Financial Services – Vice-president, Marketing, Toronto

Our client, a global leader in the property and casualty insurance industry with corporate headquarters located in the UK, is committed to being an industry leader in providing its customers with a superior customer service and experience. With this commitment in mind, our client is undergoing a digital transformation which will challenge the status quo while establishing new standards for organizational as well as industry wide excellence.

A critical component to this transformation agenda for the Canadian business will be the thoughtful and innovative leadership of the Vice President, Digital Marketing. Leveraging a well-established global brand and global resources this is a unique opportunity to build a creative digital marketing capability with a mandate to work across the organization to help change the way the business serves the market. The successful candidate will bring a creative and pragmatic approach to challenge existing mind-sets to effect change for both the Canadian and global organizations.

This role will appeal to a digital leader with the drive, confidence and sophistication to be the catalyst for change our client and the industry now requires. Individuals comfortable working in slow paced, bureaucratic organizations need not apply!

Scope of Position

Reporting to the Canadian Chief Customer and Marketing Officer and collaborating with the global marketing team, the VP, Marketing will push the envelope in developing and delivering an innovative multi-channel marketing strategy and vision for the Canadian business.

Driving profitable growth by ensuring the company’s customers are provided with continuous value through meaningful content and connectivity will be fundamental to success in this role.

In an ever-evolving digital world, the ideal candidate can see around corners to anticipate opportunities and foresee needs as they are responsible for providing insight and thought leadership to the larger organization.

Functional Tasks

1. Lead, manage, mentor and develop a high performing, multi-disciplinary, agile marketing team with a strong vision and business acumen.
2. Provide relevant, timely developmental feedback on performance; fostering an environment that enables highly creative staff to consistently perform with excellence.
3. Oversee all aspects of campaign planning, digital optimization and channel results across all product lines and businesses.
4. Build and facilitate the development of strong relationships and synergy with all other areas of the business and external vendors including digital agencies.
5. Collaborate with all internal and external stakeholders to develop a marketing strategy and roadmap that aligns to the corporate priorities.
6. Develop a culture and mindset that unleashes and fosters the development of an internal high-value, creative content capability while judiciously and cost-effectively leveraging external agencies.
7. Champion the digital experience to create the best, highest velocity experience for customers to engage, drive consideration, optimize conversion and retain customers.
8. Analyze customer, industry, and market trends to establish long term digital marketing strategies, priorities, and goals.
9. Leverage data and marketing analytics to optimize campaigns, gain insights, set KPI’s, and communicate campaign results to senior management and relevant stakeholders.
10. Evaluate and refine all customer facing digital assets with a focus on driving and optimizing the digital experience for both B2C and B2B customers.
11. Define and orchestrate online marketing, acquisition, and campaigns efforts across all marketing channels including web, A/B, SEM, SEO, paid social, retargeting, webinars, strategic relationships and onsite lead gen.
12. Establish quantitative and qualitative means to assess, measure and communicate the success of ongoing digital experience efforts and define net new demand generation strategies, tactics and programs.
13. Create targeted content and demand generation across all product and business lines.
14. Identify, communicate and manage project risks and/or escalate to management. Anticipate problems before they occur.
15. Establish and maintain succession plans and programs for all positions within the marketing organization to ensure the smooth transition and minimize vacancies for critical roles.

Key Performance Deliverables

Specific measures of performance will be agreed upon with the successful candidate.

Competency Profile

The following define the role of VP, Marketing :

Leading Change
Recognizes when change is necessary. Challenges the status quo and champions new initiatives. Acts as a catalyst to change and stimulates others to change. Develops an effective action plan to implement change and monitors results.

Motivating
Encourages others by creating enthusiasm, a feeling of investment and a desire to excel. Inspires a healthy attitude to work by recognizing positive contributions.

Drive
Adopts an energetic approach. Works towards goals and willingly tackles demanding tasks. Demonstrates capacity for sustained effort and hard work over long periods of time, even in the face of adversity.

Strategic Approach
Develops a strategic plan to realize the vision. Revises strategy in light of changing circumstances. Takes a long-term view of organizational success. Works to clarify long-term organizational goals. Able to stand back from immediate problems in order to focus on more far reaching ideas.

Innovation
Generates new ideas; Challenges existing assumptions; Goes beyond the status quo; Recognizes the need for new or modified approaches; Brings various perspectives and approaches together, combining them in a creative fashion to implement effective improvements.

Industry & Market Awareness
Seeks to anticipate and respond to industry and market changes/challenges by understanding key characteristics, issues and the factors driving them. Aware of competitor’s products, services and position.

Results Orientation
Focuses strongly on achieving agreed upon outcomes and ensures that key objectives are met. Conveys a sense of urgency and drives issues to closure. Aims to improve upon past performance. Establishes aggressive personal targets and strives to achieve them.

Preferred Experience / Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, or related field required; MBA preferred.
• Proven track record of driving highly effective multi-channel, lead-generating marketing programs across both enterprise and consumer segments.
• An innovative digital marketing leader that inspires creative strategic thinking and fosters a constant flow of ideas such that the best ideas rise to the surface.
• Strong commercial orientation with the ability to interpret business requirements and translate those into actionable, practical and measurable marketing strategies.
• Possess a strong sense of urgency and ownership over projects and deliverables.
• The successful candidate will have superior communication and people management skills with a proven ability to motivate teams, instill accountability and achieve agreed upon outcomes.
• Individuals with a proven track record of success working on both the client and agency side will be given preference.
• Has proven ability to deeply understand consumer needs, unearth new insights, and translate learnings into successful new product concepts/launches.
• A catalyst for change, the successful candidate will have a proven record of inspiring teams to deliver transformational change both to the marketing team and the business.

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