Head of Brand Marketing

Cohere • Toronto, ON

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

Cohere is building frontier AI for the enterprise. The product is technical. The buyer is technical. The category is loud. None of that exempts us from being a brand people actually want to be near. We're hiring a Head of Brand Marketing to own how Cohere shows up in the world: visually, verbally, culturally, and emotionally. You'll be the senior leader most responsible for what Cohere feels like in a keynote, on a billboard, in a product launch film, on a t-shirt at a conference, in a post that goes around design Twitter on a Sunday night. The goal isn't brand-as-decoration. It's brand as compounding advantage: the reason a great engineer joins us over a competitor, the reason a CIO remembers our name in a procurement meeting, the reason a journalist picks up our story. This is a senior creative and strategic role. You'll set the brand strategy, own our narrative and verbal identity framework, drive our cultural point of view, and partner closely with two creative counterparts who report into the same leader: our Design Director, who leads in-house design and owns Cohere's visual identity, and our Editorial Director, who leads our owned-media, long-form content, and the execution of voice across what we publish. Together, the three of you are the taste filter for everything that goes out the door under the Cohere name. Your job is to set the vision and the brief; theirs is to bring it to life. The best work will come from real partnership across all three seats.

Requirements

• 15+ years in brand, creative, or marketing leadership roles, with at least 4–5 years running a brand or creative function at a senior level.
• A portfolio of work (campaigns, launches, identities, films, editorial) that you can walk us through with conviction. Bring receipts.
• Demonstrated taste. You can hold the room on a creative decision and explain why something is or isn't working, in language that helps the room get smarter rather than nodding along.
• Real fluency in contemporary culture (fashion, music, art, design, film, internet) and a track record of using that fluency to make commercial work resonate.
• Experience leading and developing creative teams (strategists, writers, producers), partnering closely with design, editorial, and social counterparts, and managing external creative partners (agencies, studios, freelancers).
• The ability to operate inside a fast-moving company. You're comfortable with ambiguity, deadlines, and the trade-offs that come with shipping.
• Sound judgment about when to play it straight and when to take a real swing. Both are skills.

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience marketing technical products to technical buyers.
• A network in the design, fashion, music, or publishing worlds we'd be lucky to inherit.
• A point of view on how AI is changing creative work, and how brands should respond.

Responsibilities

• Set the brand strategy: who Cohere is, what we stand for, what we won't be.
• Own Cohere's master narrative and make sure every surface (product launches, executive comms, recruiting, sales decks, partner work) ladders up to it without flattening into sameness.
• Sharpen our positioning at the cultural and emotional level, in tandem with Product Marketing's positioning at the category and competitive level.
• Own Cohere's verbal identity at the framework level: the voice and tone strategy, copy systems, naming conventions, the brand book. The Editorial Director owns the execution of voice in long-form published work, drawing from the framework you set.
• Partner with our Design Director, who leads our in-house design team and owns Cohere's visual identity, as your creative counterpart. You'll set strategy and narrative direction together, brief into the work together, and act as joint taste filters on the most important output.
• Bring strong creative judgment to flagship work. You won't be art-directing layouts, but you should be in the room early, with a point of view, on the work that matters most.
• Set the vision and strategy for Cohere's integrated brand campaigns: the kind people screenshot and send to each other, that build awareness, reframe the category, and earn the right to be remembered.
• Own the brief. Bring the Design Director and Editorial Director in early as your creative partners to build the work itself: design and visual systems on one side, long-form narrative and content on the other.
• Work with the Integrated Marketing leader so brand work amplifies pipeline work and vice versa, without either watering the other down.
• Develop Cohere's cultural calendar: the conferences, fairs, magazines, festivals, screenings, dinners, and collaborations where being present matters more than being loud.
• Identify and run brand partnerships with companies, artists, designers, publications, or institutions whose audiences we want to be in front of.
• Sponsor selectively and well. Pass on most things. Make the yeses count.
• Have a real voice in Cohere's editorial sensibility: what we choose to engage with, the cultural questions we take on, the brand-level work that lands on our owned channels.
• Partner with the Editorial Director, who owns and runs the long-form content engine (essays, films, photography, podcasts, books, owned-media properties), so editorial work and brand work move in the same direction. They run the engine; you partner with them on what feeds it.
• Our Social Lead owns Cohere's organic social channels. You'll partner closely with them on the cultural moments worth engaging, on how the brand shows up in feed, and on the brand-level decisions about what we say, when, and how.
• Keep an ear to the ground across the corners of the internet where culture is actually being made, and bring those signals into the conversation about what we should and shouldn't engage with.
• Own how Cohere shows up in physical space: event design, office and lobby experiences, signage, merch, gifts, books, exhibitions.
• Treat merch as brand. If it's not something you'd wear, we don't make it.
• Lead and grow a team of brand strategists, writers, and producers.
• Partner with three peers who report into the same leader: the Design Director (visual identity and design execution), the Editorial Director (long-form content and voice execution), and the Social Lead (organic social channels). The expectation is real partnership across all four seats: joint planning, shared briefs, shared standards, not a baton-pass relationship.
• Build a creative culture inside the company: high standards, real feedback, and the conditions for great work to happen.
• Manage external partners: agencies, studios, photographers, directors, illustrators, casting.

Benefits

• An open and inclusive culture and work environment
• Work closely with a team on the cutting edge of AI research
• Weekly lunch stipend, in-office lunches & snacks
• Full health and dental benefits, including a separate budget to take care of your mental health
• 100% Parental Leave top-up for up to 6 months
• Personal enrichment benefits towards arts and culture, fitness and well-being, quality time, and workspace improvement
• Remote-flexible, offices in Toronto, New York, San Francisco, London and Paris, as well as a co-working stipend
• 6 weeks of vacation (30 working days!)

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed