Urban Outfitters Senior Manager, Celebrity & Music Partnerships

The Senior Manager, Celebrity & Music Partnerships will drive cultural relevance and brand equity for UO by building iconic partnerships with global celebrities, breakthrough musicians, and Gen Z cultural leaders. This role will lead best-in-class campaigns, oversee marketing for vinyl, lead talent casting across a variety of initiatives, and collaborate with the Associate Director, Brand Partnerships to set the strategic vision for how UO shows up across culture and entertainment. The ideal candidate is a strategic marketer, tastemaker, and relationship-builder who brings creative courage, industry fluency, and strong commercial instincts.  

They should have a track record of creating and executing talent-first brand partnerships that foster meaningful relationships with our partners, our consumer and drive business growth. 

Responsibilities 

Drive Talent Partnerships: This role will drive the strategy as well as end-to-end processes for our talent partnerships, and own day-to-day management of partnership programs. The right candidate must be comfortable negotiating high value contracts, managing large budgets, and ensuring alignment with URBN legal processes. 

Foster Relationships: Collaborate with Associate Director, Brand Partnerships in building a rich talent pipeline to power brand marketing campaigns, develop bespoke partnerships and collaborations, and identify talent integration opportunities within our always on influencer programs. This role should be a stellar networker with a deep rolodex of contacts in the entertainment industry at talent agencies, record labels, stylists, and talent.  

Talent Discovery & Trend Forecasting: Identify emerging talent and movements before they hit the mainstream, ensuring UO stays ahead of the curve in aligning with Gen Z culture. 

Event & Experience Integration: Lead integration of talent into in-person activations, pop-ups, and experiential campaigns in retail stores or live music events. 

Lead Vinyl & Music Strategy: Own the end-to-end marketing strategy for vinyl and music at UO. Craft innovative, culturally resonant campaigns that elevate the product and tell a deeper story—one that connects music, community, and the UO brand. 

Effective Campaign Management:  Lead end to end campaign management of 360° brand partnerships. Begin with clear and effective briefing of external and internal partners across all marketing needs, ensure smooth asset delivery and launch, monitor campaigns with a critical eye, and finally work closely with Analytics team to report and share back results both internally and externally.  

Cross-functional Leadership: Partner with cross-functional teams and marketing channel leads to establish strong relationships. Work closely with cross functional partners, specifically on the Digital, Social, Merchandising and Creative teams, to build strategic dedicated partnership campaigns.  

Brand Advocacy:  Effectively communicate the UO brand positioning and campaign initiatives to external partners and sell them into our activations. Create pitch decks that prove UO’s position in the market and offer thoughtful insight to ensure our partners are highly engaged with UO. Be a vigilant advocate for UO across the campaign lifecycle, constantly on the lookout for creative excellence.  

Creative Oversight: Partner closely with our creative team and external partners to ensure concepts, journeys, and tactical deliverables for partnerships are met and align with objectives, and work back with internal and external stakeholders on necessary creative approvals. Manage assets and ensure seamless delivery to channel owners and partners.  

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities: 

Education: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience desired.  

Experience: 6+ years of experience in a celebrity, entertainment marketing, music, or partnerships role.  

Demographic Knowledge: Demonstrate an understanding of the target customer and the ability to select the appropriate product/trend that will appeal to the customer and meet their expectations. 

Cultural Expertise: Deep knowledge of the music, film, arts and sports that are relevant to our target customer.  

Storytelling Ability: Strength with communicating a compelling brand narrative both written and orally. Ability to brief and inspire internal teams and external partners.  

Negotiation & Contracting Expertise: Advanced skill in structuring talent and IP agreements, including exclusivity clauses, usage rights, and long-term partnerships.  

Measurement Frameworks for Brand Equity: Comfort working with brand lift, earned media value (EMV), and sentiment analysis tools to evaluate the long-term impact of talent partnerships. 

Retail + DTC Brand Integration: Experience bringing talent partnerships into product development, and in-store storytelling. 

Platform-Specific Fluency: Deep knowledge of how talent performs across TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and emerging platforms; understanding of platform-native content formats. 

Communication: Positive, professional, and timely communication with internal cross-functional teams, and external partners.  

Time Management: Proactively plans and controls time to efficiently deliver team priorities and meet deadlines.  

Strategic Thinking: Never lose sight of larger company and team initiatives and strategy; consider KPIs at every stage of the decision-making process.  

Detail Orientation: Focus on and manage the small details of a task or project to consistently produce high-quality work. 

Leadership Ability: Take charge of the strategic direction for talent partnerships at UO and lead the decisions that lead to those outcomes. Hold yourself accountable.  

Inclusivity: Commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion within the workplace.

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URBN offers comprehensive Perks & Benefits to employees. Availability and eligibility to specific benefits may be subject to your location and employment status. Benefits include medical, dental, vision, PTO, generous employee discounts, retirement savings and much more! For additional information visit www.urbn.com/work-with-us/benefits

URBN celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We are proud to provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, sex (including gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression), religion, creed, age, physical or mental disability, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, citizenship, service in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic as established by law. We believe strongly in fostering a safe, fair and respectful work environment. To ensure compliance with our non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, we offer anti-harassment training to managers and employees.