Vice President, Integrated Brand Marketing

National Geographic • Washington, DC

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Communications, Marketing and Brand team at the National Geographic Society (NGS) uses creative and strategic tools to further its mission and maintain its position as a trusted non-profit and global brand. The team develops and executes mission-driven brand strategies, integrated strategic communications, marketing, creative, and audience growth efforts across owned channels, partners, and earned media. The VP, Integrated Brand Marketing is responsible for orchestrating a unified brand narrative across all touchpoints, working closely with all Marketing and Communications teams. This role defines high-level brand strategy, ensures tactical execution, and delivers a seamless, consistent experience across channels. The VP will oversee the cultivation of a unifying brand story for the Society, emphasizing and executing a “One Voice, One Brand, One National Geographic” approach, and ensuring the National Geographic brand promise and pillars are authentically expressed across all existing and new marketing, communications, and brand activations. This role also leads customer growth and digital strategies to ensure a holistic digital growth roadmap, clear customer experience, and connected journey across channels, leading to audience growth and engagement. The VP will partner closely with Advancement and Campus & Experience marketing teams to build integrated strategies, ensure coordination and optimization across all marketing, channel, and audience engagement efforts, and act as a business partner to deliver against broader fundraising goals and support Education and Mission Programs. This leader will also amplify efforts supporting major multi-year comprehensive campaigns, including planning and managing all internal and external marketing aspects to achieve impact and goals.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree required.
• Credentials in branding, marketing, business or related field.
• 15+ years of experience in brand building and integrated marketing with experience in content strategy, audience engagement and omni-channel management and deployment.
• Experience building a global brand, developing brand positioning and repositioning, assessing brand risk and maintaining brand standards, including with partners.
• Understanding of the creative process and experience in managing agencies and working with in-house creative teams to develop high quality and effective creative.
• Proven success acting as a brand guardian while strategically assessing and adding partners and advancing growth opportunities.
• Experience building integrated marketing campaigns including digital channels, content strategy and audience growth with experience in executing omni-channel engagement activities.
• Ability to analyze data to gauge success, adjust strategies quickly and efficiently, and forecast growth and engagement goals.
• Technical proficiency and working knowledge of key Martech systems including Content Management Systems, SEO platforms, digital analytics, marketing automation, social listening platforms and audience analytics.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills and meticulous attention to detail.
• Ability to handle sensitive information confidentially and exercise good professional judgment.
• Proven leader and manager with experience developing talent and leading teams to meet deadlines, produce exceptional work, and have fun while doing it.
• Self-starter that is comfortable with ambiguity, able to adapt to change, and can innovate and thrive in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent interpersonal, communication, and relationship management skills.
• Leads by example, displaying highly collaborative, influential and creative approaches to solving problems.

Nice To Haves

• MBA or advanced degree preferred.
• Agency experience or management of an agency.
• Experience in advocacy, non-profit, and/or fundraising space.
• Experience working with a legacy brand a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead and evolve the brand strategy across the Society and serve as a thought leader and key brand liaison to partners, including The Walt Disney Company, that are licensed to amplify the brand leading brand positioning, brand expression and activation and brand guardianship.
• Lead in development of gathering audience insight and market data into actionable brand positioning and compelling reasons to believe that drive differentiation and brand performance.
• Lead the development of comprehensive, integrated marketing plans that align with overarching business goals working across divisions translating business priorities into integrated calendars and seasonal initiatives and ensuring alignment with larger brand priorities.
• Develop marketing strategies and execute multi-channel marketing plans for the Advancement and Education divisions growing impact with donor, educator and learner audiences.
• Defining the short- and long-term objectives and goals for marketing, establishing quantifiable metrics to track progress and ensure all efforts are data-driven and seamlessly integrated with broader fundraising and organizational goals.
• Synthesize market trends, competitive intelligence, and audience insights into a compelling brand narrative.
• Provide strategic direction for brand, creative, marketing, and other teams across the Communications division and the entire Society to produce innovative, compelling work of the highest standard.
• Able to build and execute marketing campaigns and effectively lead the creative development process.
• Serve as “brand guardian” and resident expert on brand guidelines, maintain brand integrity across all initiatives, products, partnerships, activations, and all opportunities, ensuring consistent adherence to brand guidelines and standards.
• Partner with internal teams to vet new opportunities and partnerships and assess how they align with NGS’ brand standards and mission and assess potential brand or reputational risk versus reward and recommend opportunities to leadership.
• Lead team responsible for Society-wide brand training working with key partners to ensure a unified brand voice and determine the appropriate brand education cadence.
• Leads the Society-wide process for developing the comprehensive content roadmaps, annual content and editorial plan and guidelines and multi-channel distribution strategies across partner, owned and other applicable channels.
• Lead Brand and Content Committee that consists of decision makers across the Society to review, evaluate, and make decisions on all audience facing brand and content efforts.
• Perform content audits to assess effectiveness, map content to user journeys, and maintain editorial calendars and work with designers, marketers, and stakeholders to ensure consistent messaging across channels.
• Design and partner across the organization to lead a holistic digital growth roadmap that aligns with high-level business goals for revenue and audience expansion.
• Lead development of an integrated customer experience (CX) across all platforms—website, social and email —to drive engagement.
• Oversee or create high-quality content, ensuring it is optimized for SEO/SEM and user experience (UX) across society channels.
• Utilize customer data and CRM systems to analyze behavioral trends, creating journey maps and identify personalized interactions that drive efficiency and increase retention.
• Lead development, deployment and optimization of NGS channels, including email, web and social in support of broader campaign and audience engagement goals.
• Partner on development of customer data and martech needs supporting digital programs and integrated marketing strategies.
• Develop vision for the team and build innovative solutions and strategies to complex problems, articulate clear goals, KPIs, insights and plans, and move forward key projects to meet business objectives.
• Recruit and manage a team to support the development and execution of ther marketing and brand strategies.
• Lead and mentor junior to mid-level team members to build a culture of high performance, creative thinking, and risk-taking.
• Establish and monitor staff performance and development goals, assign accountabilities, set objectives, establish priorities, conduct annual performance appraisals, and administer salary adjustments.
• Serve as a marketing thought leader and trusted advisor to the CAO and Chief Education and Community Engagement Officer and their Senior Leadership team and participate in key divisional leadership meetings.
• Ensure activities drive agreed to Advancement and Education goals and KPIs as outlined are delivered.

Benefits

• competitive and comprehensive benefits package
• medical, dental, and vision insurance
• engaging and comprehensive wellness program
• 401(k) retirement savings plan with matching contributions after 6 months of employment
• flexible paid time off benefits with up to 22 days of paid annual leave per calendar year (15 days for new hires in their first year, prorated based on the number of pay periods remaining in the year)
• 10 days of sick leave
• 12 paid holidays
• paid winter break between December 25 and 31
• paid parental leave
• adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement
• fertility benefits
• learning and development opportunities
• Lifestyle Spending Account
• pet adoption assistance and insurance
• pre-tax transportation benefits with a generous employer subsidy
• employer-paid life insurance and disability benefit
• variety of National Geographic discounts and perks

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive