Associate Director, Marketing Financial Planning

This is a Full Time Job

DESCRIPTION:

As Associate Director, you will report directly to the VP Marketing Financial Planning in the centralized finance organization servicing the Sony Music US Front Line Label Group (encompassing Columbia Records, RCA Records, Epic Records, Arista Records, Sony Music Nashville, Provident Entertainment, and Ultra Records), with dotted-line reporting to the VP Finance of your assigned labels. You will play a crucial role in planning, tracking, and analyzing marketing expenditures across a wide range of artist campaigns, working at the strategic intersection of finance and frontline marketing, where your insights drive both creative success and business performance. The ideal candidate will combine attention to detail with strong analytical skills, and the ability to translate financial insights into clear, actionable guidance that supports both creative execution and fiscal discipline.

What you'll do:

• Budgeting & Forecasting:
Partner closely with marketing teams for your assigned labels to build, manage, and adjust budgets aligned with each artist’s go-to-market release strategy and commercial objectives;
Manage the maintenance and update of marketing budgets in the company’s proprietary marketing planning system, ensuring data accuracy and real-time responsiveness to campaign changes;
Support monthly forecast cycles, incorporating new spend assumptions and campaign updates.

• Purchase Order Management & Budget Validation:
Oversee the creation, submission, and approval of marketing-related purchase orders, ensuring alignment with approved budgets and internal controls;
Validate purchase orders and committed spend against established artist campaign budgets to prevent overruns and maintain spending discipline;
Track commitments at multiple levels: by artist, project, spend category, and release phase.

• Expense Tracking & Reconciliation:
Review actual marketing expenditures against budgets and forecasts on a monthly and quarterly basis;
Process accruals and ensure accurate invoice coding and approval routing;
Liaise with Accounts Payable and label teams to resolve discrepancies and ensure timely vendor payments.

• Financial Reporting & Spend Visibility:
Manage the preparation and distribution of recurring reports showing actual spend and available remaining budget by artist, project, and campaign phase;
Provide clear, real-time visibility to label and executive stakeholders on how current investments are tracking against planned activity;
Analyze marketing spend relative to forecasted revenue at both the artist/project level and in aggregate across the label to evaluate efficiency, support ROI assessments, and ensure adherence to the label’s overall fiscal year marketing expense budget.

• Cross-Functional & Dual Reporting Collaboration:
Serve as a key financial liaison to marketing, media, and promotion teams across multiple active artist campaigns for your assigned labels;
Ensure effective communication and coordination between your direct and dotted-line reporting managers to align on workflow and ensure accurate and timely delivery of financial inputs and outputs.

• Compliance & Process Optimization:
Ensure all marketing expenditures follow corporate finance policies, internal approval hierarchies, and SOX requirements, with documented controls and audit trails;
Identify and implement improvements to budgeting, approval, and reporting processes;
Support maintenance and enhancements related to the marketing planning and purchase order systems.

• Strategic Support & Special Projects:
Support campaign post-mortem analyses, vendor benchmarking, and long-range marketing planning;
Lead label-wide marketing expense analysis, fiscal year marketing budget planning, and spend scenario modeling across various release slates.

Who you are:

• You have a Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, or related field, and 6-8 years of relevant financial planning & analysis experience with supervisory responsibilities.