Brand Director, Action & Entertainment

CA EMPLOYEE PRIVACY RIGHTS:

MGA Entertainment is one of the largest privately held toy and entertainment companies in the world, known for its commitment to creativity, quality, and innovation. Headquartered in Los Angeles with offices globally, the company creates innovative, proprietary, and licensed consumer products and entertainment properties, including toys, games, dolls, apparel, consumer electronics, home décor, stationery, sporting goods, movies, and television series. The MGA family includes award-winning brands such as L.O.L. Surprise!™, Little Tikes®, Rainbow High™, Bratz®, MGA’s Miniverse™, CarTuned™, Hyojo™, Armorsaurs™, BABY born®, and Zapf Creation®. For more information, please visit us at or check us out at LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

POSITION OVERVIEW

The Brand Director owns the global brand strategy and product roadmap for MGA’s Action & Entertainment portfolio, including in-market brands such as CarTuned™, Hyojo™, and Armorsaurs™, and new sports and entertainment brands. This role sets the multi-year brand strategy for the portfolio and leads a cross-functional team to translate that vision into commercially successful global product lines.

This is a brand-building role for a leader who understands boys’ action and collector categories: fandom, rarity and chase mechanics, collector community dynamics, and entertainment- and content-led brand development. The ideal candidate pairs rigorous analytical and portfolio discipline with genuine instinct for what makes a collector brand successful. This role operates as one half of a two-Director partnership with the Marketing Director, and the two are jointly accountable for the growth of the Action & Entertainment portfolio.

This is a fast-paced, hands-on role. Decisions are made quickly and the Director is expected to be hands-on building the line plan, reviewing the numbers, and course-correcting in real time.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Global Brand Strategy & Planning

• Own and execute the multi-year global strategic roadmap for the Action & Entertainment brands, including brand positioning, target audience definition, and growth ambition.
• Define the global brand architecture and ensure consistency of brand meaning across all regions, categories, and licensing extensions.
• Conduct market research, consumer insight work, and competitive analysis to identify white space, emerging trends, and opportunities within the boys’ action and collector landscape.
• Serve as the internal authority on the collector consumer — collecting behavior, community sentiment, secondary-market dynamics, and fandom health.
• Partner with the Marketing Director to ensure global brand strategy translates into an executable marketing and communications plan.
• Lead brand development for new Action & Entertainment properties, from concept and positioning through launch, including the new sports and entertainment brands in the pipeline.

Product & Line Management

• Own the global product portfolio ensuring the right product mix for the target audience across sub-brands, categories, price points, and retail channels.
• Partner with Product Development and Packaging to guide the creation of innovative toys and collectibles that resonate with the target audience.
• Manage product lifecycle end to end including the innovation pipeline, line architecture, SKU optimization and phase-outs.
• Lead license selection for the portfolio with Product Development and the Licensing teams, deciding which inbound licenses to pursue and integrating them into the line.

Team Leadership & Development

• Lead, coach, and develop the Brand team.
• Set clear goals and performance expectations; build a culture of strategic rigor, curiosity, and accountability.
• Recruit, onboard, and retain talent; build bench strength within the Brand team.
• Model collaborative leadership across the Brand/Marketing partnership and set that tone for both teams.

Global P&L, Budget & Forecasting

• Manage the annual global brand forecast and P&L for the Action & Entertainment portfolio, ensuring alignment with corporate objectives.
• Lead the forecasting process across regions, consolidating regional inputs into a single global brand number.
• Track performance against forecast, identify risks and opportunities, and adjust strategy to achieve revenue and profitability goals.
• Manage gross margin and pricing architecture for the portfolio in partnership with Finance and Operations.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Align with Sales and Retail Marketing teams to ensure product sell-in strategy and line presentation meet retailer expectations globally.
• Collaborate with Operations, Supply Chain, and Inventory teams to optimize production planning and inventory levels.
• Partner with Media, PR, Creative, and Entertainment teams to ensure content and marketing plans support brand strategy.
• Represent the portfolio to senior leadership in line reviews, strategic planning cycles, and business reviews.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, or a related field. MBA preferred.
• Experience: 8+ years in brand management, brand planning, or strategic planning within the toy or collectibles industry.
• People leadership: 3+ years directly managing and developing a team, with demonstrated success building and retaining talent.
• Global scope: Proven track record managing large, global brands across multiple regions and retail channels.
• Product fluency: Hands-on experience with product development processes, line planning, and bringing physical product to market.
• Commercial rigor: Experience managing a brand P&L, forecast, and pricing architecture.
• Category insight: Demonstrated understanding of boys’ action, collector, or fandom-driven categories — including collector motivations, rarity and chase mechanics, community dynamics, and content- or entertainment-led brand building.

Preferred

• Experience with brands serving both kid and adult-collector audiences, and an understanding of how those audiences differ.
• Familiarity with entertainment and content pipelines (series, shorts, gaming, digital) as brand-building vehicles.
• Proficiency in market research tools, syndicated data (e.g., Circana/NPD), and data analysis platforms.
• Experience with licensing.
• Exposure to international markets and the differences in how consumer categories behave outside the U.S.
• Experience taking a new brand from concept to market, not only growing an established one.

Salary

$145,000.00 - $175,000.00