Director, Content Operations & Production

Job Description:

The Director, Content Operations & Production plays a critical role in our transformation toward data-driven brand building. This position helps redefine how we connect with pet parents, enabling more personalized, meaningful engagement and fostering lasting relationships with pet parents at the heart of everything we do.

Reporting to the VP, Marketing Operations & Transformation, you will be responsible for owning the end-to-end content production engine — brief to publish — across all brand and channel needs. The integration partner to the Integrated Planning & Media Director: where IP&M sets strategy and channel demand, Content Operations & Production runs the engine that produces the assets meeting it, at quality, at speed, and at scale.

This is an operating-model leadership role, not a creative leadership role. It owns the systems, partners, talent, workflows, and discipline that allow content to be produced reliably across a complex multi-brand portfolio — and increasingly, the AI and automation strategy that determines how the function scales over the next several years.

You will be a highly skilled People and Business leader with a strong Creative & Content production & operations background. 

What are we looking for?

• 12–15 years in content production, creative operations, or integrated production leadership; brand-side or production-company leadership required

• CPG experience strongly preferred — multi-brand portfolio environments most relevant

• Track record managing complex multi-channel production at enterprise scale, with meaningful budget stewardship

• Proven experience leading production transformation, not just steady-state management

• Experience designing operating models, workflows, and governance across cross-functional teams

• Working knowledge of the production technology landscape: DAM, work management, creative review platforms, and AI-assisted production tooling

• Proven people leadership with a demonstrated commitment to developing talent and building team engagement

• Experience managing senior stakeholders in matrixed environments

What will be your key responsibilities?

Discipline Building & Adoption

• Builds the content operations and production discipline for Pet Nutrition Marketing in partnership with the global team — defining the team roles, standards, ways of working, and operating model that scale across the portfolio

• Drives adoption of the discipline across all brands and channels; meets brand teams where they are and brings them into a consistent, repeatable production practice

• Role-models the collaborative leadership that builds cohesive production at scale — across functions, brands, and partners — and sets the standard for how production excellence actually gets done

Production Operating Model

• Defines and runs the brief-to-publish operating model across the portfolio: intake, scoping, briefing, creative development, review and approval, production, delivery, archival; designs the system that makes content production predictable, repeatable, and continuously improving

• Builds or manages the systems and ways of working that allow content to be produced once and adapted across markets, channels, and personalization layers — reducing time-to-market and unit cost while protecting craft

Partner Ecosystem & Build vs. Buy

• Owns the strategic relationships with production partners; negotiates master arrangements and holds partners accountable to outcomes, scope, and quality

Brand Integrity & Asset Value

• Runs the QC discipline that ensures every produced asset meets brand standards, regardless of who produced it or where

• Partners with Global Product teams on the DAM strategy and the infrastructure that protects asset value over time: version control, metadata discipline, talent and music and image rights tracking, asset reuse and modularity at scale; partners with Marketing Systems & Enablement on the platform layer

Technology & AI Strategy

• Owns the business use cases for AI-assisted production: where it's piloted, where it's scaled, what guardrails apply, how brand safety is protected, how value is measured; partners with Marketing Systems & Enablement on the broader enterprise approach

• Partners with the AEO/GEO lead to ensure content is optimized for AI-powered search experiences, improving discoverability, visibility, and performance across emerging answer engines and generative search platforms.

Investment Stewardship

• Responsible for total production budget management: partners with brand teams to manage production budget, and drives cost discipline through better briefs, smarter sourcing, modular reuse, and process; reports return on production investment to senior leadership

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Primary partner to Integrated Planning & Media on creative demand, brand leadership on portfolio priorities, Social & Communities on the creator-to-brand content flow, Recruitment & Sampling on program-specific production, and Marketing Systems & Enablement on the systems and workflows the function runs on

Team Leadership

• Attracts, leads and develops direct reports to be recognized as top-talent with high-quality objectives and development plans

What can you expect from Mars?

• Work with over 130,000 diverse and talented Associates, all guided by The Five Principles.

• Join a purpose driven company, where we’re striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today.

• Best-in-class learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University.

• An industry competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus.

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