The Head of Digital Business Development will oversee higher-value licensing negotiations and relationships with many major digital accounts, including management of direct license negotiation and agreement ownership.
Work with Licensing senior management and the Digital Licensing team on key partner and market-level matters to develop strategy and ensure consistency of licensing across all Media and Digital markets. Manage the Account Relations team member in their partnership marketing work with major digital accounts.
Directly manage other business development-focused team members and engages with other departments tasked with management of business intelligence, digital partnerships, and licensing sales.
The finalist will execute commercial and partnership plans, to maximize revenue opportunities as well as direct-to-consumer audiences. Deep understanding of the licensing and rights management in the traditional and digital Film/TV space is a key element of success.
Responsibilities
Digital Licensing:
- Develop and implement licensing strategies, particularly with regard to evolving licensing solutions for online Film/TV services (FASTs, AVOD, VMVPDs, SVODS, etc.), trends in advertising spending, evolving business models in licensed markets, and other nascent markets.
- Lead negotiation of agreements with higher-value digital licensees, ensuring that long-term strategic considerations are made in individual negotiations and consistency is achieved. Work with direct report and team to ensure the same.
- Identify and direct the analysis of emerging markets and trends in digital entertainment. Collaborate with the team on strategic planning to maximize respective position.
- Liaise with AVP to set and meet revenue goals each fiscal year and provide feedback on targets.
- Establish and manage regularly scheduled business reviews with all top Digital accounts. Develop agendas and lead and present company in portion of such meetings.
- Regularly interface with other departments such as Legal, Accounting, Operations and others to ensure that all “shared service” departments have the information and expertise they need to process and disburse royalty receipts from the Digital Licensing group.
- Engage with Corporate Communications on internal and external marketing and publicity for Digital licensing initiatives.
- Proactively engage with and provide expert analysis to Corporate Planning on industry research and analysis projects.
- Represent company at industry events. Act as a resource both internally and externally to address questions regarding digital media and digital music copyright, along with specific questions about company.
- Support the Core Values and cultivates a culture of diversity and inclusion.
Supervisory:
- Directly supervises departmental employees, including those directly managing bespoke negotiations.
- Carries out supervisory responsibilities in accordance with the organization’s policies and applicable laws. Responsibilities may include interviewing, hiring, and training employees; planning, assigning, and directing work; appraising performance; rewarding and disciplining employees; addressing complaints and resolving problems.
- Manage Director, Account Relations to develop and further relationships with licensees, proposing and executing partnership opportunities.
Background and Requirements
- Proven experience in digital entertainment, in either a rights management, digital service, and/or content-based role
- In-depth knowledge and experience with the following:
- Digital Music Services, Audio Visual experience, directly working on content-based agreements with platforms and/or programming services.
- The online film/TV marketplace (e.g., content providers, FAST, AVOD, SVOD platforms, etc.) and traditional cable/TV.
- US and global digital rights marketplace.
- Advertising spending and market trends, particularly as it relates to ad-supported online services.
- Digital fitness, gaming, social media, and other online services utilizing music preferred
- Interpreting licensing agreements and other legal documents.
- Analyzing data reports to determine trends, potential E&O, and their potential financial impact.
- Music publishing and copyright.
- KPIs across the variety of digital services that company licenses.
- Long-term Forecasting and budgeting in perpetually evolving markets.
- Experience managing account relationships and/or executing on partnership initiatives.
- Proven track record in building business relationships.
- Proven record of outside sales success in the digital space, with significant experience executing agreements with key players in the music, content, and/or performance rights marketplaces.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, especially in the areas of agreement negotiation and partner relations.
- Possess strong analytical skills, own the ability and drive to interpret data, using it to set performance and revenue targets and long-term business goals
- A disciplined approach to managing processes and streamlining workflows
- A dynamic leader and influencer who is able to foster a healthy team culture
Personal Characteristics
The successful candidate will first and foremost be a savvy, fire-in-the-belly executive with a passion for new challenges. The candidate of choice will be driven, solutions-oriented and proactive. Ability to think quickly based on a discipline of constantly educating oneself about the opportunities is also a key element of success in this post.
The ideal candidate will be an astute executive whose results orientation will be coupled with strong team orientation. The ideal candidate will have excellent oral and written communication skills, as well as collaborative and relationship building skills. The finalist will be a detail-oriented and organized team player.
This individual will demand of themselves and others the highest level of personal and professional integrity.
