Associate Director, Audience Strategy

Company description

Spark Foundry was built during the most transformative time in the history of advertising and marketing. We deliver everything a traditional media agency has to offer and have grown into one of the world's most successful agencies by helping brands evolve their marketing by leveraging identity, commerce, artificial intelligence, and more to connect with people. Transformation is part of our DNA.

Spark Foundry's start-up spirit delivers high-touch approaches and a never-ending desire to challenge the status quo. Combined with Publicis Media's powerhouse soul leveraging connected data assets, advanced AI applications, and investment clout, we "Bring HEAT to Brands." No other agency possesses the expertise that we do to address today's most pressing challenges to drive business transformation through media.

Overview

Media always starts with an audience. The Associate Director, Audience Strategy & Insights supports the development and execution of audience strategy for Mattel brands and initiatives, serving as a strategic partner on audience definition, segmentation, and identity‑based targeting in support of marketing and growth objectives. This role ensures audience considerations are embedded across the campaign lifecycle-from planning and activation through measurement and learning - contributing to effective, efficient, and scalable marketing outcomes across brands and markets.

Embedded within the broader Data & Analytics organization, the Associate Director operates as part of an integrated analytics and data community, with close partnership to Audience Strategy, Analytics & Insights, Media Strategy, Activation, Creative, and Marketing Technology teams. The role supports global, regional, and local stakeholders and contributes to the development of actionable audience strategies while maintaining clear guardrails between audience design and audience performance measurement.

In partnership with Analytics & Insights, this role helps translate performance insights into audience implications and recommendations, supporting the application of learnings to future audience refinement and growth strategies.

Responsibilities

* Audience Strategy & Growth Enablement

* Support the development of audience strategies aligned to brand objectives, growth priorities, and marketing goals.

* Translate business and marketing questions into audience hypotheses, segmentation approaches, and targeting considerations.

* Partner with audience, data, and technology teams to support scalable, addressable audience activation.

* Contribute to building and maintaining a body of audience knowledge to inform ongoing and future planning.

* Audience Informed Planning & Lifecycle Integration

* Partner with Analytics & Insights during planning to ensure audience definitions and segmentation logic are reflected in learning agendas.

* Support the integration of audience strategy into planning and activation decisions without owning performance measurement or adjudication.

* Embed audience thinking from briefing through post campaign analysis and refinement.

* Identity, Segmentation & Addressability

* Support audience segmentation and growth audience development using first party, third party, and identity-based data.

* Help translate identity and data considerations into clear, actionable audience recommendations for internal teams and partners.

* Partner with data and marketing technology teams to support the operationalization of audience definitions within platforms and tools.

* Develop working knowledge of identity, addressability, and data connectivity considerations across markets.

* Activation Partnership & Enablement

* Partner with Media and Activation teams to ensure audience strategies are executable within channel and platform constraints.

* Support onboarding, deployment, and reuse of audience segments in alignment with established standards and best practices.

* Coordinate with internal teams on audience needs that may require custom solutions.

* Audience Learning & Insight Translation

* Interpret analytics and measurement outputs through an audience lens in partnership with Analytics & Insights teams.

* Assist in…