McW Executive Search | McWillson Executive Recruitment

Description:

Lead the creation of a centre of excellence for brand communication informed by market research and balance the growth ambitions for the company’s brand in its markets with supporting very active business units such as mobile financial services, B2B and the Group.

Brand Communication and PR
Ensure that the company and its brands are leveraged consistently and in an integrated manner across all communications-related touch points, adhering to the overall brand strategies in Africa by:

•Creating and implementing the brand communication and engagement strategy, informed by customer insight
•Devising thought leadership, brand and lifestyle PR campaigns based on customer insights to drive awareness and penetration
•Supporting operations to produce and manage the commercial calendar plan
•Creating and leading the digital communications strategy for the brand
•Supporting executive leadership and country managers with their visibility, media liaison and engagement programmes
•Developing joined up brand communications capabilities within the in country marketing, communications and digital teams
•Developing appropriate brand communications toolkits and sharing best practice for implementation by markets
•Playing an active role in the delivery of key projects that require senior leadership and oversight (i.e., strategy updates and contributing to reporting
•Owning relationships with pan-African agencies, media and influencers to support the communications focus of communications teams based in their market.

Customer Insight
•Proactively support operations to generate valuable insights and conclusions from available data and provide tangible recommendations to enable quick and efficient decision making
•Own and oversee regional standard brand and quality trackers
•Define key processes, deliverables and measurable for activities of the commercial team
•Tracking business management information to ensure that our messaging is up to date and compliant with latest financial reporting
•Providing data driven insights to add weight to press releases and external communication
•Business unit and market support
•Making sure that the best agencies are selected and best match support needed per project/event
•Championing ways to make information make sense – using infographics, graphs and images for example

Required Qualifications:

•Master degree, Marketing Communications / Business / Research and Customer Insight
•Educational achievements and experience that demonstrates the requisite intellectual capability to take on and resolve complex challenges
•High caliber external communications professional with at least 10 years of international marketing and/or communications experience in a leading agency environment and/or as part of an in-house communications team at a leading multinational.
•Deep knowledge and understanding of multichannel marketing and communications
•Strong experience in all areas of content creation and production, including editorial planning and production and creative services
•Understanding, affinity and talent for all things digital, as a critical element of the ever evolving communications mix
•A proven track record in leading high performing teams, by developing interpersonal skills and competencies, establishing high communication standards, coaching for improvement and managing high and low performance.
•Experience in implementing research methodologies, both quantitative and ethnographic
•English with good French speaking skills as a bonus
•Strong written and verbal communication skills. Includes the ability to create cogent arguments and simple messages and produce good first drafts (of responses, statements, CEO communications, etc).
•Proven intercultural awareness from living and working in several countries

•World class brand communications expert with great commercial acumen
•Self-confidence, collaborative and robustness required to work effectively as part of a team.
•Ability to work under pressure
•Ability to motivate and provide both strategic direction and hands-on assistance and guidance.
•Ability to manage and orchestrate complex teams and projects at the same time, managing all internal stakeholders with diplomacy and professionalism
•Analytical and passionate about the potential of evaluation, research, insight generation and analytics to transform business and communication effectiveness
•Cultural astuteness: savvy, pragmatic and flexible in how to effect change in different national cultures. Adapts and seeks many strategies to get things done
•Hands-on professional who is able to successfully build a long term approach, while delivering on short term needs
•Strong project management and planning skills
•Strong data analysis skills and data aggregation
– Understanding of research methodologies, both quantitative and ethnographic
– Proven emerging markets knowledge / understanding (previous work in emerging markets-focused communications a distinct plus)

Offer:

Very attractive base salary + bonuses + benefits
Others