Director of Marketing

The Opportunity

As Director of Marketing at Chicago Public Media (CPM), you will drive the strategy, planning, and execution of marketing campaigns across chicago.com, WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times and Vocalo. This role reports to the VP of Marketing & Communications and sits at the center of CPM's audience growth efforts, connecting brand, content and revenue through cohesive, multi-channel marketing.

Your primary objective is to translate organizational priorities into high-impact campaigns that grow audience reach, deepen engagement, and support membership and revenue goals. You will lead campaign development from concept through execution, drive brand storytelling, creative concepting, and copywriting that define how our brands show up in the world, and shape channel strategy that builds our brands and extends audience interaction across social, digital, paid and owned platforms.

In this role, you will serve as a key connector between Marketing, Circulation, Editorial and Membership, ensuring alignment across storytelling, audience engagement and conversion efforts. You will balance strategic thinking with operational execution, building systems and workflows that enable CPM to scale its marketing efforts across a multi-brand ecosystem.

Our ideal candidate is both a strategic marketer and creative strategist; someone who can manage complexity, lead cross-functional collaboration, bring bold ideas to brand storytelling and apply a deep understanding of audience behavior, digital channels, and mission-driven media.

Key Responsibilities

• Campaign Development & Execution: Lead end-to-end development of integrated campaigns across CPM's portfolio, including brand, programming, product, and audience growth initiatives.
• Creative Strategy & Brand Evolution: Lead creative strategy and messaging across social media and content marketing, and help evolve how each of CPM's brands looks, sounds, and shows up in the world. Work with VP to develop brand-specific voices, content frameworks, and creative concepts that keep our brands relevant, distinctive, and growing in reach and engagement.
• Owned & Organic Channel Strategy: Own and evolve CPM's owned and organic channel strategy across email, organic social, and digital platforms. Build engaged communities on social media, grow newsletter audiences, and partner with Editorial and Membership teams to optimize lifecycle journeys through segmentation, testing, and performance insights that drive engagement and revenue.
• Performance & Paid Media Strategy: Bring a strong understanding of performance marketing to plan, optimize, and measure paid campaigns across search, social, and digital channels.
• Team Management & Development: Manage and mentor marketing team members, translating strategy into clear execution plans and ensuring high-quality output.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5-8+ years of experience in marketing, preferably in media, publishing, or mission-driven organizations
• Strong creative strategy, brand storytelling, creative concepting, and copywriting skills, with a portfolio that shows it
• Digitally savvy and fluent in social, content, and platform trends, including short-form video, creators, and emerging formats
• Solid understanding of performance and paid media across search, social, and digital, including influencer and creator partnerships
• Analytical mindset, with the ability to define KPIs, read performance data, and turn insights into sharper creative and channel decisions
• Scrappy and resourceful, comfortable producing work with lean tools and knowing when to bring in agency, freelance, or production partners
• Highly organized, detail-oriented, and comfortable working in a fast-paced environment

Compensation

The expected pay range for this position is $104,000 to $125,000 per ANNUM.

Chicago Public Media provides pay ranges representing its good faith estimate of what the organization reasonably expects to pay for a position. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as (but not limited to the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, departmental budget availability, internal equity, geographical location, and external market pay for comparable jobs.

Working at Chicago Public Media

At Chicago Public Media, we care deeply about our employees as we know attracting, developing, and growing talent is key to our success and enhancing our impact.

Our culture is one where collaboration, diversity of ideas, and innovation are encouraged. We value colleagues who will enhance our culture by bringing new ideas, divergent experiences, and talents to our dynamic workplace.

At Chicago Public Media we believe dedication to a great workplace includes supporting our employees and their families. As a result, we provide a broad and generous benefits package for employees at hire and in the years to come.

Our benefits include a competitive salary and benefits package which includes medical, dental, vision, vacation, holidays, life insurance, disability coverage, retirement savings, and a commuter benefits plan.

The essential functions described above are not all-inclusive and are not intended to create any contractual or other legal commitment. Chicago Public Media may change the content or format of this job at any time in its sole and exclusive discretion without notice.