Freelance Research Manager Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Department: Brand Strategy

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Los Angeles

Reporting To: SVP, Brand Strategy

Compensation: $175,000 - $200,000 / year

ABOUT US

Fulwell Entertainment is a global entertainment company with offices in Los Angeles, New York, and London. We create premium content, build audience communities, develop original IP, and produce live experiences across entertainment, sports, music, and culture.

Our portfolio includes award-winning brands such as UNINTERRUPTED and The Shop, as well as premium television, film, digital, and live-event productions for many of the world's leading platforms, talent, brands, and rights holders. Current and recent work includes The Kardashians, Mind the Game, Starting 5, The Grammys, and the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies.

We're focused on building enduring businesses around great ideas, great talent, and engaged audiences. That means creating content people love, developing new commercial opportunities, and finding innovative ways to connect storytelling, community, distribution, brands, and IP.

Fulwell is a place for ambitious people who like solving hard problems, moving quickly, and helping shape what's next in media and entertainment.

CORE BEHAVIORS

• Be Intentionally Curious: Push boundaries, challenge historical thinking, and incorporate approaches from different industries, geographies, and eras. Venture into your unknown to discover and develop better practices.
• Strive for Creative Excellence: Be bold, curious, and collaborative. Share what you know, learn from what doesn’t work, and support each other in doing great work—together.
• Practice Active Inclusion: Welcome differences and honor the unique narrative of each person and community. Foster a company where cultures are celebrated and perspectives are broadened.

ABOUT THIS ROLE

Fulwell Entertainment is looking for a Director, Brand Strategy to expand the function's capacity across the business, including go-to-market initiatives, Fulwell brands, channels, and IP, priority pitches and RFPs, proactive new business, brand-partnership opportunities, and white-label advertising and marketing engagements.

This role sits at the intersection of audience, culture, brand, and business. The successful candidate will lead defined workstreams, turning audience, cultural, market, and business intelligence into positioning, narratives, briefs, frameworks, and platforms that guide creative and go-to-market decisions. They bring structure to ambiguous opportunities and define the real problem before anyone jumps to a solution.

The ideal candidate combines rigorous thinking, cultural fluency, research and analytical skill, and exceptional communication. They partner comfortably with senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams, lead client conversations, and hold strategic clarity as work moves from early framing into development and execution.

Strategic Development

• Lead assigned Brand Strategy workstreams from initial problem definition through final strategic recommendation.
• Develop brand architecture, positioning, value propositions, messaging, audience strategies, narratives, and go-to-market frameworks that make Fulwell's brands, tentpole shows, and IP more commercially attractive to new and existing partners.
• Translate audience, cultural, market, competitive, category, and business intelligence into clear, actionable strategic choices.
• Identify and frame the underlying business, brand, audience, or cultural problem before developing solutions.
• Build compelling briefs, narratives, frameworks, and strategic platforms that guide creative, commercial, and cross-functional work.
• Lead qualitative and quantitative research appropriate to each engagement's scope and synthesize complex information into original recommendations.

Leadership and Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner across Brand Partnerships, New Business, Creative, Client Experience, Sales, and teams across the company to define problems, shape strategic direction, and maintain continuity through execution.
• Sit within Brand Partnerships and act as a strategic driver of revenue, helping scale Fulwell's brands across partnership opportunities tied to our IP and tentpole shows.
• Shape strategic direction across white-label client engagements, Fulwell brands, channels, and IP.
• Establish a clear objective, audience, positioning, and strategic foundation for assigned workstreams.
• Build strong, influential relationships with senior clients, partners, and internal leaders across disciplines.
• Manage assigned strategic workstreams and coordinate freelance, research, and specialist resources as needed.
• Mentor junior, freelance, and project-based Brand Strategy contributors within assigned workstreams as needed.

New Business, RFPs and Growth Opportunities

• Develop strategic approaches for priority pitches, RFPs, proactive opportunities, and partner-facing initiatives.
• Create narratives and points of view that connect business ambition, audience opportunity, and culture.
• Contribute audience, category, cultural, and partner intelligence to positioning and go-to-market development for Fulwell brands and IP.
• Identify strategically grounded opportunities to deepen client relationships or extend assigned engagements, in partnership with relevant client leads. Bring a proactive point of view on how Fulwell's IP and tentpole shows can be scaled into new partnership revenue.
• Define the scope, inputs, resources, timing, ownership, and intended outputs of additional strategic work before making commitments.

• Eight or more years of experience in brand strategy, communications strategy, cultural strategy, audience strategy, consulting, marketing, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated experience leading significant strategic assignments, client relationships, pitches, or pieces of business.
• Strong command of positioning, audience strategy, cultural insight, research, narrative development, and creative briefing.
• Exceptional strategic thinking, analytical, written, and presentation skills.
• Proven ability to translate complex or ambiguous information into clear recommendations and strategic direction.
• Deep understanding of entertainment, sports, music, media, brands, and culture.
• Experience leading client presentations and senior stakeholder conversations.
• Ability to manage multiple priority workstreams while maintaining strategic quality and clarity.
• Experience directing freelance, research, specialist, or junior Brand Strategy contributors.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

• Priority opportunities begin with a clearly defined problem, audience, objective, and strategic foundation.
• Brand Strategy is engaged early, shaping briefs, framing problems, and informing decisions before solutions are developed.
• White-label engagements, RFPs, proactive pitches, and Fulwell IP opportunities are grounded in rigorous, differentiated, and actionable strategic thinking.
• Audience, cultural, market, and business intelligence is translated into clear strategic choices, not simply reported as information.
• Creative and commercial teams work from sharper briefs, narratives, and strategic platforms.
• Assigned workstreams have clearly defined scope, inputs, timing, ownership, and intended outcomes. Additional work is scoped before it's committed, not added on the fly.
• The function can support more priority opportunities without compromising strategic quality or discipline

LIFE AT FULWELL ENTERTAINMENT

We are looking for team members who are more than just what’s on the page. We value people who take initiative, step in without waiting to be asked, and look for ways to strengthen the work around them. Roles here often grow with the person, and we encourage that. This job description covers the essentials, but not the limits. Opportunities and responsibilities may evolve as the needs of the business do.

COMPANY BENEFITS

Fulwell is proud to offer fully-subsidized individual healthcare options (medical, vision and dental) as well as subsidized dependent care. We provide a competitive 401k employer match, enhanced personal health days, and a strong paid vacation policy. Additional details on these and other company policies may be found in the Fulwell US Handbook.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Fulwell is committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.