Director, Brand Strategy, Culture & Partnerships

Our Story

Launched in 2015, Sol de Janeiro is a globally recognized, award-winning beauty brand, drawing inspiration from Brazil’s beauty rituals, warmth, and spirit. Sol de Janeiro delivers a sensory experience beloved by multi-generational consumers worldwide, with clinically proven results, transformative textures, and transportive fragrances.  

Headquartered in New York and launched as a digitally native brand, we have expanded globally with teams in Paris, London, and Germany. Our commitment to excellence has earned high-profile honors, including being named one of _TIME1_00’s 2024 Most Influential Companies, Fast Company’s 2024 World's Most Innovative Companies, and WWD Beauty Inc’s Power Brands of 2024, underscoring its leadership in the beauty industry and outstanding workplace. These accolades highlight our dedication to being a leading brand in the beauty industry and an exceptional workplace. 

What You’ll Do

Sol de Janeiro is seeking a visionary and strategically minded Director, Brand Strategy, Culture & Partnerships to lead the development of the brand’s cultural agenda, partnership ecosystem, and integrated go-to-market strategy.

Sitting at the center of the Integrated Marketing, Communications & Culture organization, this role is responsible for ensuring Sol de Janeiro consistently earns disproportionate attention, cultural relevance, and consumer desire beyond the scale of its marketing investment.

The Director serves as a strategic architect behind some of Sol de Janeiro’s most important brand and business moments, translating brand strategy and business priorities into cultural opportunities, breakthrough partnerships, integrated campaign frameworks, and launch platforms that drive both conversation and commercial impact.

This leader oversees the Body and Fragrance strategy teams while partnering closely with Product Marketing, Creative, Global Integrated Brand Media & Talent, Communications, Influencer Relations, Regional Marketing, Retail Marketing, and Commercial teams to ensure every major initiative is built through a single integrated lens.

The ideal candidate combines exceptional brand strategy expertise, cultural intuition, partnership leadership, and commercial thinking. They understand how modern brands earn attention, how culture shapes consumer behavior, and how integrated marketing creates sustained brand desire.

What You’ll Be Working On

Define Sol de Janeiro’s Cultural Agenda

• Define how and where Sol de Janeiro can authentically participate in culture to earn relevance, credibility, and conversation.

• Develop an annual cultural agenda that establishes priority territories, partnership opportunities, tentpole moments, franchise support, and emerging trend activations.

• Build a long-term point of view on how the brand should show up across culture, communities, and consumer passion points.

• Identify where Sol should lead conversations versus participate in them.

• Monitor shifts across consumer behavior, entertainment, fashion, wellness, social platforms, travel, sports, lifestyle, and other culturally relevant spaces.

• Identify emerging trends, cultural tensions, and white-space opportunities that can unlock future brand and business growth.

• Serve as an internal thought leader on culture, consumer behavior, and emerging opportunities.

Transform Brand Strategy Into Integrated GTM Platforms

• Serve as the strategic architect behind Sol de Janeiro’s most important launches and brand moments.

• Lead the development of integrated master briefs that align teams around the business objective, consumer insight, cultural opportunity, target audience, strategic idea, partnership strategy, and measures of success.

• Build launch architectures that connect Communications, Influencer Relations, Talent, Media, Creative, Retail, Product Marketing, and regional teams.

• Establish best-in-class planning processes and frameworks that balance global consistency with local market relevance.

• Ensure campaigns begin with a strong strategic foundation and a single organizing idea.

• Challenge teams to move beyond tactical execution toward insight-led, culturally relevant thinking.

Lead Strategic Partnerships & Collaborations

• Own the global partnership strategy for Sol de Janeiro.

• Develop a strategic framework for evaluating opportunities based on brand fit, cultural relevance, audience expansion, business impact, heat potential, and long-term brand equity.

• Identify and cultivate opportunities across entertainment, music, fashion, wellness, travel, hospitality, sports, lifestyle, retail, and creative communities.

• Lead strategic partnership recommendations for leadership consideration and approval.

• Partner with relevant teams on negotiation strategy, activation planning, and execution.

• Ensure partnerships go beyond visibility to create meaningful cultural participation, consumer engagement, and measurable impact.

• Maximize the value of partnership investments across the organization.

Lead Body & Fragrance Brand Strategy

• Lead and mentor the strategic marketers responsible for Body and Fragrance.

• Ensure category strategies ladder into broader brand and business priorities.

• Guide annual planning, portfolio prioritization, launch sequencing, and strategic briefing.

• Create consistency in strategic rigor, planning quality, and briefing standards across categories.

