Creative Social Media and Content Lead (Strategy Lead)

The Role:

Shape History is searching for candidates with 4-5 years of experience in social media and creative content strategy, to fill the new position of Creative Social Media and Content Lead. Working with one of our biggest partners, a philanthropic foundation working to improve the wellbeing of youth in cities around the world,  we are looking for someone with a knack for storytelling and creativity, a passion for social media, and a drive to make a difference.

 If you’re ready for a new challenge in London, let’s talk. 

Hello! We’re Shape History, the social impact communications agency. We work with our partners –  charities, businesses, UN bodies, academic institutions, philanthropic organisations –  on some of the biggest issues facing humanity today, from Climate Change to Gender Equality, Health and Wellbeing to Youth Empowerment. Our vision is a fairer world, and we use communications to get there faster. 

We’re a full service agency, doing everything from strategically advising major institutions, to managing digital presences, to ideating and crafting beautiful content that resonates with audiences. The successful candidate will join our Strategy Team, reporting to an Associate Strategy Director. They will work to shape and activate content strategies across a variety of social media platforms for Shape History and our partners.

How you’ll be shaping history everyday:

  • Running social media accounts: Working across numerous channels, you will develop and administer social media content (text, video, graphics, surveys) that is designed to engage audiences. This involves crafting punchy post copy, ideating content suggestions, drafting content calendars, scheduling content, analysing results and collaborating with the team to make recommendations based on these are implemented. A large proportion of your time will also be to lead on responsive content such as promoting new stories and announcements and administering community engagement. 
  • Community Management: Build communities through fostering and engaging with relevant audiences, from young people, to senior leaders in the UN, to NGOs to build, maintain, and enhance our partners’ online presence and relationships. 
  • Creative and strategic brilliance: Stay focused on the big picture every day when delivering work, prioritising outcomes over outputs. You will ideate innovative social media and content strategies that push boundaries, infuse creativity into every aspect of planning and execution, and continuously seek fresh ideas and innovative approaches.
  • Active Reading and Horizon Scanning: Upskilling and improving knowledge on key issues related to the projects and partnerships you lead on. For example,  keeping up to date with the developments of key issues within the sectors you work in, including key industry events such as COP,  UNGA, or the World Urban Forum. 
  • Storytelling and Copywriting: Day-to-day, you’ll write clear and concise copy for a range of different channels. You will be an expert at adapting tone of voice and ensuring posts and content inform and engage. 
  • Design skills: You’ll be using tools such as Canva to design quick turnaround creative assets for social platforms. You’ll also have our in house creative team to support you.
  • Consulting & facilitating workshops: Joining and facilitating workshops to uncover insights and co-create strategy and activations- both virtually and in person. You will also provide training to our partners across social media and content strategy. 
  • Collaboration: Working  extremely closely with the entire Shape History team (especially Strategy & Creative Leads and our Digital Marketing team) and our partners to support idea generation and implementation –  ensuring all your activities are contributing to agreed outcomes and  strategies. You will also be willing to roll up your sleeves during intensive sprints to support the team with tight deadlines and delivery.

You’re good at… (role requirements)

  • Social Media Management Experience: You are proficient in developing paid and organic creative content strategies across a variety of platforms, primarily LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. 
  • Data-informed storytelling: You know what makes a good, engaging piece of content across different platforms. You can turn data and audience analytics  into content that are understandable, engaging, and relevant to audiences. Sometimes in less than 240 characters! Linked to this, you have a strong understanding of social media KPIs, website traffic metrics and SEO and can use these insights to inform future content strategies. 
  • Creativity: Creativity runs through your veins, and you recognise how essential it is for crafting compelling copy and attention-grabbing content.
  • Strategic mindset: You constantly think about the strategy behind your content and how everything is working to meet it. If content is proposed that doesn’t meet strategic objectives, you will be comfortable advising against it. 
  • Communication:  You possess excellent written and verbal communication skills. You are a strong presenter, are adept at speaking to different audiences, with the confidence to convince them to take action. 
  • Design skills: Confidence in using online tools such as Canva to create content is a must. Full design experience using software such as Adobe Creative Cloud or InDesign would be a nice to have!
  • Agency experience: You will have a couple of years’ of experience working in an agency or creative studio across a number of different social media accounts.
  • Project and time management: You are responsive and comprehensive in your project management, are comfortable speaking with relevant stakeholders, and ensuring deadlines are met. 
  • Stress Management and Adaptability: Adapting when unexpected issues arise, being able to manage and surpass stressful situations. This involves managing a complex and reactive workload. 
  • Clarity and simplification: You can comfortably present ideas to the internal team or our partners in an engaging way that resonates and creates clarity and alignment. 
  • Proactivity: You are autonomous in your approach to work, solving problems that others may not have noticed, and going out of your way to continue learning and growing. 
  • Eye for detail: You are able to give clear, constructive feedback that helps improve the overall quality of work. You are confident in signing off on pieces of work before they go live, ensuring they are of the highest standard.

Additional Note:

As part of this role, you will be leading on creative social media strategies, content and activations for a variety of our partners. Over the next 12 months, up to 50% of your time will be solely focussed supporting one our most exciting partners: Fondation Botnar.

Fondation Botnar is a Swiss philanthropic foundation working to improve the health and wellbeing of young people living in cities around the world. Advocating for the inclusion of youth voices and the equitable use of AI and digital technology, the foundation invests in and supports innovative programs and research, and brings together actors from across sectors to create dialogue and partnerships. The successful candidate will be leading on all aspects of the foundation’s social media presence and will need to show demonstrated interest and enthusiasm in their work to champion and support the wellbeing of young people globally. Please note, a representative from the foundation will also sit on the recruitment panel. 

Race Equity:

We are committed to having an inclusive culture in which everyone feels safe and supported to achieve their potential. We recognise that there is a long way to go in implementing race equity in the sector and we have a robust strategy in place for delivering this at Shape History. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented and minority groups, including those with lived experience of social issues we are working to address. As part of this strategy, we use blind recruitment in our first round of applications. When applying for this role, you will be taken to a Typeform link where you’ll be asked a series of questions.

Remuneration: 

Base salary of £38,000 – £43,000 plus company and personal bonus (between 3-5% base salary)

Recruitment process:

We may review applications on a rolling basis but to give you a general sense of timings:

  • The deadline for applying for this role is Monday 4th December
  • Longlisted candidates will have their CV requested on Wednesday 6th November. 
  • Shortlisted candidates will be given a short exercise to complete by Wednesday 13th December. 
  • Interviews will be held on Wednesday 18th and Thursday 19th November.

Mid-weight Creative

The Role:

Shape History is looking for candidates with over 3 years of experience in the creative industry, to become our new mid-weight Creative.

Do you have the vision to make the world a fairer place, faster and the creative ambition to realise it? Are you a constantly erupting volcano of ideas? Are you a hybrid creative that can jump between words and pictures like a ninja in an art gallery? If this sounds like you, you could be what we’re looking for. 

We’re Shape History, the social impact communications agency. We work with our partners  on some of the biggest issues facing humanity today, from Climate Change to Gender Equality, Digital Health to Human Rights. We’re a full service agency, doing everything from brand books to hero videos, stunts to strategies, and creative campaigns of every size.

This is your opportunity to let your creativity loose, collaborating with a high-level Creative Team to support in the creation of campaign identities and brand activations for our social impact partners. You’ll be the guardian of the ‘big idea’, working closely with strategists, designers, motion masters and our web team to ensure your creative vision comes to life across all disciplines. 

The successful candidate will sit in the Creative team, reporting to either an Associate Creative Director or the Creative Director.

