Marketing Activation Manager

This role will manage market activation across your assigned markets, translating campaign and service line priorities into coordinated execution across events, sponsorships, communications, digital, paid media and client engagement.

This role combines programme management, activation planning and team leadership. You keep activity aligned to business priorities, operationally coordinated and delivered to standard across your markets.

You are expected to move beyond event execution into broader activation management, working across channels, stakeholders and delivery teams to ensure activity is joined up and growth-focused.

You work closely with the Market Activation Lead on priorities, with Service Line Marketers on campaign requirements, with the other Market Activation Manager to keep activity connected across markets and with the Assistant Manager and Associate on delivery.

Key Accountabilities

Manage campaign activation across events, digital, social, email, sponsorships, paid media and client communications.
Coordinate activation plans across paid, earned, owned and in-person channels across your markets.
Own the activation calendar for your markets. Coordinate across the team to make sure activity is scoped, assigned and delivered on time.
Plan event and sponsorship programmes, including objectives, audience, format, business intent and follow-up strategy.
Brief the Assistant Manager and Associate on logistics, production requirements and on-the-ground delivery.
Apply activation readiness discipline across all programmes, ensuring target audience, outreach approach, stakeholder roles and follow-through responsibilities are defined before execution begins.
Manage and develop the Market Activation Assistant Manager and Associate as a hands-on team leader, setting delivery standards, reviewing work and building capability.
Manage agency and vendor relationships for in-market activation. Brief clearly, quality-check delivery and escalate issues to the Market Activation Lead.
Manage the campaign intake process for your markets. Review and scope briefs, assign work and ensure delivery against agreed timelines.
Coordinate with Service Line Marketers to ensure activation reflects business priorities and partner requirements.
Support PR activity under the direction of the Comms Lead, including local briefing, agency coordination and output quality.
Support local market communications activity including PR coordination, executive profiling support and thought leadership activation under guidance from the Market Activation Lead and Communications team.
Oversee local sponsorships across your markets. Manage sponsor relationships, activation planning and ROI tracking within the agreed framework.
Own paid media and advertising coordination for your markets, working with the Market Activation Lead on targeting, placement and budget.
Contribute to campaign messaging, audience planning and activation recommendations for market programmes.
Work with the Global Services Hub on production requirements. Brief clearly and review output against brand and quality standards.
Track campaign performance and report on activation outcomes. Provide recommendations for improvement.
Identify opportunities to improve activation effectiveness, stakeholder engagement and market visibility across your markets.
Maintain campaign records in Click-Up and keep reporting accurate and up to date.
Complete post-activation close-out for all programmes, including attendance reconciliation, CRM capture, follow-up action tracking and post-event review inputs.
Keep all activation aligned to the firm’s brand positioning and governance standards.
Use AI tools to improve planning, targeting, communications and operational efficiency, applying appropriate review to ensure accuracy and quality.

Experience and Profile

Bachelor’s degree required.
7+ years in marketing execution, campaign management or a similar role in a B2B environment, with demonstrated channel breadth across digital, paid media, content, PR, partnerships, sponsorships, events and direct outreach.
Experience delivering integrated campaigns across multiple channels is important for success in the role. The position requires broad activation exposure across channels rather than deep specialism in a single area.
Experience in professional services, financial services or a similarly complex sector preferred.
Proven ability to manage multi-channel campaign delivery with clear business outcomes.
The role includes responsibility for coaching and developing junior team members. Previous direct line management experience is beneficial but not essential.
Experience delivering integrated activation programmes across multiple channels including events, sponsorship, communications, digital and client engagement activity.
Strong organisational skills with the ability to manage multiple programmes and deadlines simultaneously.
Strong coordination and planning capability, with the ability to manage complex programmes involving multiple stakeholders, channels and deadlines.
Experience with PR agency management and media relations at a local or regional level.
Experience managing sponsorship's and in-market partnership activation's.
Familiarity with project management tools, CRM and marketing automation platforms.
Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to work across service lines and local leadership teams.
Commercial mindset with an understanding of how activation activity supports pipeline progression, relationship development and market visibility.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with confidence briefing stakeholders, agencies and delivery teams.
Proficiency with AI tools to improve planning, targeting, communications and operational efficiency, with the ability to apply appropriate judgement and review to ensure accuracy.
Ability to travel across your markets as needed.

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Grant Thornton Ireland is rapidly approaching 3,000 people, in 9 offices across Ireland, Isle of Man, Gibraltar and Bermuda. With a presence in over 149 countries around the world and a global network of 73,000 people, we bring our clients the local knowledge, national expertise and global presence to help them succeed – wherever they’re located.

At GT, we work as trusted advisors, bringing local knowledge and national expertise, with a global presence, to help businesses succeed – wherever they are located. We make business more personal by investing in building relationships and empowering our clients to make the right decisions for their organisation now and for the future. Whether that is working with the public sector to build thriving communities, with regulators and financial institutions to build trust, or with a diverse range of businesses to help them achieve their goals, Grant Thornton Ireland work hard to support clients to act on the issues that matter.

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A Career at GT

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What does this mean for you?

A career in a more inclusive working environment, a more collaborative work culture, a more supported, flexible working role, more possibilities to grow and more opportunities to help shape the future for your clients. We respect and value your experience. And we want you to bring your authentic self to work and be at your best. It is how it should be.

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We are all at our best when we are able to be ourselves and we view integrity and authenticity as integral values to bring to our day-to-day work-life at the firm. We are excited to see the personality and perspectives you will bring to our team because we know we will all benefit from them. Diversity of thought, background and experience enables better decision-making, improves the quality of our delivery, and helps us to meet the needs of our clients. Our firm is built on people and their ideas, so we want to hear all the new perspectives and fresh thinking you have to offer. You form the bedrock of our firm’s best-practice principles and we will champion you as leaders from day one.

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Marketing Activation Manager

Benefits

Job Description