📍 Location: London or Milan
💰 Salary: €50–65K up to ~20% bonus
🏷️ Industry: Premium Lifestyle / Fashion / Design
Role Overview
A fast-growing premium lifestyle brand is seeking an Activations Manager to lead the planning, coordination, and execution of high-impact retail and experiential activations across key global markets. This role blends trade marketing, retail execution, events, and brand experience — overseeing everything from activation planning and vendor management to on-site delivery, budget control, and post-event ROI evaluation.
Key Responsibilities
- Build and manage the annual activation calendar, covering retail, trade, experiential, and brand events.
- Define activation objectives, scope, deliverables, budgets, and expected ROI.
- Lead end-to-end execution of pop-ups, trade shows, in-store installations, partner events, and other physical activations.
- Coordinate with agencies, vendors, production partners, and internal teams to ensure seamless delivery.
- Oversee production and timely delivery of physical assets, props, displays, and POS materials.
- Ensure visual merchandising consistency across all activation locations.
- Support partner staff with updated brand, product, and training materials.
- Collaborate with Sales, Merchandising, Digital, and Operations to enhance retail performance for each activation.
- Track and report on activation performance, ROI, and budgeting accuracy.
- Produce structured post-activation reports, dashboards, and recommendations for continuous improvement.
What You Bring
- Strong background in retail activations, trade marketing, events, or experiential brand execution.
- Proven ability to manage complex projects with multiple vendors and stakeholders.
- Solid understanding of visual merchandising, retail standards, and in-store experience.
- Skilled in budgeting, vendor negotiation, production timelines, and operational planning.
- Confident communicator with excellent stakeholder and partner management abilities.
- High attention to detail, strong ownership mindset, and ability to deliver under fast-paced conditions.
- Analytical approach to performance tracking and ROI evaluation.
Ideal Background
Candidates coming from accessible premium, fashion, lifestyle, or design-driven consumer brands, ideally within fast-growing, agile environments. Valuable experience includes pop-ups, shop-in-shops, international trade shows, experiential events, co-branded activations, and multi-market retail execution.
A strong plus: experience in brands where creativity, cost efficiency, and operational excellence coexist.
