Marketing & Communications Manager

Last updated: February 2023

The Role:

Shape History is looking for candidates with at least 3+ years of marketing experience, some of which has been at an agency or purpose-led brand, to become our new Marketing & Communications Manager.

Are you looking for a new challenge that gives you the chance to use your marketing expertise to grow the credibility and trust of our social impact agency? Are you a commercially minded person who loves finding creative solutions to build brands and increase partnerships ? Are you proactive, entrepreneurial, and incredibly passionate about social impact? If so, this full-time London based role will be perfect for you.

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, Digital Health to Human Rights. We harness the power of communication to inspire inventive thinking and propel social impact leaders and changemakers to create a fairer world faster.

We’re a full service agency, doing everything from strategically advising major institutions, running social media campaigns, placing stories in the news, creating beautiful content, and developing large scale marketing plans to influence target audiences. An understanding of our services as an agency, how to work collaboratively, and take a strategically commercial approach to marketing are all part of this role.

The successful candidate will join the Growth team, report into the Strategy & Partnerships Director, and will be responsible for:

1. Driving new partnerships: you will work closely with the Growth Team to implement marketing strategies to support the acquisition of new partner organisations across different markets – the UK, North America, Europe and Africa.

2. Scaling our impact through storytelling: you will plan & execute communications and marketing activities that both amplify the impact of our projects and partnerships, as well as the internal impact of the agency covering environmental sustainability, race and gender equity, and progressive business culture.

3. Building brand trust and credibility: you will be responsible for growing the Shape History brand within key target audiences – philanthropy, multilateral institutions, purpose-driven companies, and civil society.

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How you’ll be shaping history everyday…

Management & development of brand channels: you will manage all owned and earned channels and be responsible for our content calendar to achieve the above goals. We’ve broken this down below:

1. PR & Awards

Build relationships with key journalists within the creative industries and our key areas of sustainability and social impact
Identify and secure written press opportunities including press releases, features and OpEd in both trade, national and sector press
Identify strategic selection of awards, create and oversee application submissions

2. Social media & newsletter

You’ll manage content and community management across our social media channels, primarily LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and MailChimp.
You’ll plan and collate creative project updates, and package up the story in a way that resonates with and inspires our audiences.
You’ll be responsible for expanding our community by finding new and unique opportunities to engage in sector discussions and trends
You’ll work with our team to plan, create and post pieces of thought-leadership that spark conversation and engagement.
You’ll manage a limited budget to help amplify key pieces of content.

3. Events & Conferences

Plan out a small calendar of external events & conferences to attend, with the aim of securing speaking opportunities across sustainability, social impact focus areas, and creative industries.
Work with one of the Planning Team to organise and deliver a series of partner virtual and physical events that strengthen partnerships relations, and create opportunities for referrals/ introductions to prospective partners.

4. Website

Liaise with Planners to put in post-project workshops with teams to agree storytelling angles and impact.
Manage production, upload and promotion of all case studies in a timely fashion including visual and verbal content.
Ensure project team members have clear actions and timelines to develop and collate their content in the right format.
Copyedit and proofread content prior to publication.

Development of agency storytelling: you will work with the Ops and People team to increase the appetite to storytell our internal culture across all teams

Processes: Working closely with our Ops and People team to identify core processes and systems that need to be introduced or evolved to optimise agency marketing & communications.

You’re good at…

Marketing: You have at least 3+ years of marketing experience, ideally having worked within an agency or purpose-led brand and can manage working in a fast paced, entrepreneurial spirit.
Proactivity & responsiveness: 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.
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. Thinking outside of the box is one of our values and pushing internal team members beyond their comfort zones is important.
Content creation: Natural flair for strategic thinking about storytelling, with a good design eye, and strong graphic design skills (eg. Canva) to create content.
Confidence: This is key to step into potentially uncomfortable situations, take a lead on calls with perhaps limited prior knowledge and put the team and our partners at ease.
Commercial mindset: You’re interested in how businesses operate and grow, and therefore recognise the importance of processes that need to be put in place and also need to evolve over time. You feel comfortable talking through proposals and budget negotiations.
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: You present and organise information in a clear, engaging way that resonates and creates clarity and alignment.
Time management: Effectively planning and organising how to divide your time between specific projects and activities, balancing the art of flexibility with realism.
Organisation: You know how to handle budgets and timelines and are more than familiar with organising both projects and people.

Extra bit of awesome:

Video editing skills
Existing network of journalists and media contacts in relevant sectors
Knowledge and background in the social impact/charity/political sector, whether that be volunteering or working with charities, campaigns, NGOs, funders, or institutions.

Race Equity:

Diversifying leadership, both within our agency and our sector is a strategic priority in the coming years, at every level of Shape History. We are committed to having an inclusive culture in which everyone feels safe and supported to achieve their potential. 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.

As such, we actively encourage applications from underrepresented and minority groups, including those with lived experience of social issues we are working to address.

Remuneration:

Base salary of £30,000-£40,000 + end of year bonus (5-8% of base salary)

Recruitment process:

As part of our process, we use blind recruitment in our first round of applications. This is part of a wider race equity strategy at Shape History. When applying for this role, you will be taken to a Typeform link where you’ll be asked a series of questions.

Applications will close on Wednesday 8th March 2023 at 5pm GMT. Following this the recruitment panel will notify a long list of candidates by Thursday 9th March, who will be asked to submit CVs – please do not try to submit CVs before you are contacted to maintain the integrity of blind recruitment.

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by Thursday 16th March 2023 and asked to complete a short exercise (this will take no more than 1 hour) and schedule a presentation and interview on Thursday 23rd March or Friday 24th March (between 9.30am – 1pm). We aim to have made a decision by Monday 27th March 2023.