Production Director (Experiential Marketing)

Small Girls PR, an Orchestra company; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Small Girls PR is seeking an Experiential Production Director with 7–9 years of experience leading multichannel projects across in-person activations and digital experiences. This role oversees strategy, client relationships, budgets, and timelines, and guides producers toward standout brand experiences in fashion and beauty.

Based in New York or Los Angeles, the hybrid schedule requires two days in the office weekly; candidates should be willing to travel domestically and internationally for

Qualifications

• 7–9 years of experience leading multichannel projects across in-person activations and digital experiences.
• Experience working with fashion and/or beauty brands is highly valued for this role.
• Agency experience and adept client interface are preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead experiential projects and client relationships day-to-day, ensuring strong delivery, client satisfaction, retention, and continued engagement.
• Serve as a trusted strategic counselor to clients, building confidence through thoughtful guidance, dependable leadership, and consistently strong work.
• Lead a large client account with multiple initiatives running concurrently; experience in the beauty space is a plus, but not required.
• Develop experiential strategies in collaboration with senior leadership and interdisciplinary peers across influencer marketing, earned media, paid media, creative, and other capabilities.
• Maintain routine, clear client communication and keep senior leadership informed of campaign progress, changes in strategy or budget, emerging risks, and opportunities.
• Ensure project teams understand client objectives and are delivering efficiently against clear goals and expectations.
• Develop breakthrough, culturally relevant experiential strategies and creative concepts that communicate client positioning, drive measurable impact, and generate conversation, social sharing, and earned media.
• Translate client objectives into executable programs with clear KPIs and measurement plans.
• Lead experiential projects of varying sizes, formats, and budgets from initial concept through post-production, adapting your level of involvement based on the needs and complexity of each program.
• Oversee multiple concurrent programs, providing senior production leadership, guiding execution, and stepping in to troubleshoot when needed.
• Maintain a strong command of production fundamentals, including timelines, budgets, vendor negotiations, permitting, fabrication, staffing, run-of-show development, and on-site execution.
• Provide strategic and creative direction that elevates team output and ensures the final work is differentiated, operationally sound, and aligned with client goals.
• Stay closely attuned to experiential trends, cultural moments, emerging technologies, and best-in-class work, translating relevant insights into opportunities for SGPR clients.
• Manage and develop experiential team members through clear expectations, ongoing feedback, weekly one-on-ones, goal setting, and thoughtful career development.
• Create a collaborative, accountable, and solutions-oriented team environment that inspires strong creative and production work.
• Understand when to delegate, when to provide direction, and when to step directly into a project to help the team deliver.
• Monitor the performance, workload, and development of direct reports, keeping senior leadership informed of progress, challenges, and support needs.
• Partner with senior leadership and experiential peers to assess team capacity and assign the appropriate staff to each project.
• Collaborate effectively with creative, finance, earned media, influencer, and other interdisciplinary teams to establish clear roles, responsibilities, and ways of working.
• Own project and account budgets day-to-day, proactively identifying potential risks, changes, or inefficiencies and recommending solutions.
• Ensure experiential work is scoped, staffed, and executed appropriately against approved timelines and budgets.
• Contribute constructive input to performance reviews and participate meaningfully in hiring processes for the experiential team.
• Proactively contribute to internal processes and initiatives that strengthen SGPR's experiential capabilities and client service.

Job description

Small Girls PR is looking for an Experiential Production Director with 7–9 years of experience leading multichannel projects across in-person activations and digital experiences. This includes developing cohesive experiential strategies, managing client relationships, concepting standout experiences that drive social conversation and press coverage, overseeing technical execution, managing complex timelines and large budgets, and developing talented producers. Experience working with clients / brands within fashion and/or beauty is highly valued for this role. This role will serve as the senior day-to-day lead across experiential accounts and projects, connecting creative ideas and production plans to clients' broader brand and business objectives. The Experiential Production Director will work closely with senior leadership, keeping them informed of campaign progress, strategic or budgetary shifts, client needs, team performance, and potential risks. The right candidate knows how to lead a campaign from ideation through post-production and can project manage in their sleep. They are also prepared to dive into the details, knowing that no task is too small in the world of events. This role will work with a wide range of creative and innovative brands across beauty and fashion, food and beverage, wellness, consumer technology, and more. Ideally this candidate has agency experience and is adept at client interface, in addition to execution. There is no one-size-fits-all for an SGPR client, which means your career will be enriched with meaningful and diversified experience. We've busted beauty myths with OLAY in Bryant Park, spotlighted Violife with a cheeky Election Day campaign, and reintroduced a Jack in the Box product as a "return from the grave" with a Halloween cemetery screening. From events and mailers to brand partnerships and hotlines, if the team can dream up an idea for audiences to see, do, or touch, our experiential team can produce it. Note: This role is based in our New York or Los Angeles office, working two days a week in the office on a hybrid schedule. Candidates should be prepared to travel domestically and internationally as needed for event execution.

How you'll make an impact

• Lead experiential projects and client relationships day-to-day, ensuring strong delivery, client satisfaction, retention, and continued engagement.
• Serve as a trusted strategic counselor to clients, building confidence through thoughtful guidance, dependable leadership, and consistently strong work.
• Lead a large client account with multiple initiatives running concurrently; experience in the beauty space is a plus, but not required.
• Develop experiential strategies in collaboration with senior leadership and interdisciplinary peers across influencer marketing, earned media, paid media, creative, and other capabilities.
• Maintain routine, clear client communication and keep senior leadership informed of campaign progress, changes in strategy or budget, emerging risks, and opportunities.
• Ensure project teams understand client objectives and are delivering efficiently against clear goals and expectations.

Creative & Production

• Develop breakthrough, culturally relevant experiential strategies and creative concepts that communicate client positioning, drive measurable impact, and generate conversation, social sharing, and earned media.
• Translate client objectives into executable programs with clear KPIs and measurement plans.
• Lead experiential projects of varying sizes, formats, and budgets from initial concept through post-production, adapting your level of involvement based on the needs and complexity of each program.
• Oversee multiple concurrent programs, providing senior production leadership, guiding execution, and stepping in to troubleshoot when needed.
• Maintain a strong command of production fundamentals, including timelines, budgets, vendor negotiations, permitting, fabrication, staffing, run-of-show development, and on-site execution.
• Provide strategic and creative direction that elevates team output and ensures the final work is differentiated, operationally sound, and aligned with client goals.
• Stay closely attuned to experiential trends, cultural moments, emerging technologies, and best-in-class work, translating relevant insights into opportunities for SGPR clients.

Team Leadership & Operations

• Manage and develop experiential team members through clear expectations, ongoing feedback, weekly one-on-ones, goal setting, and thoughtful career development.
• Create a collaborative, accountable, and solutions-oriented team environment that inspires strong creative and production work.
• Understand when to delegate, when to provide direction, and when to step directly into a project to help the team deliver.
• Monitor the performance, workload, and development of direct reports, keeping senior leadership informed of progress, challenges, and support needs.
• Partner with senior leadership and experiential peers to assess team capacity and assign the appropriate staff to each project.
• Collaborate effectively with creative, finance, earned media, influencer, and other interdisciplinary teams to establish clear roles, responsibilities, and ways of working.
• Own project and account budgets day-to-day, proactively identifying potential risks, changes, or inefficiencies and recommending solutions.
• Ensure experiential work is scoped, staffed, and executed appropriately against approved timelines and budgets.
• Contribute constructive input to performance reviews and participate meaningfully in hiring processes for the experiential team.
• Proactively contribute to internal processes and initiatives that strengthen SGPR's experiential capabilities and client service.

Business Growth

• Play an active role in new business efforts, including pitch strategy, creative ideation, proposal development, budgeting, and scoping in partnership with senior leadership.
• Lead the development of experiential components within integrated and experiential-specific proposals, ensuring recommendations are strategically sound, creatively distinctive, and feasible to produce.
• Own significant portions of new business presentations and confidently present experiential recommendations to prospective clients.
• Identify opportunities to expand existing client relationships and cross-sell services within SGPR and across the Orchestra network, partnering with senior leadership to convert those opportunities into additional work.
• Contribute to case studies, capabilities materials, and other resources that help communicate SGPR's experiential offering.

Why we’ll love you

• Experience: You have 7–9 years of relevant experience managing and executing events, ideally at an agency where you've worked on integrated accounts. You've led a range of projects, such as pop-ups, multi-day conferences, product launches, intimate dinners, mobile activations, and other custom brand experiences. You understand permitting requirements and application processes in major U.S. markets and have developed strong relationships with production partners, vendors, and venues.
• Creativity & Cultural Fluency