Partnerships Senior Account Manager

The Role

Pitch Marketing Group is searching for an experience Senior Account Manager with a passion for Sports and Marketing to join our growing Partnerships team.  

This is an opportunity for an ambitious individual to join a team devising and delivering distinctive Partnership activation campaigns, working on some of the country's biggest sports Partnerships and flagship rugby client.  

In this client-facing role, you will be taking the lead on your allocated client relationships – acting as a dedicated Partnerships expert and providing specialist sports marketing advice to your clients. You'll undertake a variety of work, including strategic planning, creative activation, idea generation, planning of full rights-utilisation and oversight of delivery, and amplification of, activations within both digital and experiential channels.  

The successful candidate will be confident in building strong client relationships and comfortable with presenting big, bold ideas to clients, whilst acting as their trusted advisor.  

Salary band: £40,000-45,000

About Pitch

Pitch Marketing Group is on a mission to transform how brands engage with people. We do this by helping our clients to win in culture.

Founded in 2002, we led the way as the UK's first creative comms agency to specialise in sport, entertainment and lifestyle. We are an award-winning marketing and communications agency with four specialist divisions: PR, Social, Partnerships and Influencer, supported by in-house strategy, creative and content teams. We work with high profile brands rights holders and media companies including: ASICS, Beats by Dre, Gallagher Insurance, Red Bull, Puma, Paddy Power, and Les Mills.

We have always been fiercely independent and in April 2023 became the first agency in the sports and entertainment sector to become 100% employee-owned. As a 100% employee-owned business, we have a real passion for the work we do and our winning culture is powered by three values:

• Positive Energy:
  We go about our work with a proactive, can-do attitude that is supportive and productive. We exhibit positive energy through radical candour, kindness, and always being solutions-oriented.
• Progressive Thinking
  : Because we only succeed with sharp, curious and open minds, always looking ahead to future opportunities. We are progressive in the way we think about our clients and our business
• Unbeatable Togetherness:
  We are at our best when we work together as one team. Taking enjoyment from working in true partnership with our colleagues and clients to achieve a common goal.

In 2025, our winning culture was recognised by being named on Campaign's 'Best Places to Work' list. We have created a vibrant, inclusive and entrepreneurial culture, treating staff as partners who benefit when we achieve success. In addition to the commercial benefits of working for a 100% employee-owned business, we offer hybrid working hours (3 days in office, 2 at home with Fixed Mondays and Thursdays), a comprehensive benefits package (see Pitch Perks), internal and external training programmes and personal development plans that help our people become their best selves.

We believe that diversity of thought is a business imperative that means we can create culture-led work that resonates with our clients' diverse audiences. We strive to achieve this by creating a culture of inclusivity, providing equal opportunities and celebrating our differences. We have ambitious DEI targets and a dedicated Talent & DE&I Manager, who ensures our policies, processes, training and recruitment contribute to our targets. We work hand in hand with passionate partners including Creative Access, The School of Communications Arts (SCA) and People Like Us to attract and retain the best diverse talent. And we have a Non-executive Director, who acts as an independent advisor, holding us all to account and supporting our DE&I strategy.

Employee Ownership at Pitch

As well as a competitive salary and annual performance bonus, the benefits of being a 100% employee-owned agency are:

Employee Ownership bonus (£3,600 is tax-free)

Decided in June each year based on the financial position of the business and based on government regulated formula of length of service and seniority. Employee ownership bonuses are subject to a £3,600 tax-free allowance, available only to those working for employee-owned businesses. This means, on average, people at Pitch keep 25% more of their bonus.

Your long-term earning potential is supercharged.

As a result of our Profit Share scheme, in the mid-term, you will earn at least 15% more than the market rate per year, compared to an agency with a standard corporate structure. In the long term, you will earn up to 35% more than the market rate.

We're an entrepreneurial business where everyone has a voice.

Each and every person has a greater say in the way we run our business. Our Partner Empowerment Team (PET) provides the platform for everyone in the agency to have a voice via quarterly Partner Town Halls. Our growth team programme gives people at all levels the chance to lead and deliver strategic projects that positive impact the growth of the agency and our people.

Requirements

• 5+ years' experience in and passion for Partnerships marketing
• An understanding of the sports and consumer media landscape and effective partnerships marketing, and activations
• Confident and comfortable presenting to Senior clients and stakeholders
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent attention to detail
• Enthusiastic and reliable self-starter
• Organised and proactive
• Curiosity for culture and creativity

Desirable

• Experience delivering Partnership activations around Professional Cricket and extensive understanding of the sports structure within the UK

Key Responsibilities:

Account Management:

• Delivery and day-to-day management of agreed partnership activation campaigns
• Able to lead client meetings while ensuring timely and effective reporting and follow ups to actions post meeting– ensuring accuracy of Junior team members meeting notes and updates to contact and status reports.
• Contribute to the planning and running of brainstorms to develop ideas for upcoming activations across a variety of sponsorship accounts
• Support at client events in a professional and efficient manner e.g. management of third-party suppliers, oversight of event running orders, and management and mitigation of risks
• Ensure client documents are delivered on time and in line with high agency standards
• Support on the delivery & creation of activation plans that satisfy client business and partnership objectives while fully utilising partnership rights.
• Keep abreast of industry and sports developments and regularly review impact on client activity and objectives.
• Work with other client retained agencies (e.g. Advertising, events, design, digital, production) to deliver to client objectives.

Client Liaison:

• Maintain regular contact with clients, maintaining professional and positives relationships.
• Proactively manage clients across multiple projects, providing accurate information and updates on time

Team Management:

• Manage junior agency staff and direct reports to deliver agreed campaigns.
• Ensure staff ownership and responsibility for projects for all members of the team, developing a clear understanding of accountability.
• Provide support for agency staff and team members.
• Ensure all junior account team members have relevant KPI's and assist in staff reviews and appraisals.
• Lead by example in attitude, efficiency, and results.
• Assist in ongoing search for new talent for the agency as required.

Growing Existing Business:

• Work with SAD and HOD to create and develop opportunities for growing existing client business.

Creativity:

• Demonstrate innovation and creativity in developing new initiatives and proactive idea generation for clients that meet their objectives across all channels.
• Oversee management of agency design department to deliver creative materials for your client where appropriate and manage workflow, budgets and costs.