Brand Assurance Associate

BRAND ASSURANCE ASSOCIATE

King Features Syndicate, a subsidiary of Hearst is seeking a Brand Assurance Associate to maintain and keep current King Features' Product Approvals System and Creative Asset Center, ensuring all partner products and marketing materials adhere to KFS branding and legal guidelines on a global basis. These support systems are essential to keeping KFS' Licensing/ Marketing/PR businesses functioning efficiently.

GENERAL FUNCTION:

Manage, maintain, and keep current King Features' Product Approvals System and Creative Asset Center, ensuring all partner products and marketing materials adhere to KFS branding and legal guidelines on a global basis. These support systems are essential to keeping KFS' Licensing/ Marketing/PR businesses functioning efficiently.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Serve as primary contact in the product development process; establish and maintain relationships with licensees, agents and brand owners.
• Manage complete product submission lifecycle in KFS' Product Approvals System:
  • On-board new partners by granting them access to the Approvals system and educating them on the KFS submission process during kick-off calls.
  • Read final contracts to understand all rights granted to licensees by brand, characters, product category, distribution channels, final samples required and contract term.
  • Review submissions for King Features' licensed products and marketing materials to ensure they uphold brand integrity standards and legal compliances; flag any submissions that are outside of contract terms.
  • Provide comments to licensees as needed and ensure the corrections are made in resubmission phases; answer partner questions as needed and gather feedback from proprietors when applicable.
    • Facilitate product approvals for international markets with local agent in each territory; gather and communicate launch details to the KFS team
  • Maintain current list of trademarks and legal lines for all properties by territory.
  • Notify Licensing/Marketing/PR teams when product is final by sharing hi-res imagery of the final products and product launch details (date, retailer, territory etc.)
  • Confirm delivery of pre-production and final product samples in-house as detailed in each contract, and coordinate delivery of legally required samples to property owners as needed
  • Provide monthly product submissions by brand report to management.

Present "best of" products to leadership in management meeting quarterly

• Manage inventory in the product closet regularly to ensure final product samples are recorded, archived and accessible.
  • Coordinate charitable donations as needed; closet must be kept organized.
  • Manage special permission requests for art usage on one-off products.
• Manage the Creative Assets/Style Guides system:
• Coordinate the delivery of all final creative files, review for accuracy and load them to the Style Guides system with corresponding metadata
• Adhere to the organizational structure defined for the Creative Assets system to ensure the system remains user friendly and easy to navigate
• Work with Marketing Director to update/replace any creative assets on the system that are not user friendly for all LOBs (must be available in multiple formats)
• Notify team and partners when new assets have been added to the system
• Perform bi-annual review of the creative assets in the system and make recommendation on which assets should be moved to the vault
• Review and manage KFS contract with Mediabox; evaluate system usage on a monthly basis and remove inactive user accounts to avoid overages; renegotiate contract as needed
• Communicate product launch timing to marketing team to initiate marketing/pr planning; coordinate social media support for product launches with social media managers
• Address internal and external business questions (with supervisor support, as needed) and follow through to resolution

QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS:

• Looking for an enthusiastic go-getter who seeks to join a small but very active team;
  must be willing to wear many hats in order to learn and grow within the role over time
• College degree with 3+ years of relevant work experience
• Detail-oriented team player with highly productive work ethic and a proactive attitude
• Appreciation for the importance of process, efficient workflow and effective communication

Exceptionally organized, detail-oriented and able to effectively multi-task

Excels in written and verbal communication

Able to adhere to a tight deadline-oriented environment with a high volume of work

High proficiency in programs that facilitate organization including Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Google Docs, Dropbox, Acrobat Pro, ZOOM, and Teams; Mac experience preferred

Experience using Mediabox Approvals and Style Guide System or similar project tracking/product development programs

Basic knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign

Fundamental understanding of cultural differences across the glob (trends, customs etc.) by territory

Familiarity with consumer products licensing, product development process and experience with contract tracking systems; previous experience with character licensing is ideal; previous exposure to brand management a plus

Studio, production company or entertainment marketing/licensing experience is helpful

In accordance with applicable law, Hearst is required to include a reasonable estimate of the compensation for this role if hired in New York City. The reasonable estimate, if hired in New York is $60,000-$65,000. Please note this information is specific to those hired in New York If this role is open to candidates outside of New York , the salary range would be aligned to that specific location. A final decision on the successful candidate's starting salary will be based on a number of permissible, non-discriminatory factors, including but not limited to skills and experience, training, certifications, and education.

About King Features

King Features Syndicate, Inc. is an American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles, and games to nearly 5,000 newspapers worldwide

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