Head of Brand and Strategy

Job Description

Join us for a career defining opportunity to establish the blood cancer category and reach more people affected by blood cancer who need us.

Our strategy has set ambitious goals to reach and engage a much larger and more diverse range of people who care about blood cancer. We’re looking for a talented individual to join our Communications department, bringing audience-centric and insight driven brand and strategy experience to help deliver this change.
There are a number of challenges to tackle:

• Blood cancer is the 5th most common type of cancer and yet understanding of it is very low. We want everyone to understand that blood cancer is as big a health challenge as the other four most common types of cancer.
• We have a strong core community of people affected by blood cancer who regularly engage with us, we now need to build on these foundations to significantly broaden and diversify our reach to increase our impact.
• We need to embed audience insight at the heart of all our engagement work, using data to break away from traditional ‘supporter’ and ‘service user’ mentality.
• And to fund growth and impact across all our work, we need to create a step change in our income generation over the lifetime of this strategy. In order to do this, we need to reach significantly more people affected by blood cancer.

We are making good progress toward our engagement goals – earlier this year we were ranked 4th in the YouGov list of top improving charity brands and our fundraising income has grown considerably year on year since 2020 – but we know there is more to do.

This role – you – will be critical to building on this momentum, leading the team that brings together Brand, Strategy and Audience to inform the work of the Engagement directorate, playing a key role in our growth and to help us bring forward the day where no-one dies of blood cancer.

We strive to be a place where the best people do their best work, creating the conditions that have led to a work culture that stands our as one of core strengths.

Key Responsibilities

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES
Audience growth

• Develop and implement a long-term audience strategy to drive growth and diversification, working closely with the Brand and Audience Strategist, Deputy Director of Communications and Head of Mass Marketing
• Design and deliver work that helps us better understand our audiences, their needs, motivations and behaviours and enables us to drive engagement through the funnel. Support the Deputy Director of Communications to embed an audience-centric approach across the organisation
• Develop our work on engaging marginalised communities, demonstrating that we are improving our reach and representation and are welcoming new and missing audiences

Brand strategy and development

• Ensure we continually develop our brand, so we are relevant and inspiring to our key audiences
• Oversee the creation and production of high-quality, impactful multi-channel creative and content from multimedia through to print collateral and merchandise
• Keep abreast of brand and marketing trends across the sector and beyond, identifying opportunities to learn from and apply these to deliver impact

Planning and processes

• Develop and own processes to enable strategic alignment between all marketing, comms and policy campaigning, and fundraising
  • planning and spending time and budget on the right things that serve the needs of our long-term strategy
  • driving growth and engagement across all audiences.
• Guide marketing plans that deliver against strategic objectives and ensure coherence and integration between the Mass Marketing and External Communications teams
• Set and oversee the brand budget to ensure maximum impact and ROI
• Keep abreast of the market and test fresh approaches to ensure our brand and approach remains relevant
• Embrace a culture of test and learn across our engagement work, using analytics to optimise and continually improve

Team

• Be an active member of the Blood Cancer UK leadership team, embodying the values of the organisation and being the brand voice at all times
• Coach and lead a high-performing Brand and Strategy team, setting an ambitious approach, empowering team members to deliver the highest quality work and providing guidance and feedback to ensure their success and professional growth
• Embrace our culture of creativity, collaboration, innovation and ownership within the team

THINGS WE ALL DO

• Promote Blood Cancer UK’s vision, mission and core values
• We’re all fundraisers. This is slightly different for all roles, and your team will have fundraising KPIs and objectives we all work to
• Attend and assist at Blood Cancer UK events and activities as required (NB this involves evening and weekend work)
• Be an effective ambassador for Blood Cancer UK at any activity you attend
• All staff are expected to adhere to Blood Cancer UK’s policies and procedures
• Do any other reasonable things your manager needs you to do

Skills Knowledge and Expertise

Skills, knowledge and experience

• In-depth knowledge and experience of strategy and planning, with evidence of developing and delivering integrated strategies that achieve significant audience penetration and growth
• Experience of impactful brand strategy and development that delivers results
• Significant experience of planning multi-channel, data-driven marketing (including media buying) that delivers impact in reach and activation amongst consumer and professional audiences
• Keen analytical skills with the ability to predict results as well as respond to performance
• Strong understanding of and interest in marketing & media trends.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams and bringing together - and inspiring – internal and external stakeholders to achieve common goals
• Management of brand, creative and/or marketing functions
• Commitment to a culture of continuous improvement, taking learnings from communication outcomes to future work
• Experience of budget and KPI setting and monitoring in line with strategic priorities
• A commitment to equal opportunities and diversity and the aims and values of Blood Cancer UK