WHAT YOU’LL DO

Nurture Healthy Relationships
As an Executive Project Director at Storyland Studios, you’ll be responsible for three crucial components of the studio’s overall health—nurturing healthy relationships, driving tangible results, and building healthy relationships. Yep, we said the relationship thing twice! We’re a relational organization that relies heavily on a healthy partnership between our Senior Leadership and Project Directors to establish long-term relationships with clients while delivering exceptional work.

Activate the Story
You get brands and love translating them into stories that people can walk into. You intuitively sense what feels right for the intellectual properties you work with. As the Project Director for Activations at Storyland, you’ll ensure that each project under your care honors our client’s brand and extends the story into engaging events, memorable moments, and innovative experiences.

Orchestrate the Production
Great project directors are born leaders with intuitive problem solving muscles. You’re ability to align stakeholders and coordinate the team’s effort displays a strategic mind and a strong project management base. As the project director of activations, you’re the producer “in-charge”. That means you’ll need to become familiar with the client’s industry, business, customers, and pain points. You need to know each phase of development and which disciplines are integral along the way. This “been there, done that” knowledge, enables you to field questions on the fly, coordinate each moving part and ensures the show will go on.

Grow Forward
We’re hiring someone who will roll up their sleeves and add value on day one, but we also believe in the potential of every employee. We want you to grow, we want you to have a growth mindset, and we’ll look to support that growth with the opportunity to work with industry veterans on a wide scope of projects. We see this role as key to helping us expand of our service offerings as we seek to deliver an increasingly holistic approach to storytelling that lifts the Spirit.

THE RIGHT PERSON FOR THIS ROLE

With a wealth of experience in brand activations and innovative pop-up experiences, you will be familiar with running immersive design and production-based projects of all shapes and sizes. Your portfolio and CV will demonstrate that you have successfully lived, worked and installed beyond the concept phase. You will be skilled at assembling and managing project teams, including freelancers and sub-contractors. Ideally you’ll have an established network of resources in which you can call upon to potentially augment the internal Storyland project team. Finally the right person for this role is someone who relishes the opportunity to work on international projects and familiar with the challenges of navigating design, construction and experience projects in emerging markets, like the Middle East.

WHAT SUCCESS WILL LOOK LIKE

For day-to-day success, you will…

• Exhibit flexibility, kindness, and a willingness to learn. Yep, that’s the top of the list!
• Be comfortable in ambiguity and shaping “something” into something extraordinary without paint-by-number instructions.
• Know how to put on a show, and you live by the motto “The Show Must Go On!”—tackling every challenge with a can-do, level-headed attitude.
• Serve as the day-to-day client contact and work to constantly build relational equity and trust with clients, and strategic vendors.
• Be equally comfortable in a boardroom or a fabrication shop floor
• Know what it takes to make an event go off without a hitch, from early concept ideation through project close-out.
• Successfully navigate multiple stakeholder priorities, from IP holders to sponsorship/funding partners to the boots-on-the-ground brand ambassador teams.
• Ensure project priorities are established and clearly understood by everyone on the team.
• Drive to consensus quickly and always mindful of the project’s schedule.
• Understand how to scale and be creative when presented with budgetary challenges. As the first line of defense for scope creep, you know the contract inside and out and are well-equipped to discuss ways to overcome shifting project needs through skilled negotiation.
• Simultaneously protect the guest experience and the bottom line, walking the tightrope of production with experienced steps.
• Understand the nuances of production for temporary activations versus longer-term, larger-scale permanent projects, identifying & prioritizing critical path activities to achieve success.
• Act as the voice of the client to ensure Storyland teams understand the client’s priorities, vision and project intent at all times.
• Have your main, dependable project team on speed dial. You’ve been in the trenches with your team of pros and you can quickly “assemble your Avengers” when called upon.
• Should be well connected with vendors, ideally with experience or active presence in the Middle East, from the following disciplines:
  • Fabricators
  • Installers
  • Media Production
  • App Development
  • Audio & Video
  • Lighting
  • Special Effects
  • Brand Ambassadors
• Set up a regular cadence for feedback with Senior Leadership, as appropriate, all along the project timeline.
• Support sales growth by constantly looking at the client’s needs and what comes next.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING TO THE PARTY

Skills and Qualifications

• 10 years in producing/project managing pop-ups, branded events, temporary brand activations, and experiential marketing tours or campaigns.
• You are dialed in on emerging tech and have experience with mixed reality (AR/VR).
• Experience producing projects in the Middle East with an extra plus for experience producing projects in Saudi Arabia.
• Demonstrate project leadership of a minimum of 3 large activations delivered through opening day.
• Knowledge and passion for Gaming and EGaming a huge plus.
• You have a full grasp of each phase of a complex project and how each discipline integrates for a successful and profitable delivery from contract to opening curtain.
• Knowledge of design management and a strong grasp on project controls and financial tracking
• The ability to develop collaborative relationships across multiple-disciplines that lead to successful results, within the studio and externally – with clients, consultants, and other key participants in the concept, design and delivery process.
• You’re responsive in serving others and anticipate what’s next.
• You’re undaunted by ambiguity. You love shaping solutions to problems, you’re at home in the midst of change and embrace continual improvement.
• High degree of adaptability. You shift gears easily and thrive in a setting where you juggle multiple things at once.
• You have an EQ that matches or supersedes your IQ — we hire just as much, if not more, based on values than strictly intellect or ability. If you’re humble, hungry, and servant-hearted—you’ve found your people!
• You see feedback as a means to growth, rather than criticism.
• While this role will not have a concentrated focus on this market, you’ll be right at home working with or alongside those who do work with cause-based and Christian, faith-based clientele (for projects under our sister studio, PlainJoe).
• You have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience.
• You’re willing to relocate for an advanced period of time should a project require it
• You’re fluent in English-equally able to write or present.