How you’ll be shaping history everyday…

  • Driving the big ideas: You’ll be supporting in the ideating of creative concepts, campaign identities and brand activations. Working with the team in brainstorming sessions, as well as collaborating in internal and external workshops. You’ll help guide concept development and work directly with teams across specialisms, to ideate content and assets that are innovative and break new ground.
  • Bringing your ideas to life in every way: You’ll be part of a growing creative team, which means you’ll need to have your feet in both visual and verbal camps. You can specialise more on either side, but you will:
    • Write with flair: From campaign names and straplines all the way to film scripts and social media copy – you’ll need to turn your ideas into strong messaging that is emotionally provocative and strategically impactful. 
    • Visualise your ideas: You’ll effectively communicate your ideas visually, to guide the design team on the appropriate look and feel for your concepts. Using moodboards and imagery to effectively brief designers and present concepts to partners will be key. 
  • Presenting your big, bold ideas. You will have the ability to create concepts that are big and bold but also realistic within practical constraints. You’ll be regularly supporting pitches for new work, collaborating on the development of pitch concepts and materials, and demonstrating great presentation skills to prospective partners.
  • Creatively strategic: Good creative concepts are rooted in insight. You’ll be working closely with both the Strategy and Creative teams to ensure all insights from our discovery phase are effectively translated into impactful, strategic brand and campaign activations. You’ll be responsible for ensuring  creative ideas are strategic and strategic ideas are creative, you’ll focus on all key touch points of development and activation for maximum social impact at launch. 
  • Keeper of Concept: You’ll also be responsible for overseeing your ideas as the team brings them to life through all design collateral, motion and UX/UI assets. You’ll work with the team to ensure purity and clarity of concept remains true to the brand and/or campaign across all deliverables.   
  • Setting the standard: You’ll be the guiding light for the team when developing assets, setting a high benchmark and ensuring quality control. You’ll be responsible for delivering accessible and inspiring briefs to the designers you work with. You’ll offer constructive feedback, providing regular quality checks, and be responsible for ensuring final sign-off of all deliverables from the project lead. 

You’re good at… (role requirements)

  • Creative industry experience. You have at least 3 years of experience working within the creative industries, with at least 1 of those years working at an agency. 
  • Creativity bursting from the seams. You are an optimistic thinker and have the ability to balance big picture thinking while coming up with concepts that are realistic within certain constraints. 
  • Copywriting. You are a creative copywriter, understanding target audiences and writing convincing and concise copy for both brand activations and campaigns. 
  • Art direction. You have a visual mind and know how to get the look you want for a campaign or activation, able to gather references, describe your vision and oversee the design team’s work on your ideas.
  • Partner relations. You have experience of building trust and demonstrating your knowledge, skill, insight and tact – enacting our core value of compassion. You feel comfortable pitching your ideas and pushing back on your teammates or partners. 
  • Effective communication which is clear, concise, informative and friendly. You’ll be great at communicating creative concepts to partners and confident in pitching your ideas. 
  • High level creative collaboration You’ll know how to leverage presentation skills and tech tools to effectively communicate your ideas and brief creatives of all disciplines and a wide range of partners. You should be skilled in industry standard operating systems including Adobe CC to visualise your ideas, with knowledge of creative development and collaboration tools such as Miro, and the full Google Suite.

Extra bit of awesome:

  • Powering up social impact. Can you show us that you live and breathe social impact? What drives you, what are you passionate about, what pisses you off? Tell us what problems you’ve been working to solve and how you’ve leveraged your skills to make the place a fairer world, faster. 
  • Specialised creative skill sets. It’s an added bonus if you can demonstrate skills in design, motion or production. 
  • Hola. Bonjour. Shalom. Speak another language? Great! 

Race Equity:

We are committed to having an inclusive culture in which everyone feels safe and supported to achieve their potential. We recognise that there is a long way to go in implementing race equity in the sector and we have a robust strategy in place for delivering this at Shape History. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented and minority groups, including those with lived experience of social issues we are working to address. As part of this strategy, we use blind recruitment in our first round of applications. When applying for this role, you will be taken to a Typeform link where you’ll be asked a series of questions.

Remuneration: 

Base salary of £31,000 – £40,000 plus company and personal bonus (between 3-5% base salary)

Recruitment process:

  • The deadline for applying for this role is Tuesday 31st October.
  • Longlisted candidates will have their CV requested on Friday 3rd November. 
  • 3-4 shortlisted candidates will be given a short exercise to complete by Friday 10th November. 
  • Interviews will be held on Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th November.

PR & Marketing Manager

The Role:

Shape History is looking for candidates with at least 4-5+ years of experience across PR & marketing marketing  at either an agency or purpose-led brand. We’re looking for someone with commercial acumen & a track record of delivering high value marketing and media  marketing and media  coverage, a passion for building relationships, and an innate understanding of the social impact/sustainability space.  If you’re ready for a new challenge in London, let’s talk.

Hello! We’re Shape History, the social impact communications agency. We work with our partners (not clients!) –  businesses, charities, multilaterals, and philanthropic organisations – on the biggest issues facing humanity today, from Climate Change to Gender Equality, Public Health to Human Rights. We maximise the power of communications to shape the history of tomorrow, today . 

We’re a full service agency, so our expertise ranges from strategically advising major institutions, to placing stories in the news, creating global campaigns, and crafting pioneering brand identities. The successful candidate will join our Growth team, reporting to our Co-MDs and will be responsible for:

  • Scaling our impact through storytelling: Strategise and execute PR/marketing activities that places our expertise, thought leadership, and quality work in front of new audiences, and amplifies our pioneering internal culture. 
  • Driving new partnership acquisition: implement strategies to raise awareness of the agency with key target audiences that leads to the acquisition of new partner organisations across different markets –  the UK, North America, Europe and Africa.
  • Building brand trust and credibility: Grow the Shape History brand within key target audiences demonstrating evidence of our impact – philanthropy, multilateral institutions, purpose-driven companies, and civil society. 

How you’ll be shaping history everyday:

Shape History is a storyteller’s dream. You will have the space and autonomy to decide how you deliver on the above goals with efficiency and results, although we’ve mapped out key priorities below  – if you have a different take  with these, we’d love to hear your thoughts and be challenged:

PRIORITY 1 | PRESS & COVERAGE – delivered autonomously, with support from the Growth team as and when required.

Raise the agency’s profile within trade and sector press

  • Build relationships with journalists within the creative industries and our key areas of sustainability and social impact including climate, human rights, public health.
  • Identify and secure written press opportunities including press releases, features and OpEds in trade, national and sector press for our team and our work. 

Maximise events & conferences

  • Plan out a calendar of external events & conferences for the team to attend and secure speaking/panel opportunities across sustainability, social impact focus areas, and creative industries. 
  • Attend events acting as a key spokesperson for Shape History, aiming to secure new partnerships. 
  • Work with team members attending events to coordinate valuable on-the-day and follow-up content

Drive impact-focused storytelling

  • Work: Lead the rapid creation of case studies (for the website, proposal decks and award entries)  with project teams, guiding them to create concise summaries of projects that showcase both the expertise of the team and the impact of the work.
  • Culture: Lead on external storytelling/promotion of all internal initiatives including the Environmental, Race Equity and Neurodiversity Steering Groups, as well as the History Shaper Programme to position Shape History as a cultural leader.

PRIORITY 2  | THOUGHT LEADERSHIP – delivered with focused support from Growth team

  • Identify awards & manage submissions: Identify strategic selection of awards, create and oversee application submissions across both creative industries and social issue specific competitions
  • Cultivate existing partner network: Identify, organise and deliver activations (eg. virtual/physical roundtable events) that strengthen partnerships relations, and create new opportunities for referrals/introductions with prospective partners. 
  • Curate thought leadership & content: Work with our team to plan, create, proof and place/post pieces of thought-leadership that spark engagement, as well as produce your own original content that champions the agency’s expertise. 

PRIORITY 3 | DAY-TO-DAY – delivered in collaboration with Growth team

  • Manage & evolve website: Primarily focused on production, upload and promotion of all case studies including visual and verbal content, as well as Hub pieces. Also contributing ideas to evolve new/existing sections of the website. 
  • Manage social channels & newsletter: Support management of content and community across our social channels, primarily Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Mailchimp to grow social following, deepen engagement and build reputation in new sectors.
  • Proposal identification & creation: Support with identifying new proposal/partnership opportunities through routes not already specified, and create high quality proposals, with support from the Growth Team.

ALONGSIDE THESE PRIORITIES, THERE’S A FEW EXTRA FUNCTIONS THAT ARE PRETTY CRUCIAL:

  • Proactive organisation: Manage and organise your own tasks, taking ownership of your responsibilities, ensuring you update relevant stakeholders  on your deadlines. 
  • Champion quality: Ensure work you produce and deliver is of the highest quality prior, with minimal changes needed prior to be signed off. 
  • Manage budgets: Manage and plan out the yearly budget for all marketing activities, making sure resources are being spent in the most efficient way and activities throughout the year stay within budget. 
  • Engage internal team: Engage and excite the wider Shape History team with weekly updates and presentations of marketing priorities.

