Brand & Sponsorship Executive in Manchester

Type: commercial

Firm: Accountancy

Salary: £45 - 50,000

Location: London or Manchester or Leeds

Our client is a top ten Accountancy firm with offices in London and Manchester. We are looking for a Brand and Sponsorship Executive to join them. They are a growing team and partner across the business on all projects from embedding creative thinking across teams to supporting our national charities. They are an ambitious team with an innovative mindset, and will celebrate fresh thinking and embrace change.

You will be reporting to the Head of Brand and will work closely with the wider brand and communications team, bringing to life the core brand objectives, accelerating our awareness and positive perception, with fresh and innovative ideas to achieve the most from your budget.

With a passion for delivering engaging brand plans and creating communication ecosystems for key projects, you will be excellent at connecting with stakeholders and bringing to life our brand strategy through delivering an engaging connections plan, in particular for our sponsorship and experiential programme.

You will have the ability to see the big picture and use insight gained from both our internal reports, employee engagement surveys, middle market business data, and external sources to help identify opportunities to grow the brand further and support our vision to be the advisor of choice to middle market business leaders.

You love collaborating with peers, colleagues and stakeholders, helping them to tell the story of the brand, and ensuring we embed it through all our internal and external activation. In particular, you will work with our employee experience team to support bringing to life activity plans for the CR and D&I teams, working with our internal and external channel teams to develop and support the activity.

Working in close partnership with the Brand and Communications Team, the NIS Team, Marketing sectors and service lines and the International team, you will bring energy and passion to the solutions to inspire our people internally and support the perception of our brand externally.

This is an incredibly varied role, and as the right candidate, you will be highly motivated, inquisitive, adaptable and an excellent self-starter, with the confidence to challenge the status quo and bring the outside in. You will have a strong sense and understanding of the bigger picture, with the ability to get to the heart of an issue connecting with stakeholders of all levels.

Core duties will include:

• Bring your energy and ideas to the strategic thinking on the development of our brand growth opportunities.
• Support the development and implementation of the brand plan with the brand and communications team and the other core functions, including the marketing and people teams.
• Develop insight-led brand activation and connection strategies for your focus areas, creating an integrated approach to building brand awareness and driving brand consideration.
• Develop and implement our sponsorship and brand ambassador programme activity, creating the annual communication plan and embedding the activity with the core comms channels.
• Support the Brand and Communications Project Manager with the brand activation calendar to ensure maximum brand exposure with efficient and effective use of resources.
• Bring to life the brand messaging using the resources of our in-house team and agencies, ensuring it is developed and communicated consistently.
• Collate and analyse market data, bespoke research and internal data sources to spot trends and develop insights, which inform our campaigns and thought leadership, with a passion for building and spreading these stories through a multi-channel approach.
• Support the development and promotion of our culture, community, and inclusion plans, playing a key role in our networks across the firm.
• Support the development and implementation of our brand tracker, managing the research brief with our insights team, and coordinating the execution and reporting with our research partners.
• Regularly review brand performance with the core communication channel leads, to deliver reporting on brand activation, making recommendations to course-correct where necessary.
• Build relationships with key stakeholders including the National Leadership Team, Head of Marketing and Business Development, Head of Digital Communications, Head of Design, and the National Information Service Director, along with key sector and service line partners.
• Play a key role in the brand and communications team, contributing effectively to meetings, presentations, projects and workstreams etc., and demonstrating a collaborative approach within the team.
• Actively manage the brand budget to ensure maximum return on investment and track performance against KPIs.

Ideal candidates must have the following:

• 6+ years brand management experience in consumer, professional services or agency businesses.
• Stakeholder management experience.
• Knowledge across a spectrum of brand marketing disciplines.
• Experience in developing and executing sponsorship and experiential programmes.
• Passionate brand advocate and champion.
• Strong understanding of financial performance measures and factors that influence this.
• Strong understanding of campaign performance metrics.
• A professional, credible and confident communicator, with strong influencing skills and the ability to work effectively, displaying confidence and national authority.
• Excellent project management and coordination skills.
• A proactive and self-motivated individual.
• An active team player.