• Identify future growth opportunities, adjacent spaces, and areas for innovation.

• Ensure category insights and learnings are shared across the broader organization.

Drive Cross-Functional Integration

• Act as a strategic connector across Integrated Marketing, Communications & Culture and the broader organization.

• Partner closely with Product Marketing, Communications, Influencer Relations, Integrated Brand Media & Talent, Creative, Retail Marketing, Ecommerce, Sales, and regional leadership.

• Build alignment throughout the planning process and ensure every function understands its role within integrated programs.

• Break down silos and create operating rhythms that strengthen collaboration, integration, and decision-making.

• Partner with leadership on annual planning, portfolio strategy, launch prioritization, budget allocation, and future growth opportunities.

• Provide clear strategic recommendations on where resources and investments can generate the greatest impact.

Measure Brand Heat & Business Impact

• Develop measurement frameworks that demonstrate how cultural relevance, integrated marketing, and partnerships contribute to brand and business performance.

• Evaluate brand heat through indicators such as share of voice, earned and social conversation, search behavior, and cultural participation.

• Connect cultural and partnership performance to brand health, including awareness, consideration, preference, and relevance.

• Evaluate commercial outcomes including launch performance, velocity, sell-through, and market impact.

• Translate performance data into executive-level reporting, actionable insights, and recommendations.

• Use learnings to continuously strengthen future strategy and investment decisions.

Build & Lead a High-Performing Team

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of strategic marketers responsible for category strategy and cultural planning.

• Build a culture grounded in curiosity, strategic rigor, collaboration, creativity, and accountability.

• Establish clear priorities, expectations, and decision-making frameworks.

• Develop team capabilities to support continued organizational growth.

• Coach and develop the next generation of strategic leaders within the organization.

Must Haves

• 10-12 years of progressive experience across brand strategy, integrated marketing, partnerships, cultural marketing, communications, or related disciplines.

• Proven experience developing integrated brand and marketing strategies for a consumer-facing brand.

• Demonstrated experience building and leading strategic partnership programs and culturally relevant brand activations.

• Deep understanding of culture, consumer behavior, emerging trends, and how brands can authentically participate in conversation.

• Strong ability to connect brand strategy, cultural opportunity, consumer insight, and commercial objectives.

• Experience building integrated campaign and go-to-market frameworks across multiple marketing functions.

• Proven people leadership experience with the ability to coach, develop, and inspire high-performing teams.

• Strong executive presence with exceptional communication, presentation, and facilitation skills.

• Demonstrated ability to influence senior stakeholders and lead complex, highly cross-functional initiatives.

• Experience navigating global or multi-market organizations.

• Ability to balance long-term brand building with near-term commercial priorities.

• Experience within beauty, fragrance, fashion, lifestyle, luxury, wellness, or another culturally driven consumer brand is strongly preferred.

Leadership Profile

The ideal candidate is part strategist, part futurist, part cultural anthropologist, and part business leader.

You are obsessed with understanding what people care about, where conversations are moving, and how brands can create meaningful participation in culture. You understand that successful marketing is no longer about driving awareness alone — it is about creating desire, conversation, advocacy, and relevance.

You are equally comfortable discussing consumer insights, launch strategy, partnership valuation, creative territories, organizational processes, and business performance.

Success in This Role Looks Like

• Sol de Janeiro consistently participates in culture in ways that feel authentic, relevant, and distinctive.

• Launches become moments people talk about, not simply products that are advertised.

• Partnerships create measurable impact across brand and business metrics.

• The organization operates from one strategic idea rather than multiple disconnected plans.

• Body and Fragrance teams have clear strategic direction and stronger launch performance.

• Brand Strategy, Culture & Partnerships becomes a catalyst that transforms strategy into cultural relevance and consumer desire.

• Sol de Janeiro earns disproportionate attention relative to its investment and continues strengthening its position as one of the most culturally relevant brands in beauty.

#LI-hybrid

Salary Range$160,000—$180,000 USD

Why Sol de Janeiro?

• Competitive salary and bonus program for full-time team members
• Flexible hybrid work environment with opportunities for collaboration and growth
• Inclusive culture that values diverse perspectives and celebrates individuality
• The chance to be part of a fast-growing, award-winning global beauty brand

 The information contained herein is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee, as these may change or new ones may be assigned at any time. 

Sol de Janeiro is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. 

Requests for accommodation due to a disability or any other protected characteristic can be made at any stage of the recruitment process and during employment by contacting our People Experience Team at careers@soldejaneiro.com. 

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