Head of Sponsorships and Experiential Marketing at Discovery Limited

Job Purpose 

• The Head of Sponsorships and Experential Marketing sets the strategic vision and direction for the organisation’s sponsorship portfolio, ensuring it delivers measurable brand and business impact.
• This role provides strong leadership across the sponsorship function, driving the delivery of high value projects and establishing influential partnerships both internally and externally.
• As a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders, the incumbent provides expert guidance, strategic insight, and thought leadership, while empowering and developing a high performing sponsorships team.

Key Reponsibilities include, but not limited to:

Leadership & People Development

• Lead and develop a high performing team, fostering continuous learning, professional growth and a culture of excellence.
• Encourage creativity and innovation by providing clear guidance, coaching, mentorship and strategic support.
• Ensure the team remains motivated, engaged and challenged, with a strong focus on wellbeing and performance.
• Oversee overall team performance and effectiveness, offering ongoing advice, expertise and best practice insights to empower the team to achieve goals.
• Exceptional communication skills—both verbal and written—with the ability to influence, inspire, and lead diverse stakeholders at all organisational levels, including C-Suite executives, across internal and external environments.
• Strong presentation and public speaking skills, with a track record of delivering persuasive messages that influence decision-making and foster stakeholder buy-in.

Commercial and Financial Management

• Own the annual budget for the portfolio, ensuring efficient planning, allocation and control of financial resources.
• Develop and present robust business cases to secure required financial support.
• Approve and sign off budgets in line with organisational guidelines and strategic priorities.
• Proven ability to negotiate and secure robust commercial rights across all sponsorship agreements, ensuring maximum value, strategic alignment, and long-term partnership success

Thought Leadership & Strategic Direction

• Lead the development of the organisation’s sponsorship strategy in collaboration with key stakeholders.
• Stay informed of global best practices, industry trends and emerging opportunities, integrating insights into sponsorship and marketing strategies.
• Identify, evaluate and negotiate impactful and innovative sponsorship opportunities.
• Conceptualise unique ways to showcase Discovery’s products, benefits and value proposition through sponsorship assets.
• Oversee and guide the group-wide ambassador strategy, ensuring alignment to brand and business objectives.
• Provide strategic leadership for thought leadership events across the organisation.

Sponsorship, Ambassador & Experiential Marketing Execution

• Drive the successful implementation of Discovery Group’s mass participation event sponsorships.
• Leverage sponsorship assets and rights to create meaningful Discovery brand and product benefit opportunities through activations, competitions and integrated marketing campaigns.
• Lead the execution of the organisation wide ambassador strategy, ensuring consistent delivery and brand alignment.

Qualifications

• Required: Completed tertiary qualification (NQF level 7 equivalent)
• Preferred: Completed Masters Degree, South African Chartered Marketer Qualification

Experience

• Required: A minimum of 10-15 years experience heading up a Sponsorships function at a large corporate or serving as a Head of Marketing