Octagon

Football Marketing Trainee

McLean, Virginia, United States Full Time

THE JOB / Football Marketing Trainee

Are you a hard-working and focused individual who is interested in a career in sports marketing?

This is a hands-on role supporting the sales and marketing efforts for our football clients. The work is heavily outbound-facing identifying brands, finding connections, and helping with closing deals. Success in this role comes from consistent outreach, follow-through, and an interest in driving results. This is a paid, temporary position.

Who we’re looking for is:

  • Highly motivated with ability to work independently and solve problems.
  • Experienced in college athletics or professional sports, and/or has a strong understanding of athlete expectations, communication styles, and schedules.
  • Comfortable initiating brand outreach (email, calls, DMs, LinkedIn) and keeping conversations moving forward.
  • Able to manage shifting priorities, quick-turn tasks, and fast-paced project timelines with steady follow-through.
  • An individual who takes the first step to resolve a problem or address a project they are unfamiliar with, returning with solutions or a proposed approach.
  • Highly organized: keeps trackers up to date, maintains clean spreadsheets (you should love Microsoft Excel & PowerPoint), organizes information clearly, and keeps projects moving.
  • Incredibly detailed: notices formatting, spacing, layout, or visual inconsistencies and ensures materials look ‘client ready’ and polished before being shared.

The work you’ll do…

  • Research brands, helping initiate outreach, pitch relevant clients, and maintain active relationships.
  • Manage client gifting program, sourcing brands, product seeding campaigns, and all related logistics to executing.
  • Support partnership negotiations and logistics, including conversations relating to contracts, payment, invoices, etc.
  • Communicate client updates, requests, needs with internal departments and follow through until resolved.
  • Assist in the coordination and execution of client events and activations.
  • Occasionally travel for camps, brand activations, or recruiting purposes.

The bigger team you’ll join

Where others see complexity, we see possibility.

Octagon is the global sports, entertainment and experiential marketing arm of the Interpublic Group. But if that classification doesn’t do it for you, and it shouldn’t, let’s take it a step further.

We are what we believe. And we believe that while the world of sports and entertainment is full of opportunities and possibilities, sometimes the amount of choice can seem a little overwhelming. Even daunting.

That’s where we come into play.

At Octagon we inspire talent, brands, and our people to see the world for all its potential. We then help break down the complexity and push forward to help our partners make the next right move.

Octagon is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship, disability or protected veteran status.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

We make our careers website accessible to any and all users. If you need an accommodation to participate in the application process, please contact us at JobAppAccommodation@ipgdxtra.com. This email address is not for general employment inquiries or vendors; rather it is strictly for applicants who require special assistance accessing our employment website. Due to volume, messages sent to this email address that are not related to an accommodation cannot be answered.