Associate Head of Strategic Marketing

A high number of candidates may make applications for this position, so make sure to send your CV and application through as soon as possible. The NSPCC's mission is to end cruelty to children in the UK. In order to carry out its charitable work and achieve its strategic objectives, the NSPCC must communicate efficiently and effectively with the maximum possible impact, relevance and emotional resonance to engage all key audiences including supporters, professionals, service users, volunteers and the public across a variety of offline and online channels (paid, owned and earned).

The prime purpose of the NSPCC’s Strategic Marketing team is to deliver timely and effective best practice marketing and compelling strategic marketing priority campaigns and propositions, working in partnership with Brand and Marketing colleagues, and teams across the organisation. Strong leadership, project management and influencing skills are essential due to the need to engage a diverse range of key stakeholders, to work collaboratively across the organisation and to manage external agencies. Resilience and determination are key to ensure campaigns are delivered on time and to budget. Analytical and problem-solving skills are also critical to measure and assess results, define insights and refine activities to continually improve performance.

Job purpose

• Own the development and implementation of our integrated marketing strategy.
• Contribute to the development and execution of the organisation’s overall brand strategy and audience specific strategies.
• Maximise the impact of our audience facing divisions’ most visible marketing efforts and ensure an integrated and coordinated approach to high level marketing.
• Offer strategic counsel to all NSPCC senior managers on marketing.
• Take ownership of high level marketing strategies and media/implementation schedules for the relevant major business area/audience segment.
• Share market specific knowledge, customer insight and new communications techniques with the Communications and Marketing management team and other SMTs.
• Develop and maintain internal and external stakeholder and supplier relationships, identifying and incorporating the best industry-wide standards and establishing best practice.

Key relationships - Internal

• Reports to Head of Brand and Marketing
• Works closely with Director of Communications and Marketing
• Line manager to 3 x communication managers (professionals, children and volunteers)
• Senior management in Brand and Marketing
• Senior management in Public Engagement
• Works closely with all senior managers, including Executive Board to ensure clarity of key messages, integration and adherence to the NSPCC’s brand guidelines

Key relationships - External

• Creative, media and research agencies.
• Peers within the UK charity sector.
• Industry opinion formers, media and other stakeholders.
• Professionals/trade bodies/organisations in charitable sector.

Main duties and responsibilities

• Building and maintaining the NSPCC brand and sub-brand(s): contributing and developing to the overarching and audience specific NSPCC brand strategies by working with internal stakeholders and external suppliers; setting and ownership of brand KPIs; guardianship, internal brand engagement and activation, and stakeholder management through all levels.
• Overseeing paid for advertising campaigns: managing creative teams/agencies and media agencies to develop effective creative strategies and advertising assets, underpinned by strong audience insight.
• Working with Brand and Marketing Planning to develop an overarching annual marketing plan to achieve our objectives.
• Agency relationship management including our creative, media and research partners. Holder of the main agency roster and responsible for developing and implementing an interagency process.
• Be financially numerate and be able to evaluate campaigns – ensure deep understanding of budgets, marketing spend and financial report.
• Strategic planning support as required to develop marketing strategies to maximise awareness and/or income.
• Consultancy support for internal teams in best marketing practice and process including briefing, campaign management and evaluation.
• Development and management of the brand tracking research for both NSPCC and ChildLine brands. This includes questionnaire design and insight dissemination and influence.
• Maintain the highest standards of knowledge on best practice and developments within the marketing industry and the charity sector generally with attention to innovation, legislation and codes of practice.

Responsibilities for all Staff within Communications

• A commitment to safeguard and promote the welfare of babies, children, young people and adults at risk.
• Actively participate in regular department and team meetings, contributing to strategy, discussions and decisions which will be beneficial to NSPCC’s communications activities.
• Maintain an awareness of own and others’ Health and Safety and comply with the NSPCC’s Health and Safety policy and procedures.
• Take personal responsibility for keeping up to date with NSPCC work to end cruelty to children, including securing updates on project and service developments and general NSPCC news.
• A commitment to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people.

Person specification

• Evidence of a substantial track record of success in working in strategic marketing, dealing with a wide range of marketing disciplines including through the line campaigns, digital and social influence.
• Highly developed interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate and deal with people at the highest level in a range of disciplines, and to successfully achieve objectives through these contacts, involving problem solving, decision making, negotiation, motivation, influencing, tact, diplomacy, persuasion and consultancy skills.
• Excellent copywriting and presentation skills with the proven ability to communicate confidently and clearly to senior management level and external audiences.
• Substantial experience of marketing/media budget management and financial planning.
• Understanding of the media and regulatory environment and ability to deliver marketing strategies and campaigns at a high level of execution.
• Excellent ability to plan, monitor, and implement major projects to agreed deadlines often with conflicting priorities.
• Corporate and strategic thinker with excellent proven ability to contribute to the delivery of a communication strategy, ensuring cooperative working and maintaining vision.
• Clear understanding of the strategic role of communications to impact on positive business results.

Safer Recruitment

As an organisation, we are committed to creating and fostering a culture that promotes safeguarding and the welfare of all children and adults at risk. Our safer recruitment practices support this by ensuring that there is a consistent and thorough process of obtaining, collating, analysing and evaluating information from and about candidates to ensure that all persons appointed are suitable to work with our children and adults.

The recruitment and selection of our people will be conducted in a professional, timely and responsive manner and in compliance with current employment legislation, and relevant safeguarding legislation and statutory guidance.

Our principles:

• Always seek to recruit the best candidate for the role based on merit including their skills, experience, motivation and competencies. Our robust recruitment and selection process should ensure the identification of the person best suited to the role and the organisation.
• Committed to diversity and equality of opportunity and will interview all applicants (internal and external) who self-declare at application as having a disability and who meet the minimum requirements in the person specification of the vacancy they are applying for.
• We will make reasonable adjustments at all stages of the recruitment process in order to enable successful candidates who declare disabilities to start working or volunteering their time with us.
• Any current member of staff or volunteer who wishes to apply for vacancies and is suitably qualified will be considered and addressed fairly and objectively based on their merit.
• As an organisation committed to safeguarding, we will ensure all under 18’s joining the organisation will have ongoing risk assessments to ensure their role and activities are safe and appropriate.
• All documentation relating to candidates will be treated confidentially in accordance with the GDPR legislation.