VP, Global Marketing

The Role:

Reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, the Vice President, Global Marketing leads the development and execution of brand and communications strategies to promote our vision, engage deeply with our customers, reach new audiences, and drive business growth. This requires a balance of strategic vision and operational excellence, with a passion for customers who put reading at the centre of their lives.

The VP, Global Marketing will support our global mission to make reading lives better.  They are responsible for building a relevant and competitive brand platform, creative system, and compelling communications programs that connect and resonate with new audiences, customers, partners and authors in a cohesive way across all business units.  

An inspirational leader and collaborator, the VP will model a learning-hungry culture, understanding customer needs and crafting solutions to grow brand awareness, familiarity, consideration, reputation and NPS. They will know how to evaluate an international challenger brand and create competitive product positioning, plan integrated marketing campaigns, and engage audiences through product lifecycle communications to support customer acquisition, retention and sales objectives.

They will mentor and develop talented professionals in PR, Social, Content Marketing, Creative Services, Product Marketing and Integrated Marketing Strategy and identify opportunities to build a best in class, centre of excellence for brand marketing and communications, ensuring quality and efficiency across the resourcing mix of full time/freelance/agency partner teams.

The Responsibilities:

Team

• Set the optimal team and external resource support structure and way of working to deliver on the brand and business targets
• Foster a culture of creativity, collaboration, and accountability, ensuring team members have clear roles, goals and development paths.

Operations

• Manage a global budget to deliver on territory-specific targets
• Optimize resource allocation and production investments to maximize ROI
• Manage the 360-marketing campaigns calendar, ensuring integrated plans have the right balance of investment relative to the brand and revenue growth objectives

Brand Building

• Increase brand awareness and consideration
• Complete the new brand guidelines, imagery, photography style and writing guides; train stakeholders to adopt and implement across channels, including but not limited to eReader packaging, ads, retail displays, emails, and gift card designs
• Develop a clear messaging hierarchy that aligns product/service benefits with core motivations of booklovers through the customer journey: from curiosity to conversion
• Use customer research and channel specific insights to create content that has measured impact on consumer intent and customer engagement

Product Marketing & Campaign planning

• Work closely with product, sales and marketing channel leads (B2B/B2C) to develop relevant and competitive positioning, integrated campaign planning and creative support throughout the product/customer lifecycle
• In partnership with regional leads, develop brand marketing strategies that resonate with local audiences but also connect to the global brand promise with creative consistency.

Communications

• Oversee media outreach, product PR and thought-leadership initiatives with agency partners around the world
• Create a cadence of storytelling that elevates employer brand, CEO and executive profile, product/services to enhance visibility, reputation and brand affinity
• Refine and grow influencer marketing programs
• Increase audience reach, follower bases and engagement in social

Qualifications

The Skillset:

• 15+ years of experience in senior brand and/or marketing communications roles, preferably within ecommerce, consumer electronics and/or media/content industries
• Exceptional leadership, communication, and presentation skills
• A proven track record in building and establishing brands, setting strategy, and turning customer insights into compelling creative and campaigns
• Appetite and aptitude to work at pace and scale in a fast-evolving environment
• Ability to attract talent, build and motivate teams, and cultivate effective relationships with agency partners
• Ability to balance vision and passion with streamlined processes, execution and budget management
• A skilled collaborator that can convey complex ideas and plans clearly and persuasively
• Expertise in using analytics, KPIs, and market research to drive priorities and inform decisions
• Bachelor's Degree and/or relevant Post-graduate Diploma
• Both B2C and B2B experience ideal
• International experience an asset

Additional Information

Key Success Factors:

• Experience integrating 360 marketing and communications plans with experience depth in one or more functional practice area
• Ability to influence, lead change and partner across teams
• What-if type thinking and entrepreneurial spirit – could we do this differently/better; balance proven strategies while continuously testing new methods
• Financially savvy; understands how to business case effort vs outcome aimed at material returns for the brand long term and the business short term
• Puts customer insights into action, operating with a global mindset while delivering on local market needs
• Ability to lead and author the work, rather than relying solely on agencies; is also savvy at agency relationship management