Institutional Marketing Strategy Director

Job Description:

Pacific Life is investing in bright, agile, and diverse new talent to contribute to our mission of innovating our business and creating a superior customer experience. We're actively seeking a talented Institutional Marketing Strategy Director

to join our Institutional Retirement Solutions Group (IRSG).

This role can be based in Newport Beach, CA, Omaha, NE, or another approved Pacific Life office location.

As Institutional Marketing Strategy Director, you will serve as a strategic marketing partner to IRSG leadership, helping translate business strategy, market dynamics, customer needs, and competitive intelligence into clear marketing priorities and differentiated market strategies.

The role spans Pacific Life's institutional retirement businesses, including Pension Risk Transfer (PRT), Defined Contribution Lifetime Income (DCLI), Stable Value, and emerging retirement solutions. You will help leadership determine where Pacific Life should focus, how the organization should position itself, which audiences and opportunities matter most, and how marketing can influence growth.

You will bring together market intelligence, customer and audience insights, competitive understanding, positioning, messaging, thought leadership, and go-to-market strategy to help IRSG build preference and strengthen its position in the marketplace.

This is a highly visible leadership role at the intersection of business strategy, market intelligence, marketing strategy, and growth. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable analyzing a market, challenging a business assumption, shaping a narrative, and translating strategy into action.

How You'll Help Move Us Forward:

Lead and Evolve Institutional Marketing Strategy

• Own, activate and evolve the established IRSG marketing strategy, ensuring it remains aligned with business priorities, market opportunities, customer needs, and the maturity of each business.
• Partner with senior business and functional leaders to identify the markets, audiences, opportunities, and priorities where marketing can have the greatest impact.
• Translate business strategies and established marketing priorities into actionable audience strategies, positioning, messaging, content, and go-to-market recommendations.
• Evolve strategic direction along with business goals and strategies for the Institutional content roadmap, ensuring priority themes, audiences, and timing are informed by business objectives, market and customer insights, and go-to-market needs, while partnering with the broader marketing team on development and execution.
• Develop business-specific marketing approaches that recognize the distinct needs and market positions of Pension Risk Transfer (PRT), Defined Contribution Lifetime Income (DCLI), Stable Value, and emerging institutional businesses while maintaining alignment with the established IRSG narrative and strategy.
• Monitor market, business, and competitive developments and recommend strategic adjustments as priorities and opportunities evolve.
• Lead ongoing marketing planning and prioritization, establishing clear trade-offs and aligning marketing resources, investments, and activity to the highest-value business priorities and measurable growth objectives.

Drive Market Intelligence and Competitive Insights

• Serve as a strategic consumer of market, customer, and competitive intelligence, bringing relevant insights into IRSG marketing and business discussions.
• Partner with internal strategy, analytics, research, product, distribution, and other teams to identify and leverage available market and customer insights.
• Monitor key industry, competitor, regulatory, and market developments and assess their implications for IRSG marketing priorities and business objectives.
• Identify gaps in market or customer understanding and help define the research or analysis needed to inform strategic decisions.
• Translate complex market and competitive information into clear, actionable insights and recommendations for business and marketing leaders.
• Bring an external perspective to marketing strategy, helping identify emerging opportunities, shifts in audience needs, and potential areas of differentiation.

Steward Positioning, Messaging, and Market Narrative

• Serve as a steward of IRSG's established positioning, value proposition, and overarching narrative, ensuring they are consistently and effectively applied across marketing initiatives.
• Translate established positioning and value propositions into audience-specific messaging and marketing strategies for PRT, DCLI, Stable Value, and emerging institutional businesses.
• Partner with business and product leaders to apply the established positioning to priority initiatives, launches, campaigns, and market opportunities.
• Identify opportunities where changing market dynamics, customer needs, or competitive activity may warrant refinement or evolution of existing positioning and messaging.
• Ensure consistency and differentiation across institutional marketing efforts while allowing messaging to reflect the distinct needs and maturity of each business.
• Partner with other marketing teams to bring the established positioning and narrative to life across channels and experiences.

Guide Institutional Thought Leadership

• Provide strategic direction for institutional thought leadership priorities, ensuring they align with the established IRSG marketing strategy, narrative, positioning, and business objectives.
• Partner with business leaders and subject matter experts to identify priority topics and opportunities where thought leadership can support market engagement and business goals.
• Translate business priorities and market developments into recommendations for thought leadership themes, audiences, channels, and timing.
• Partner with operations, digital and other marketing resources to ensure thought leadership initiatives are strategically focused and effectively executed.
• Advise on executive visibility, industry engagement, conferences, speaking opportunities, and other external opportunities based on business and marketing priorities.
• Evaluate the effectiveness and relevance of thought leadership efforts and recommend adjustments as business priorities and market dynamics evolve.

Inform Go-to-Market and Growth Initiatives

• Provide strategic marketing leadership for new products, market expansion efforts, strategic initiatives, and emerging growth opportunities.
• Assess market readiness, audience needs, competitive dynamics, and differentiation opportunities to inform go-to-market strategies.
• Partner with product, distribution, communications, analytics, digital, and other marketing teams to translate strategy into execution.
• Help define target audiences, market priorities, value propositions, and channel strategies for priority initiatives.
• Provide strategic marketing counsel on business cases, executive presentations, strategic communications, and other high-priority business materials.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen the connection between marketing activity and the customer and distribution journeys that influence growth.

