About the Commercial Strategy + Creative Group

The world of sports partnerships has evolved. It’s not just about exposure and awareness-building through signage anymore. Our partners often seek campaigns or programs that will help them achieve specific marketing objectives, require a compelling strategy and big creative ideas. ​ 

The Commercial Strategy + Creative Group (MLSE’s Internal Agency) exists to enhance the fan experience, and we do this by building killer marketing strategies for hundreds of Canada’s top brands each season. ​Our group consists of strategy, account management, and creative specialists who collaborate on the development of diverse and award-winning partnership programs. We work together from brief intake, to strategic development, to creative development and execution with one clear ambition – doing great creative work. Together.  

Our vision: To Enrich Fan Experiences 

For us, ‘great work' is work that deepens fans' relationships with the teams they love. Sometimes we add dimensionality to our fans’ appreciation of our players or rituals. Sometimes we connect fans more meaningfully with their community. Our Strategy team is unconventional; we’re a team of fans ourselves, who are on a constant evolution to understand the things that motivate, excite, and influence our community. We root our plans in a strong expertise of our spaces, teams, and people, and we’re proud to create the blueprints that inspire some of the most meaningful sports business programs in our industry. For us, status quo isn’t enough. 

We are looking for a mid-level Strategist with a passion for sports and culture to join the Commercial Strategy + Creative Group. Reporting to the Senior Manager, Commercial Strategy, this role will focus on the strategic build of sports marketing programs for some of the country’s biggest brands leveraging our teams. As the ideal candidate, you are a strategic, energetic and organized thought-leader, driven to deliver breakthrough marketing solutions rooted in sports and culture. 

In this role you will be asked to:  

• Lead brief intake sessions with MLSE partners, aligning on season-long or campaign-specific marketing objectives for us to tackle through our strategic and creative work 
• Lead the development and delivery of inspirational creative briefs to our MLSE creative teams once the strategy is sold in 
• Lead the development of a strategic direction for our campaigns by leveraging industry-standard strategic frameworks  
• Lead the development of strategy presentations to sell our partners on a strategic direction before briefing in the creative teams 
• Develop high-level campaign thought-starters as jumping off points for our MLSE creative teams 
• Provide strategic feedback to our creative teams once they have gone through the creative development process to keep the campaign on-strategy  
• Help connect our creative work back to the campaign strategy in full-team client/partner presentations once the campaign takes shape  
• Lead research exercises across several areas to guide our strategies: fan research, category research, partner/brand research, cultural research 
• Collaborate on post-campaign reports, clearly outlining how our campaign performed against the objectives/KPIs of our partners  
• Lead the development of case studies and award submissions to help spotlight MLSE’s incredible partnership campaigns 
• Collaborate with our Partnership Development team on pitches that require creative or strategic input  
• Collaborate with our brand teams to determine how our partners strategically integrate to our sports teams’ marketing programs  
• Work closely with other MLSE departments (Digital Labs, Ticketing, Game Ops, Foundation/ Community) for campaigns that require the input of those groups