You’re good at… (role requirements)

  • Agency-specific experience:  Have more than 4 years experience working within an agency or an in-house role in a similar services business. 
  • Strategic mindset: You understand how to move from outcomes, to strategy, to tactics – always making sure everything services a purpose and is working to create impact. 
  • Empathy and compassion: You are confident at having difficult conversations, and supporting our internal team to overcome challenges they are facing. 
  • Communication & Public speaking:  You possess excellent written and verbal communication skills. You are a strong presenter, are adept at speaking to different audiences, with the confidence to convince them to take action. 
  • Design skills: Confident in using online tools such as Canva to create content. Even better, full design experience using software such as Adobe Creative Cloud or InDesign. 
  • Project and time management: You are responsive and comprehensive in your project management approach, feeling comfortable speaking with our partners. 
  • Collaboration: Working collaboratively in a team, as well as independently, and willing to roll up your sleeves during short intensive sprints.
  • Open-minded: Willing to step outside your comfort zone, and work on a variety of new and different outputs to evolve your skill sets. 
  • Stress Management and Adaptability: You feel comfortable adapting your planned course of action when unexpected issues arise, and are able to effectively manage and surpass stressful situations. This involves managing a complex and reactive workload. 
  • Clarity and simplification: With your experience as a strategist, you can comfortably present ideas to the internal team or our partners in an engaging way that resonates and creates clarity and alignment. 
  • Proactivity: Taking ownership and autonomy over your work, solving problems that others may not have noticed, and going out of your way to continue learning and growing.
  • Eye for detail: You can be trusted to look over pieces of work and give clear and critical feedback that helps improve the overall quality of outputs. You are confident in signing off on pieces of work before they go live.
  • Leadership skills: You have managed individuals or a team and understand how to inspire and get the most out of them.

Race Equity:

We are committed to having an inclusive culture in which everyone feels safe and supported to achieve their potential. We recognise that there is a long way to go in implementing race equity in the sector and we have a robust strategy in place for delivering this at Shape History. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented and minority groups, including those with lived experience of social issues we are working to address. As part of this strategy, we use blind recruitment in our first round of applications. When applying for this role, you will be taken to a Typeform link where you’ll be asked a series of questions.

Remuneration: 

Base salary of £40,000 – £49,000 plus company and personal bonus (between 3-5% base salary)

Recruitment process:

We may review applications on a rolling basis but to give you a general sense of timings:

  • The deadline for applying for this role is Monday 4th December.
  • Longlisted candidates will have their CV requested on Wednesday 6th December. 
  • 3-4 shortlisted candidates may be given a short exercise before proceeding to an interview. 
  • Interviews will be held during w/c 11th December.

JOIN THE TEAM

Our team are full of campaigners who genuinely want to create an impact in society. We see the agency as a place for individual and collective evolution. We therefore put an emphasis on training for the team and ensure that everyone can be their full self when coming into the office.
Shape history

WHY JOIN OUR TEAM?

We put the individuals in the Shape History team at the heart of every decision that is made. Here are just *some* of the reasons we think you should join the team.

We run our own internal campaigns to build passion projects with no restrictions. We also have the History Shaper Fund, a public fund that offers grants to young people.

We commit time and financial resources into the two strands of the programme - History Shaper Campaigns and the History Shaper Fund.

We understand that people work best at different times in the day, and either at home or in the office so we're super flexible!

4x per year, the full team comes together to take part in workshops, activities and socials. Previous team days have included axe throwing (not at each other), graffiti spraying and team challenges around London. We also celebrate our values by hosting a Culture afternoon once per quarter.

Each team member is entitled to 24 days of holiday plus a Christmas shutdown period and bank holidays. During Summer months, you finish early on Fridays.

We think that the team has a vitamin C deficiency because the amount of fruit they devour during Monday huddles is ridiculous. Enjoy that, as well as prosecco Thursdays!

Our main priority is our team and the culture that runs throughout the agency. We put emphasis on working with team members to unfold their individual and unique potential.

We value our mental health and think it’s healthy to talk about it at work. That’s why we've partnered with Sanctus, so you can book a 50-minute coaching session each month.

We don’t shy away from talking about money at SH - we actively encourage it! We ask each team member to conduct a self reflective assessment involving writing a salary proposal for the year ahead. We also offer both company and personal bonuses!

For those who menstruate, it’s shitty enough to have to deal with the pain, not to mention the cost. That’s why we offer paid sick days to curl up in bed. We also offer sustainable, zero chemical period products whilst you’re in the office.

We have signed up to the UK government’s cycle to work scheme. We've also partnered with loveelectric - a B Corp with a focus on solely electric cars.