Salary: Competitive

Hours: 37.5 per week

Contract: Permanent

Location: Crawley, West Sussex

Closing Date: 2 December 2020 

Many of our staff at Virgin work flexibly and in many different ways, including different core hours or remote working. Please talk to us at your application or interview stage about the flexibility you need. We can't promise to give you exactly what you want, but we are happy to explore what's possible for the role.

In a nutshell

At Virgin Atlantic, we’re just as passionate as we’ve always been about becoming the most loved travel company.

It’s been an uncertain year, for us, for everyone. There’s been ups and downs, some successes, and some sadness. One thing we know for sure – this year has shown that when we combine our brand with the power of amazing people, we make something truly magical. 

Virgin Atlantic is still proudly flying, creating the same fabulous flight experience we’re famous for, and we’re busily laying the foundations for a profitable future. We know that the right people are key to creating success – so we’re looking for someone brilliant to join our team and help us achieve our vision. Perhaps that’s you? We’d love to find out.

In this exciting role as Brand Strategy Manager you'll be accountable for leading ongoing brand planning, campaign development and execution to deliver target brand and commercial objectives. Leading the day-to-day work with our agency partners and preparing the materials for the Monthly Agency and Quarterly Business Review forums to ensure appropriate performance standards are upheld across the partner roster.

In this role you'll support the VP of UK Marketing and Head of Brand Strategy and Activation in the definition of the long-term brand strategy, working flexibly across the wider Marketing team to understand the 360 degree levers to advance our brand. You'll work closely with colleagues in Internal Comms, to generate plans to excite our people across the business and galvanise all parts of the business behind our strategy.

Day to day

• Inspire, coach & lead team to achieve brand and financial objectives, as well as their personal goals. Building outstanding cross-functional relationships across Customer Journeys, Commercial and Digital through effective collaboration and stakeholder management 
• Establish best in class matrix ways of working with internal and external stakeholders to ensure efficiency and efficacy of activity. Participating in key commercial and customer meetings as the marketing representative, providing insight to both sales and marketing on the plan, brand performance and market updates.
• Contribute to the growth of a high performing team, actively seeking ways to personally contribute to the team engagement. Cultivate new digitally led ways of working across markets, building an inclusive and engaged team culture. You’ll leverage external best practice to set high quality standards and inspire others to push the boundaries.
• Lead the integration and delivery of the global brand strategy within internal teams to fully embed new brand positioning across all marketing disciplines. Be a brand owner and guardian with a strong point of view and the ability to articulate this to the business. 
• Drive the business and team towards a culture of consumer-centric marketing planning that is 6 to 12 months in advance, balancing long term ambition and short term activations. Supporting the development of annual plans for all markets for Virgin Atlantic, holidays and cargo which delivers brand & commercial targets whilst fully leveraging synergies. 
• Champion a brand-led activity plan through the business which galvanizes the team around “big initiatives” which drive performance, build excitement & commitment. 
• Lead the end to end development process for brand building activities and campaigns, from brief writing, agency / internal creative team briefing, media planning, creative development, internal stakeholder management to campaign evaluation. Develop and deliver outstanding creative and campaign assets for all markets.
• Lead and collaborate effectively with colleagues across Brand Partnership, Social, PR, CRM, Digital and Retail Marketing to ensure brand consistency across all key initiatives and across touchpoints 
• Manage the day to day relationship with external agencies and Brand Identity team to create campaign collateral that are consumer focused, engaging and cost efficient 
• Spot opportunities for automation and standardisation of activity across customers to reduce costs and lead times for activation, enabling agile quick to market solutions. 
• Partner with the Brand & Customer Effectiveness Manager to generate key insights that inform global brand strategy development, campaign evolution and the shaping of activities. Set robust KPIs for key brand initiatives and campaigns, and guide the team to undertake rigorous campaign measurement, to identify cost-savings areas to maximise working spend 
• Support the Head of Brand strategy & activation to set annual investment and resource priorities across markets. And partner with USA Marketing Manager & International Marketing Manager to ensure budget allocations for brand activations are maximized.

About you

Are you a proven strategic thinker with a consumer-centric approach to developing brand strategy? Then this could be the role for you

Alongside this we're looking for the following to be successful in your application:

• Significant experience in brand management across multiple categories. 
• Proven experience of implementing a brand positioning to meet consumer needs. 
• Experience delivering brand architecture, communication programs, innovation launches and brand activations 
• Proven track record of applying consumer and business insight to shape strategic business and brand plans 
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to create robust analysis and meaningful insights to drive actions and highlight opportunities 
• Proficiency across diverse range of marketing disciplines from advertising, PR, social, content creation and digital.

Does the above sound like you? Then we'd love to hear from you.