Overview
ESA is recruiting a content and marcomms manager to help us deliver our exciting and challenging future vision. The successful candidate will have a good understanding of the sponsorship industry and allied marketing disciplines, as well as trends in technology, changing customer behaviour and the subsequent shifts in the needs of the wider business community.
This will be a 3-day per week role to begin with, with the possibility of it becoming a permanent role in the future. It will suit an experienced freelance marketing executive. We expect you would spend some time at ESA’s Surbiton Head Office, Surrey, England, but for the most part the role can be managed from home.
ESA: Our Future Vision
ESA truly believes in the power of sponsorship to ‘enable better marketing’. Engaging consumers in their passion points to better their experience and to garner deeper relationships with them for consumer brands. We inspire the next generation of marketers in the power of sponsorship marketing, by developing insights, and innovative thinking, and showcasing best in class sponsorship marketing activations. We underpin this with our commitment to standards and education in sponsorship marketing, to fully equip this next generation.
The Role
This role will be central to everything that ESA does going forward. Working with respective ESA Board members, this role will be the glue that binds our activities together and ensures a consistent message. We must set the sponsorship agenda but still be flexible enough to react in real-time to developing themes.
We must aspire to raise standards, inspire and educate. We must place sponsorship in the wider context of marketing, focussing on business outcomes, lessons we can learn and highlighting best practice. We should be talking about experiential marketing, engagement, partnership and content marketing, digital and business intelligence because they’re all different sides of the same coin: we’re ultimately all trying to engage with people.
We should be setting our sights still further, understanding what impact the technological revolution and ensuing changes in consumer behaviour are having on our industry. We should be looking at other industry sectors and identifying lessons that can be learned or best practice applied to sponsorship.
We should not be afraid to lead from the front: we should be opinionated, not shirk from identifying trends or being creative. If we want to become the go-to resource for sponsorship ideas, information, best practice and thought leadership we need to get onto the front foot.
The role will have specific tasks, including:
- Development and delivery of marketing and communications strategy and plan
- Identification of key themes for the following year
- Ensuring these themes run through all the ESA events for that year (Summit, Knowledge Series, Awards, Diploma etc), working with the Events Director, General Manager & Peter Raymond (ESA Diploma)
- Working with other ESA workstreams to develop and promote content (Education/Mentoring, Junior Board, Policy)
- Creation of specific & relevant content throughout the year to be hosted on the ESA website, promoted to members and shared through ESA social media channels – this will require a reasonable grip on industry trends, events and other key topics to ensure we are not just reacting
- Working with ESA members (with Relationship Director) to capture, create and curate content that supports our positioning, including updating and refreshing existing content
- Promote best practice in the industry through developing inspirational ‘spotlight on’ career profiles and launch of an ‘ask the experts’ Q&A forum on the ESA website and via Twitter
- Identification of and attendance at key events (not necessarily sponsorship-related) under the ESA banner, at which the ESA viewpoint can be reinforced and debated
- Creation of ESA “community” to ensure the debate is continued and our wider membership is and feels it is part of the discussion
- Development of relationships with key figures in trade and wider marketing media to ensure our message is presented correctly
- Development of relationships with complementary marketing industry bodies so that we can share our vision and content with an ever-wider, yet still relevant audience
- The ability also to be reactive and ensure that we don’t miss the opportunity to utilise topical events to amplify our message still further
Desired Skills & Experience
- 4+ years of marketing, PR and sponsorship experience
- Proven journalistic or copywriting skills
- Experience of managing websites and utilising social media effectively
- Organised and able to work with multiple teams
- Ability to identify trends (within and without our industry) and how they might impact on our members/possible future members
- Creative & quick thinker
- Unafraid to start / contribute to industry debates
- Networker, with good existing relationship amongst industry media
- Self starter, uses initiative and comfortable working independently as well as collaboratively
- Results driven
Start date
Ideally February, latest 2nd March 2015
Application closing date
Friday 30th January 2015
To apply, please forward your CV together with a covering letter to the ESA Office via esaoffice@sponsorship.org