The North Face: Finance Investment Manager, Marketing Operations

At The North Face we dare to lead the world forward through Exploration. We were born to Explore, Disrupt and to Lead. We were born to Love Wild Places and to Spark Curiosity. We believe that exploration is a mindset - both on the mountain and off the mountain - and it infuses everything we do. As a community of explorers, we stay curious about new ideas, places, and people.

So, before we get to the job details, take a minute to learn a little more about us – our values and our culture. If you can see yourself working side-by-side with a team of adventure-loving people, The North Face just may be the place for you.

To learn more about our values and our culture, visit The North Face Careers or www.thenorthface.com.

What will you do?

A day in the life of a Marketing Investment Manager at The North Face looks a little like this.

The Marketing Investment Manager is responsible for managing a holistic view of relevant investment data for the Global Brand Marketing team, with a focus on best-in-class marketing budget management and performance metrics. This position plays a key role in ensuring that spend is optimized to achieve the best possible results and that all initiatives are executed within allocated budget. The manager will collaborate closely with the Brand Marketing leadership team, individual budget owners, as well as cross functional teams including Finance, Sales, Consumer Insights, Demand Planning, and Analytics to develop dashboards, enable decision making, and ensure spend aligns with strategy. The manager will enable resourcing decisions across working and non-working spend by closely tracking campaign investments across channels and markets. This role requires a proven track record in data/financial analysis; validating data from numerous sources; strong communication skills to partner with a variety of stakeholders; as well as experience generating fact-based recommendations based on business data insights.

Let’s break down that day-in-the-life a bit more.

• In partnership with Brand Marketing leadership, manage the Global marketing budgets for The North Face, ensuring spending is aligned with business objectives and marketing strategies.
• Drive planning and communication flow across the Marketing team to streamline monthly, quarterly, and annual budget management, from plans to actuals, and deploy VF’s MAP Marketing Planner toolkit consistently across all cost centers and owners.
• Monitor and track marketing expenses, POs, forecasts & monthly variance and provide regular updates to senior management and cross-functional partners.
• Collaborate with Marketing, Consumer Insights, Sales, Retail and Digital departments to gather, consolidate and analyze all relevant data (sell through, investment choices, conversion rates, traffic, engagement, brand health tracking metrics, equity scores, etc.)
• Create, develop and manage marketing data models to continuously improve marketing results and optimize budget allocation and management.
• Collaborate with Marketing budget owners to develop project-based budgets and forecast future expenses, identifying opportunities for cost savings and process improvement including vendor negotiations and resource allocation.
• Collaborate with Finance and Accounting departments to ensure accurate and timely financial reporting, forecasting, and compliance.
• Leverage and integrate all data insights to deliver fact-based recommendations to improve marketing performance and optimize marketing budget resources. Share insights with other departments to nurture scientific and data driven decision-making across the brand.
• Steward and refine data management best practices with cost center owners, training others with tools to effectively and efficiently track forecasts.

What do you need to succeed?

We all have unique skills that we bring to work and celebrate every day. For this role, there are foundation skills you’ll need to succeed and excel. Additionally, while formal education in a related field is great to have, we are most interested in your 3-5 years of experience and professional achievements. 

The foundation skills you will need in this position are:

• 3-5 years of experience in finance or related research/business function that requires organization of large quantities of data, strategic planning and execution.
• Proven self-starter with the tenacity to move ideas into action and ability to work closely with cross functional teams to ensure transparency and accountability.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills including meeting facilitation, stake