Sr. Marketing Manager

Job Description

Job Description

ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY

Populus is looking for a Sr. Marketing Manager to lead the day-to-day marketing of one of the most distinctive hotels in the country.
This is a highly collaborative role at the intersection of brand, culture, and commercial performance. Reporting to both the on-property Director of Sales and Marketing and Crescent’s Corporate Marketing Director, this role serves as the senior on-property marketing lead for Populus Denver and the primary day-to-day marketing liaison to the Denver-based Urban Villages ownership marketing team. The Sr. Marketing Manager is responsible for translating brand, ownership, operator, and commercial priorities into a cohesive, integrated property marketing plan and ensuring disciplined execution across internal teams and external agency partners.
The right person can move comfortably from a revenue meeting to a creative review, from developing a Denver partnership to evaluating campaign performance. You’ll be responsible for protecting what makes Populus distinctive while contributing to new ways to turn that distinction into awareness, demand, loyalty, and revenue.

ABOUT POPULUS
Populus is the first carbon positive hotel in the United States, created around the belief that hospitality can be both exceptional and environmentally responsible.
Inspired by Colorado’s aspen groves, its architecture, interiors, restaurants, programming, and approach to hospitality are designed as parts of one interconnected ecosystem. Located at Civic Center Park in the heart of Denver, Populus is not a retreat from the city, but an active participant in it.
Guests come for the architecture and design. They discover Pasque, Stellar Jay, and Little Owl. And increasingly, Populus has become a gathering place for people interested in food, art, design, sustainability, culture, and the future of cities.
The Sr. Marketing Manager will help shape how Denver, our guests, and the broader hospitality industry experience that story while remaining accountable to the business behind it: occupancy, direct bookings, F&B performance, event demand, brand awareness, and return on marketing investment.

WHAT YOU’LL OWN

Marketing Strategy & Commercial Performance

• Own the day-to-day execution of the property’s annual marketing strategy, calendar, and budget against revenue, occupancy, F&B, and ownership objectives. Manage marketing performance to approved budgets, including ongoing forecasting, invoice and spend oversight, variance management, and recommendations to reallocate investment based on business needs and demonstrated performance.
• Partner closely with Revenue Management and Sales to identify need periods, demand opportunities, offers, and campaigns across rooms, restaurants, bars, and events.
• Track marketing performance and translate results into clear recommendations, identifying what is working, what is not, and where investment should shift.
• Establish and monitor clear KPIs across paid, owned, earned, CRM, social, partnerships, programming, rooms, and F&B marketing, connecting marketing activity to measurable commercial outcomes and return on investment.
• Manage agency coordination and vendor relationships, ensuring scopes, budgets, timelines, and deliverables remain accountable to business objectives.
• Lead and hold accountable external advertising, media, digital, PR, social, creative, and other specialty agency partners as applicable, providing clear briefs and direction, evaluating recommendations and work product, monitoring performance against scope and budget, and ensuring agency activity is integrated against property and ownership priorities.
• Prepare marketing updates, reporting, and recommendations for hotel leadership, Crescent, and ownership.

Brand, Creative & Storytelling
• Serve as a day-to-day steward of the Populus brand, ensuring every expression of the property feels intentional, distinctive, and unmistakably Populus.
• Guide creative execution across photography, video, social, email, digital, collateral, partnerships, programming, and campaigns.
• Build and manage the property’s content calendar, identifying the stories, people, experiences, and cultural moments worth amplifying.
• Partner with PR, social, digital, and creative agencies to turn those stories into meaningful earned, owned, and paid exposure.
• Identify opportunities for Populus to participate in larger conversations around hospitality, architecture, food, sustainability, design, and Denver culture.

Programming, Partnerships & Community
• Help develop signature programming and activations that give people a reason to visit Populus beyond an overnight stay.
• Partner closely with the Environmental Stewardship Team to translate the hotel’s environmental commitments into tangible guest experiences and compelling storytelling.
• Build meaningful relationships with Denver’s artists, chefs, farmers, makers, nonprofits, cultural organizations, businesses, and civic community.
• Develop partnership opportunities that increase relevance and reach to support rooms, F&B, events, community engagement, and earned media.

Collaboration & Leadership
• Serve as a connective tissue between departments, bringing marketing into operational conversations early, ensuring important property moments have the strategy, creative support, and lead time necessary to succeed.
• Serve as the primary on-property marketing partner to Urban Villages’ Denver-based ownership marketing team, maintaining consistent communication and visibility into property priorities, performance, campaigns, programming, agency activity, budgets, and emerging opportunities. Ensure property-level execution remains aligned with the broader Populus brand strategy, standards, and portfolio priorities established by ownership.
• Balance long-term brand building with the immediate commercial needs of a working hotel.
• Manage, coach, and develop direct reports as the property marketing team evolves, establishing clear priorities, accountability, performance expectations, and professional development opportunities while building a high-performing and collaborative marketing function.
• Effectively navigate the owner/operator relationship, understanding when decisions sit with property leadership, Crescent, or ownership and proactively bringing the appropriate stakeholders into planning and decision-making.

WHAT MAKES YOU SUCCESSFUL
You’re equally comfortable in a budget review and a creative review.
You understand that a great hotel brand is built through hundreds of decisions, not a campaign alone. You have a point of view on design, culture, hospitality, and storytelling, but you’re just as interested in whether the work drove bookings, covers, traffic, or revenue.
You’ve helped build, launch, or evolve something rather than simply maintaining a playbook someone else handed you.
You’re curious about Denver and want to participate in the city rather than market to it from the sidelines.
You care about sustainability because you believe business can be a force for something better, and you understand that credibility comes from substance rather than claims.
Most importantly, you know how to bring people together. You collaborate, ask good questions, give clear direction, and understand when to lead from the front and when to make someone else’s idea better.

THE POPULUS WAY
Rooted in Nature: We draw inspiration from nature's resilience, stewardship, balance, and long-term thinking.
Generous: We create value by giving back—to our guests, associates, community, and environment.
Curious: We embrace creativity, innovation, continuous learning, and thoughtful collaboration.
Brave: We lead with integrity, accountability, transparency, and the courage to challenge convention.

QUALIFICATIONS
• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Communications, Business, Hospitality, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 7+ years of progressive marketing experience within lifestyle hospitality, luxury, travel, design, food and beverage, or culturally relevant consumer brands.
• Demonstrated experience connecting brand and creative work to measurable commercial outcomes.
• Experience managing marketing budgets, agencies, vendors, timelines, and cross-functional initiatives.
• Strong working knowledge of digital marketing, social media, CRM/email, PR, content, paid media, and performance reporting.
• Strong creative judgment with the ability to evaluate photography, copy, design, campaigns, partnerships, and brand experiences.
• Ability to operate independently while collaborating effectively across property, corporate, ownership, and agency teams.
• Genuine curiosity about sustainability, design, food and beverage, culture, and community.

Required:
Demonstrated experience leading integrated marketing plans across multiple channels and business lines, ideally including hotel rooms, F&B, events, and local-market programming.
Demonstrated experience managing external advertising and marketing agencies, including briefing, scope management, creative evaluation, budget oversight, performance measurement, and accountability for results.
Demonstrated experience owning and managing meaningful marketing budgets, including forecasting, pacing, reconciliation, performance analysis, and investment optimization.
Prior people-management experience, including direct responsibility for coaching, developing, prioritizing work, and managing the performance of direct reports..