Vice President, Marketing - Marketing and Communications
Description
Location: Portland OR, Washington DC or US Remote
Current unrestricted US work authorization is required at the time of application for this position.
Position Status: Full Time Regular
Starting Salary Range: $142,000 - $180,000, commensurate with experience.
About Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.
Department Summary
The Marketing & Communications division’s purpose is to amplify and support Mercy Corps’ mission by raising flexible funds, strengthening supporter partnerships and raising our global profile and influence, and fostering team collaboration and connectivity. We boldly share Mercy Corps’ global impact with our audiences, with a focus on building trust, engagement and long-term relationships among our global team members and with our supporters. We inspire financial support and partnership through transparency, inclusivity, creativity and best-in-class storytelling. We work across teams to protect Mercy Corps’ reputation and safeguard our ability to operate. The role of the Marketing department is to guide the direction of Mercy Corps global brand and develop and implement strategies to promote brand awareness and drive a sustainable base of unrestricted financial support, particularly among mass-market supporter audiences.
Position Summary
The Vice President (VP) of Marketing is a bold, ambitious, and action-oriented leader, adept at building brand profile and delivering revenue results through creative and innovative marketing campaigns. This position is responsible for developing, managing, implementing, and evaluating the organization’s marketing plan across paid and owned media channels. The VP of Marketing is a senior thought partner to the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer (CMCO) and the lead senior strategist whose job is to ensure that brand strategies and marketing programs support Mercy Corps’ goals to attract and engage key audiences, meet financial projections, and accomplish mission objectives.
The VP of Marketing will take up the role at an exciting time for Mercy Corps, as we embark on an organization-wide rebrand. The VP of Marketing will be responsible for positioning our organizational brand for the future, prioritizing growth in our supporter audience and ensuring that we steward our existing audiences through our rebrand process. The VP of Marketing will have significant experience leading high-performing teams, and will lead a Marketing Department of approximately 37 team members across Creative, Mass Market Engagement and Operations. The VP of Marketing will ensure that our global brand and marketing programs reflect our sense of hope and personal dignity, build trust with our key audiences and offer them meaningful and exciting opportunities to engage with us on issues they care about.
Essential Responsibilities
STRATEGY AND VISION
- Position our global brand for the future to encourage support and engagement from key audiences. Act as the lead senior strategist for high visibility and investment brand strategy initiatives.
- Guide the direction of our global brand, delivering this through campaigns that bring the brand to life, driving compelling and breakthrough content and partnerships to engage a range of audiences.
- Provide senior leadership to direct marketing, which includes supporter acquisition and renewal, peer-to-peer fundraising, and monthly giving, to meet annual revenue goals.
- Oversee the direction and cross team collaboration of the teams that make up the Marketing department:
- Mass Market Engagement, which defines fundraising and marketing goals and develops brand and performance strategies to achieve them, as well as leading content strategy, asset planning and executing paid and organic tactics across web, email, social and direct mail.
- Creative Team, which develops, maintains, and applies Mercy Corps brand vision, voice, visual style, tools, templates and websites for the global organization.
- Marketing Operations, which is responsible for aligning people, processes and assets to support the strategic goals, campaigns and activities of the Marketing Department.
- Work closely with colleagues from senior leadership, development, programmatic and operational departments to ensure our marketing advances our fundraising, marketing and mission goals.
- Successfully lead marketing functions during global emergency responses and crisis communications.
- Act as a senior leader for Mercy Corps. Step in as acting CMCO as needed.
- Maintain an uncompromised ability to respond quickly to current events with a strong sense of urgency and present insightful interpretations and corresponding recommendations for action.
- Partner with Policy and Advocacy and programmatic teams to ensure marketing advances Mercy Corps’ global advocacy agenda.
LEADERSHIP AND DEVELOPMENT
- Directly supervise Senior Director of Mass Market Engagement, Senior Director of Creative, and Senior Director of Marketing Operations
- Own the annual planning process for the Marketing department and ensure short- and long-term departmental goals and objectives are defined, communicated, and met.
- Clearly and transparently states expectations and is accountable to high standards.
- Lead performance proactively, taking steps to address poor performance that does not meet agency needs.
- Coach, develop and provide feedback to others to help them succeed and achieve their potential.
- Lead the Marketing Department with a vision to develop creative excellence.
TEAM MANAGEMENT
- Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.
- Promote accountability, communicate expectations and provide constructive feedback via regular performance reviews.
- Supervise, hire, and orient new team members as necessary.
- Provide team members with information, tools and other resources to improve performance and reach objectives.
- Contribute to team-building efforts, help team members identify problem-solving options and ensure the integration of all team members into relevant decision-making processes.
Supervisory Responsibility
Senior Director of Mass Market Engagement, Director of Marketing Strategy, Senior Director of Creative, and Senior Director of Marketing Operations
Accountability
- Reports Directly To: Chief Marketing and Communications Officer
- Works Directly With: Senior Director of Development Operations, Development team leads, Executives and Program Leaders
Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills
- Track record of global marketing success at a large organization or company, working with matrixed teams, preferably with a purpose-driven organization
- Vice President-level experience leading high-performing teams for developing, implementing and advancing the strategy, experience, voice, campaigns and capabilities of a brand.
- Experience in executing organization-wide brand execution projects.
- Demonstrable results leading full scale direct to consumer campaigns or integrated fundraising campaigns including digital and offline channels.
- 10-12 years preferably with a purpose-driven organization or corporation. Experience with an agency and/or in-house marketing team also qualifies.
- Ability to understand a complex competitive landscape, effectively steward our brand while raising the organization’s global profile and advancing fundraising goal
- Understanding of emerging marketing trends, including effective use of digital, multimedia and experiential marketing platforms.
- Track record of building creative, productive partnerships with networks of partners and influencers.
- Strong personal network of digital media and creative relationships.
- Understanding of the non-profit humanitarian and international development sector preferred.
Success Factors
A successful candidate will be a dynamic and inspiring leader, partner and team builder. They will be smart, connected, creative and a doer who brings 21st century marketing and communications skills to the table to help bring our brand to life across all touch points in order to advance our mission and capture share of mind, heart and funds. A solution-oriented team player with the ability to strategically and operationally lead teams to develop and implement integrated strategic plans to advance organizational objectives. They drive marketing efforts to advance fundraising goals. The VP of Marketing will show fast, creative and effective leadership during global emergencies. This individual will be a wonderful communicator who is solution and action-oriented who can work well across and within matrixed teams.
Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions
The position requires up to 25% travel in the US and abroad.
Ongoing Learning
In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.
We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.
Equal Employment Opportunity
Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.
We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.
Safeguarding & Ethics
Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.