Brand Activation Manager

• You are entrepreneurial: you see a moment that does not yet exist and you create it

• You negotiate on the phone and at the table, and maintain the relationship well afterwards

• You love structure and planning, and remain flexible enough on the day itself to get the most out of it

• You feel like an owner: what you outsource, you stand behind yourself

• You would rather build the team that can execute it yourself than outsource it to an agency

• You have run events and activations on a serious scale, including the budget underlying them, and you have the network in the Dutch event and sports world that goes with it: venues, organizers, brands, and athletes

• Experience with sports and endurance activations

• You have previously managed or grown a small team

• You have once set up your own event from the ground up, including everything that comes with doing it for the first time

• €4,000 to €5,000 gross per month, depending on experience.

• You work at our Campus in the Van Nelle Fabriek in Rotterdam. An open building with lots of light and a large garden.

• Breakfast, lunch, and dinner from our own chefs using products from our own store, freshly cooked every day.

• 20% staff discount and unlimited Upfront products for personal use.

• A private gym and wellness area with ice baths, sauna, showers, and changing rooms.

• Weekly Hyrox classes and runs with the team.

• A hairdresser at the office every month.

• 24 vacation days per year.

And perhaps the most beautiful: the freedom. You decide for yourself how to approach your work. Within your field, you are the expert, and that is how we treat you. We love to give you the space to come up with and implement your own ideas.

What is real wins.

Upfront is a Dutch brand for (sports) nutrition and supplements. Our mission: to radically simplify the nutrition industry, without fine print or vague claims. We are growing approximately 250% per year, went from €21M to €70M in revenue, and are also building our own stores (Foodstores) which we are rolling out across the country.

We are looking for a Brand Activation Manager. Revenue doesn't build a brand; the moments when people encounter Upfront in real life do: during a marathon, in the gym, at a festival. You hold ultimate responsibility for everything that makes Upfront tangible: the annual calendar, the activations, the budgets underlying them, and all major partnerships and influencer contracts. You determine where we are and where we are not, how it looks, what it can cost, and what it must deliver. You report to Harro, our CMO, and you will further expand the team.

Some weeks you are negotiating a partnership with a brand, an athlete, or an influencer, and building the plan and the objective that goes with it. Other weeks you are immersed in a script, a post-calculation, or the figures from the previous activation to determine what we will and will not do next season. We are looking for someone who performs both types of work with the same sharpness: the big moment and the budget behind it.

From 2027 onwards, we will be organizing events that we set up entirely ourselves, and we do not work with event agencies: what you come up with, you also execute yourself. You manage the calendar and the budgets yourself, build the team that can execute it, and know exactly what every activation delivered at the end of the year.

• Determine the growth strategy and the activation and event calendar for the entire year together with the CMO

• Lead the activation and event team and bear ultimate responsibility for the budgets

• Build events from concept to script to post-calculation

• Negotiate partnerships with brands, athletes, and influencers, each with its own plan and objective

• Manage by the numbers: you know what every activation delivered and choose accordingly

• Collaborate with retail, b2b, online, and content, so that every moment performs across all channels