We're looking for a freelance media planner dedicated to one of our largest accounts, a national retailer in an aggressive expansion phase — focused primarily on new store growth. This brand is opening 20+ stores a year, and every one of those openings is a local launch. New market, new audience, new community. This role builds the media plans that turn a grand opening into a market entrance.
Our approach is simple: sound national, act local. Each new store market gets its own plan — built from a repeatable launch playbook, then made specific to the market. Local broadcast, out-of-home, geo-targeted digital and social, community partnerships, grand opening moments. The right planner sees each market as its own puzzle, not a copy-paste of the last one.
This role requires organization and adaptability — at any given time, multiple markets will be in different stages of launch, from planning to pre-opening awareness to post-opening ramp. We're looking for someone thorough, diligent, and genuinely curious about the communities the brand is entering, who over-communicates to keep launches on track across internal disciplines and local vendor partners.
Broad understanding across digital and local media channels is necessary. Experience with campaign management tools (or the ability to learn them quickly) is a must. Local broadcast and OOH knowledge are a strong plus — these channels do real work in a store opening.
Responsibilities
- Support the team building localized media plans for each new store market spanning the full launch arc: pre-opening awareness, grand opening traffic, and post-opening ramp.
- Research every new market before planning it — local media landscape, competitive presence, and audience behavior specific to that market.
- Identify local moments, partnerships, and non-traditional opportunities that make the brand feel native to a community from day one, not like a national brand parachuting in.
- Manage vendor communication and campaign implementation across markets: entering buys, trafficking tags and creative, ongoing QA, and coordinating with analytics on tracking setup.
- Maintain organized, accurate flowcharts, budget documents, and billing details across multiple simultaneous market launches — each with its own budget, timeline, and vendor set.
- Collaborate closely with broadcast, performance, and analytics teams to ensure local TV/radio, geo-targeted search, and paid social are working as one system per market.
- Support asset needs, ensuring creative is properly tailored, sized, and localized for each market and channel.
- Stay current on local vendor offerings market to market, and maintain a system for sharing that intelligence with the broader team.
Requirements
- 1–3 years of media planning experience across multi-channel strategies; local market or multi-market launch experience is a strong plus.
- Experience tracking budgets across multiple concurrent campaigns, ensuring spend is both efficient and effective.
- Strong organizational instincts — this role lives in parallel timelines.
- Excellent analysis, reporting, and problem-solving skills; comfort connecting media activity to real-world outcomes like store traffic.
- Excellent oral and written communication, organization, and planning skills.
- Curiosity about people and places — the best local plans come from actually understanding a market.
- Bachelor's degree.
This assignment is anticipated to run from August 4, 2026, through December 23, 2026. While this position is intended to be temporary, there may be opportunities for continued employment should future positions become available and organizational needs align.
Flexible work from home options available.
