’s hiring range is anticipated to be $140,000 to $170,000 annually, depending on experience, plus great benefits!

Position Summary: This leadership role calls for a strategic and mission-focused marketing expert with a track record of building and inspiring best-in-class marketing teams and campaigns. You’ll drive awareness, engagement, and growth while helping new audiences discover and support Best Friends. Balancing a unified national brand with local relevance, you’ll plan and execute an integrated marketing and brand strategy that advances Best Friends goal to end the killing of dogs and cats in America’s shelters. You’ll ensure an inclusive perspective that reaches and engages diverse audiences and integrates multicultural marketing into the overall strategy.


You will lead, mentor, and directly oversee national, regional, community, multicultural, and brand marketing teams, while collaborating closely with digital/social, PR, creative, events, local programs, and advocacy teams. As a member of the Development, Experience & Communications (DXC) leadership team, you’ll be a highly collaborative, people-oriented leader who thrives on mentoring, partnership, and building strong relationships across functions to drive impact and results.
 

Culture Statement and Responsibility: We believe in treating everyone with kindness and compassion, building trust through authenticity and following through on commitments. We prioritize well-being alongside our mission, fostering strong relationships through open communication and transparent feedback. Diversity and inclusion are integral to our culture, enriching team dynamics by valuing diverse perspectives. Each team member is responsible for creating an inclusive environment where all voices are respected and contributing to a workplace that embodies our shared values and commitment to progress. By consistently aligning our actions with our Guiding Principles, we strengthen our culture and ensure that our values are lived every day.  
 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities: 

  • Lead marketing’s Center of Excellence (COE) model, ensuring it operates effectively across teams by aligning stakeholders around shared priorities, improving visibility into what’s happening and what’s next, and driving coordinated marketing efforts that unify activities and maximize impact. 

  • Develop and implement a cohesive, integrated marketing and brand strategy that strengthens and protects brand consistency while driving measurable growth in share of voice, issue awareness, brand equity, and lifesaving actions. Expand Best Friends’ reach and influence nationally and in key markets through targeted, culturally relevant strategies aligned to priority audience segments.

  • Design and lead high-impact, integrated campaigns that maximize impact through partnerships, PSAs, earned media, grassroots activation and creative collaboration—ensuring every tactic works harder through coordination, leverage, and smart use of limited paid media.

  • Inspire an environment of testing and learning, performance, and data orientation through consistent project leadership in collaboration with channel owners, internal stakeholders and external partners.

  • Utilize data, consumer insights and trends to inform decisions around target audiences, message development and key strategies; partner with the Insights & Analytics team and outside firms to translate market research into strategic marketing and brand campaigns that change public opinion and behavior on critical issues, support development priorities, and help to make Best Friends a household name.

  • Monitor the marketing and brand landscape to understand trends, audience needs, and emerging opportunities. Use data and insights to inform strategy, improve effectiveness, and guide decisions that drive growth, relevance, and lifesaving impact.

  • Guide the use of systems and tools that scale impact, maximize resources and create greater operational efficiencies.

  • Direct an integrated Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned (PESO) media strategy with a strong digital-first mindset—leveraging social, search, web, email, influencers, partnerships, and data-driven optimization—to maximize reach, relevance, and impact with limited paid investment, in close coordination with PR, grassroots, creative and content teams.

  • Work to find new ways for increasing influence and visibility of the organization and to realign resources to pursue new opportunities as appropriate.

  • Work closely with senior leadership and cross functional teams to identify opportunities and challenges; provide strong, positive, visible leadership to teams to inspire staff to perform at the highest levels, and to represent the goals, progress, and achievements.

Skills and Experience:

  • Demonstrated leadership experience overseeing teams of 10 or more employees.

  • Proven leadership in marketing and brand strategy, including building and evolving brand and messaging architectures, with a strong understanding of audience segments—their motivations, behaviors, and digital habits—and how to connect with them in meaningful ways.

  • Demonstrated success developing and leading cross-cultural, audience-centered campaigns that resonate across communities and drive measurable impact.

  • Deep fluency in the digital landscape, including existing and emerging channels, with the ability to spot trends, adapt quickly, and extend reach, relevance, and brand strength through thoughtful, integrated strategies.

  • Strong data orientation and performance mindset, using testing, learning, and ROI-based insights to continually refine strategies and tactics that grow awareness, engagement, participation, and revenue in service of the mission.

  • Experience with marketing technology, analytics, and measurement, with an understanding of how online and offline communications work together to influence awareness and behavior.

  • Exceptional organizational and project leadership skills, with the ability to manage complexity, balance strategic vision with executional detail, and lead multiple initiatives simultaneously.

  • Leadership experience building streamlined structures, processes, and workflows in cross-functional environments to enable collaboration, clarity, and high performance.

  • Experience working with agencies or external partners in fast-paced environments, managing competing priorities and delivering high-quality work through strong collaboration and accountability.
     

Physical Requirements:

  • Ability to see and sort a variety of printed and online information.

  • Work at a computer for extended periods of time with repetitive typing, sitting, arm, and hand motion.  

Thank you for your interest in pursuing a career at Best Friends Animal Society. Best Friends Animal Society is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, marital status, or domestic partner status.

 

Applicants for employment in the U.S. must have valid work authorization that does not now and/or will not in the future require sponsorship of a visa for employment authorization in the U.S. by Best Friends Animal Society.

Culture Statement and Responsibility
We value attitude over aptitude, and we treat kindness as a discipline because it is paramount in our culture along with our other guiding principles. Culture is how we talk to and treat ourselves and one another. It's how we generate and respond to change. It's how we plan and make decisions. It's how we do what we do.
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About Best Friends

Best Friends received a 2022 Top Workplaces USA award from Energage.

Visit the Best Friends Animal Society page on the Energage Top Workplaces award winners' site here to learn more. Not only do we take pride in cultivating a welcoming and supportive community and culture for our employees, but we also offer competitive benefits that make it easy to see why we were granted such an awesome award. We offer competitive pay including the opportunity to receive a discretionary bonus based on performance. We offer medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance, short- and long-term disability, dependent care reimbursement, pet sitting reimbursement when traveling for work, flexible spending account, and health savings account. We offer generous paid time off, nine paid holidays annually, an auto insurance discount, and legal and identity theft coverage.  For added well-being support, we offer pawternity leave for employees to have time to care for their personal pets, mental health support, and an employee assistance program. We also offer a generous 401(k) savings plan. Do you want to love where you work and help make history by ending the killing of pets in shelters? Look no further and apply today!

Thank you for your interest in pursuing a career at Best Friends Animal Society. Best Friends Animal Society is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, marital status, or domestic partner status. Applicants for employment in the U.S. must have valid work authorization that does not now and/or will not in the future require sponsorship of a visa for employment authorization in the U.S. by Best Friends Animal Society.

 

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