Brand Activation Manager – Retail Events in Royston

As we continue our mission to make people and nature happy through chocolate, we're looking for a Brand Activation Manager – Retail Events to join our Marketing team on a permanent basis. This is an exciting opportunity for a creative and commercially minded events professional who knows how to turn great ideas into engaging experiences that customers remember.

You’ll be responsible for creating the strategy, planning the activity and developing practical toolkits that enable our retail teams to deliver fantastic events locally. As well as a competitive salary and a range of company benefits, you’ll receive 50% discount on all products, and a 70% discount for you and your guests when you stay at our Rabot Estate hideaway on the paradise island of Saint Lucia.

Here at Hotel Chocolat, we've adopted hybrid working. This means you’ll join us on site for one day a week (dependant on project work), and for the other four days you can work from wherever you like! The on-site location for this role is our support office, ‘Mint House’, in Royston, Hertfordshire.

What you'll be doing:

• You’ll take the lead on our HC-led activations, from developing the annual activation strategy and calendar through to delivering high-quality customer experiences.
• Your responsibilities will include:
• Developing the activation strategy for HC-led events across our retail stores, cafés, pop-ups, lock-ins and other spaces.
• Defining the audience, objectives, KPIs and positioning for each activation.
• Creating and managing an annual activation calendar aligned to the wider Marketing plan.
• Identifying and securing relevant event spaces and ensuring each event has a clear purpose and engaging content.
• Developing strategies to maximise audience bookings and participation, with the ambition for our events to sell out.
• Creating activation plans for VIP.ME events, working closely with the Loyalty team and retail teams.
• Developing a train-the-trainer approach to equip our store teams with the skills and knowledge to deliver their own customer sessions and lock-ins.
• Creating practical, templated toolkits that enable stores and other teams to deliver local events consistently and to a high standard.
• Ensuring event materials, customer invitations and content are aligned with the Marketing plan and appropriate data governance.
• Maintaining high brand, governance, health and safety standards across all activations.
• Working closely with Marketing to amplify events across relevant channels and maximise bookings, reach and engagement.
• Managing the activation budget and finding creative ways to deliver a net-zero cost to P&L through product and experience sales.

Who we're looking for:

We’re looking for an experienced events and brand activation professional who combines creativity with strong commercial and organisational skills. You’ll bring:

• 5+ years’ experience in event management, brand activation or a similar role.
• A proven ability to develop creative event ideas and turn them into practical, well-executed experiences.
• A strong understanding of how to bring brand stories to life through events and create fun, engaging experiences for customers.
• Excellent project management and organisational skills, with the ability to manage multiple activations and priorities.
• A proactive, self-starting approach, with the confidence to work independently while collaborating effectively with wider teams.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• A passion for creating memorable customer experiences and bringing people together.

It would be great if you also have:

• Experience managing event budgets and delivering against commercial targets.
• Experience writing business cases and securing approval for events or activation programmes.
• Experience working within a retail, customer experience, marketing or consumer brand environment.

Why this role?

This is a chance to play a key role in shaping how customers experience our brand beyond the traditional shopping journey. You’ll have the opportunity to create exciting events, empower our store teams and build activations that drive brand reach, customer engagement and commercial impact. If you’re passionate about events, experiences and bringing brands to life, we’d love to hear from you.

About Us:

We’re not just a chocolate company; we’re a family of chocolate lovers. From luxury gifts to our iconic Velvetiser™ and beyond, we’ve built a brand that’s all about crafting moments of indulgence. Our journey began as a humble mint company, but we soon found our passion for cacao and never looked back. Today, we’re proud to operate over 150 stores across the UK and continue to grow across categories, channels, and territories. Patience, passion, and purpose drive everything we do and just like the perfect cacao pod, our success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of hard work, innovation, and the shared dedication of our customers, colleagues, farmers, and suppliers.