Measure Impact and Evolve the Strategy

• Establish frameworks for evaluating marketing effectiveness, market impact, and progress against strategic priorities.
• Define meaningful KPIs for marketing strategies, thought leadership initiatives, market engagement, and priority growth programs.
• Use data, analytics, research, and business results to evaluate what is working and where strategy should evolve.
• Regularly assess the effectiveness of marketing investments and recommend changes in priorities, resources, or approach.
• Champion a culture of accountability, learning, and continuous improvement across institutional marketing.

The Experience You Bring

• 10+ years of experience in strategic marketing, financial services marketing, institutional marketing, business strategy, consulting, product marketing, market intelligence, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated experience developing marketing strategies that are directly connected to business growth and strategic priorities.
• Strong understanding of institutional financial services, retirement markets, insurance, investments, asset management, or related B2B financial markets.
• Experience translating market, customer, competitive, and business intelligence into strategic recommendations.
• Proven ability to influence senior leaders and build alignment across complex, matrixed organizations.
• Experience developing positioning, segmentation, value propositions, messaging, go-to-market strategies, or related strategic marketing frameworks.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, and storytelling skills, with the ability to make complex subjects clear and compelling.
• Strong analytical and critical-thinking skills, with the ability to move from insight to recommendation to action.
• Demonstrated ability to operate strategically while working effectively with teams responsible for execution.

The experience you bring:

• Experience in Pension Risk Transfer, Defined Contribution, retirement income, Stable Value, asset management, insurance, or adjacent institutional markets.
• Experience working with institutional buyers and influencers, including consultants, intermediaries, advisors, plan sponsors, institutional investors, recordkeepers, or retirement-focused organizations.
• Experience building or leading market intelligence, competitive intelligence, customer insight, or strategic planning capabilities.
• Experience developing thought leadership strategies and executive positioning programs.
• Experience supporting large-scale growth, transformation, innovation, or new-market initiatives.
• MBA or advanced degree preferred.

What Makes You Stand Out

• You think beyond the marketing function. You understand how markets, customers, competitors, products, distribution, and business strategy come together to create growth.
• You are naturally curious. You want to understand what is changing in the market, why it matters, and what Pacific Life should do about it.
• You turn complexity into clarity. You can take a complicated business issue or market dynamic and turn it into a clear point of view, strategic recommendation, or compelling story.
• You connect strategy to action. You know when to stay at the strategic level and when to translate strategy into specific priorities for the teams responsible for execution.
• You can influence without owning everything. You build trust with senior leaders and cross-functional partners and can move work forward in a highly matrixed environment.
• You understand that differentiation is earned. You look beyond claims and messaging to identify the capabilities, perspectives, and market opportunities that can create meaningful competitive advantage.
• You bring executive presence. You are comfortable challenging assumptions, presenting recommendations, and engaging with senior leaders on complex business and market issues.

Why This Role Matters

This role serves as the strategic marketing connector across IRSG—bringing together business priorities, market intelligence, customer insight, competitive understanding, and marketing execution to ensure the organization's marketing strategy remains aligned to business needs and responsive to the marketplace.

With the IRSG marketing strategy and overarching narrative established, the Director will help activate and evolve that strategy across Pension Risk Transfer, Defined Contribution Lifetime Income, Stable Value, and emerging retirement solutions. The role will translate strategic priorities into focused marketing initiatives, inform future planning through ongoing market and competitive intelligence, and ensure that marketing efforts are differentiated, audience-relevant, and connected to measurable business outcomes.

The position will also look beyond the current roadmap, identifying emerging market opportunities, shifts in customer and competitive dynamics, and future strategic needs that should inform the next evolution of IRSG's marketing strategy.

Ultimately, this role ensures that marketing operates as a strategic business partner—not simply an execution function—helping IRSG strengthen market position, build preference, and support sustainable growth.

You can be who you are.

We are committed to a culture of diversity and inclusion that embraces the authenticity of all employees, partners and communities. We support all employees to thrive and achieve their fullest potential. What’s life like at Pacific Life? Visit Instagram.com/lifeatpacificlife

#LI-TM1

Base Pay Range:

The base pay range noted represents the company’s good faith minimum and maximum range for this role at the time of posting. The actual compensation offered to a candidate will be dependent upon several factors, including but not limited to experience, qualifications and geographic location. Also, most employees are eligible for additional incentive pay.

Your Benefits Start Day 1  
 

Your wellbeing is important to Pacific Life, and we’re committed to providing you with flexible benefits that you can tailor to meet your needs. Whether you are focusing on your physical, financial, emotional, or social wellbeing, we’ve got you covered.

• Prioritization of your health and well-being including Medical, Dental, Vision, and Wellbeing Reimbursement Account that can be used on yourself or your eligible dependents

• Generous paid time off options including: Paid Time Off, Holiday Schedules, and Financial Planning Time Off

• Paid Parental Leave as well as an Adoption Assistance Program

• Competitive 401k savings plan with company match and an additional contribution regardless of participation

You Can Be Who You Are

We are committed to a culture of diversity and inclusion that embraces the authenticity of all employees, partners and communities. We support all employees to thrive and achieve their fullest potential.

What’s life like at Pacific Life? Visit Instagram.com/lifeatpacificlife

EEO Statement:

Pacific Life Insurance Company is an Equal Opportunity /Affirmative Action Employer, M/F/D/V. If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran, you have the right to request an accommodation if you are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career center as a result of your disability. To request an accommodation, contact a Human Resources Representative at Pacific Life Insurance Company.