Experience Planning and Merchandising Manager

PlayStation; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A global leader in entertainment is seeking an Experience Planning & Merchandising Manager in Greater London. This role involves leading the Experience team's merchandising efforts, collaborating with various departments to implement strategically planned customer experiences. Applicants should have over 5 years of relevant experience, strong project management abilities, and proficiency in tools like Wrike and Tableau. Emphasis is placed on analytical thinking and effective communication to enhance customer engagement within the brand.

Benefits

Discretionary bonus opportunity

Private Medical Insurance

Dental Scheme

25 days holiday per year

On Site Gym

Subsidised Café

Free soft drinks

On site bar

Access to cycle garage and showers

Qualifications

• 5+ years in a similar role with in-depth organizational & planning responsibilities.
• Proven record of delivering and building short and long-range plans.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to juggle competing programmes.

Responsibilities

• Lead the creation and maintenance of a clear, visually structured Merchandising plan.
• Collaborate closely with delivery teams to project manage our merchandising activity.
• Perform post-mortem evaluations of plans to identify friction points.

Skills

Project management

Collaboration

Analytical thinking

Communication

Problem solving

Tools

Wrike

Tableau

DOMO

Job description

Why PlayStation?

PlayStation isn’t just the Best Place to Play — it’s also the Best Place to Work. Today, we’re recognized as a global leader in entertainment producing The PlayStation family of products and services including PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®VR, PlayStation®Plus, acclaimed PlayStation software titles from PlayStation Studios, and more.

PlayStation also strives to create an inclusive environment that empowers employees and embraces diversity. We welcome and encourage everyone who has a passion and curiosity for innovation, technology, and play to explore our open positions and join our growing global team.

The PlayStation brand falls under Sony Interactive Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation.

Role overview

Our team operates within the wider ‘Services Commercial’ group who are dedicated to growing PlayStation’s subscription services. This wider group strives to maximise new subscriber acquisition and retention and provide a compelling reason for people to return to the service year after year. Our product, PlayStation Plus, is critically important to PlayStation’s vision and strategy. PlayStation Plus is subscribed to by the majority of PlayStation users and has seen dynamic growth since re‑launching with a multi‑tiered proposition in 2022.

You will be joining the ‘Experience’ team – whose mission is to craft best‑in‑class customer experiences that foster an informed, engaged, and excited group of subscribers. What does that mean? Anywhere you find PlayStation Plus on a PlayStation console, or the PlayStation App, our team is determining what our customers see – the latest, the greatest, and the most relevant messages for each customer. We are responsible for both subscriber and non‑subscriber experiences – maximising subscription purchases, tier upgrades, and engagement with service benefits. We optimise user experiences through continuous test and learn activity and bring the ‘moments‑that‑matter’ to life through innovative merchandising.

As the Experience Planning & Merchandising Manager, your primary responsibility will be to bring organisation, structure, and a calm head to our planning process. We work closely with a wide array of collaborators who have a variety of priorities – you will build bridges between the cross‑functional teams at PlayStation, owning both the long‑term and monthly merchandising plans – helping us to prioritise the right activities and efforts. We can target messages to specific groups of customers – which can become complex quickly – if you see this as an enjoyable challenge to manage – you’re the right person for us!

You will harness a deep expertise in digital, merchandising and commerce to understand and communicate the highest priorities across the teams as you balance alignment between our core merchandising activity and our ongoing calendar of experimentation. You will also partner closely with Content and Engagement teams to build and maintain a calendar of editorial moments with complete support plans. You’ll review and optimise our processes that help us go‑to‑market, making sure that every time we do something it’s better with each iteration.

You will coordinate merchandising efforts across numerous touchpoints, including game releases into PlayStation Plus, Live Services moments, engagement events, promotions and seasonal moments – using analytical and creative thinking you will not only help us deliver the day‑to‑day flawlessly – but help us deliver a longer‑term strategy of being the very best at what we do. Your hands‑on approach will involve a significant amount of collaborator alignment, trade‑offs, and the ability to adapt plans as business needs change.

The Experience team are on a growth journey – We’re expanding our team significantly, and we want you to help us with that journey.

What you’ll be doing

Develop and own an Experience plan

• Lead the creation and maintenance of a clear, visually structured Merchandising, Editorial, and Experimentation plan that integrates the diverse priorities of cross‑functional teams
• Drive the quarterly planning process for the Experience team – leading alignment sessions internally and ensuring that all activity is briefed into our team’s dashboard
• Act as the liaison between the Content, Engagement, Marketing, and other cross‑functional teams to ensure that merchandising priorities are properly planned for
• Develop playbooks and automated processes to streamline planning and execution of our most common type of support and merchandising activity

Experience Plan Delivery

• Own Experience team weekly stand‑ups – working internally to track progress on key initiatives within our calendar, track team actions, coordinate read outs, etc.
• Collaborate closely with ‘Services Optimization’ and delivery teams to project manage our merchandising activity through to execution – complete with proper testing
• Integrate findings and recommendations from experimentation into our day‑to‑day business‑as‑usual efforts
• Drive parity in how we implement our Experience Strategy across all owned channels including PS4, PS5, PS App, other related channels

Performance, accountability, and continuous improvement

• Collaborate on Experience performance reports – working with other Experience team members on regular team and Executive reporting
• Perform post‑mortem evaluations of plans – Working with relevant teams to evaluate activity results, identify operational friction points, and recommend process improvements
• Foster cross‑functional collaboration within Services and related teams – achieving visibility and buy‑in for the Experience plan at all stages of calendar development and maintenance
• Stay abreast of trends and best standards in digital commerce, merchandising and editorial – highlighting emerging industry trends to bring innovative ideas to the business

What we’re looking for

• 5+ years in a similar role with in‑depth organisational & planning responsibilities and demonstrable experience of prioritising activities to drive growth.
• Proven record of delivering and building short and long‑range plans, and ensuring stakeholder buy‑in
• Experience developing and delivering complex programmes in a scaled business
• Strong project management skills with the ability to juggle competing programmes/priorities
• Experience working with project management tools, ideally Wrike (or similar)
• Passionate about delivering the best for our customers and creating exciting and impactful experiences for the communities they represent
• Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to work collaboratively in a global environment
• Experience working cross‑functionally across business, creative, and operational teams
• Ability to communicate and lead across multiple levels in an organisation
• A systematic, disciplined and logical approach to problem solving
• Comfort in using self‑serve analytics tools (such as Tableau, DOMO, and others)
• Strong presentation skills and fluency in PowerPoint
• Management consulting experience is a plus

Benefits

• Discretionary bonus opportunity
• Hybrid Working (within Flexmodes)
• Private Medical Insurance
• Dental Scheme
• 25 days holiday per year
• On Site Gym
• Subsidised Café
• Free soft drinks
• On site bar
• Access to cycle garage and showers

Please note, Sony Interactive Entertainment conducts background checks at the offer stage for all new employees (which may include criminal background checks for some roles) and will need to process personal information to support these checks.

Please refer to our Candidate Privacy Notice for more information about what personal information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and your data protection rights.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Sony is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All persons will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender (including gender identity, gender expression and gender reassignment), race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, marital or civil partnership status, disability, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy, maternity or parental status, trade union membership or membership in any other legally protected category.

We strive to create an inclusive environment, empower employees and embrace diversity. We encourage everyone to respond.

PlayStation is a Fair Chance employer and qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for employment.