This was the first brand marketing hire for our team - a marketing team of 10, and company size of ~150.. The title could be for either a Brand Marketing Manager, or a Head of Brand. I tend to flex a little bit on that based on years of experience, the amount of ownership over certain areas, strategic inputs versus execution oriented work, and where you're at as a company.

I typically think of building out my teams with a Head of Product Marketing, a Head of Growth Marketing, and a Head of Brand Marketing. And each of those heads build out their teams below them. When it comes to the sequencing of those, it's typically a growth person and a product marketing person first, and the brand person comes last on that list. And that's somewhat because my skill set is more on the brand side, but also somewhat because earlier stage you need to have shorter term ROI for the roles that you bring on board. And so it's a bit easier to get the other roles approved and pushed through. This role was rounding out the marketing leadership team since we already had Growth and Product Marketing in place.

The phrasing of brand marketing for the role is really intentional. I've seen this role phrased as a Head of Brand, which will bring in a lot of design folks and isn't what you want. Calling it brand marketing specifically is useful. Initially we called it Head of Amplification, which brought in a bit more comms-focused candidates.

I've also used a Head of Editorial for more content-facing brand work. So you can be a bit creative with the title if you have a very particular type of brand work that you envision or a type of specialty that you want this person to come in with.

But I would stay away from a generic Head of Brand because that can lead to some problems down the road when it comes to the design team.

Since this job description isn't worded as a people management role, the goals are a bit more tied to the work. Leading brand metrics ...are people engaging with the content? Are they talking about us in certain channels at a certain volume and scale?

These are relatively typical KPIs based on the "what you'll do section." If we were to elevate the role, I'd say it would be more around some of the lagging indicators: unaided brand recall, share of voice. The idea is as this role grows, those bigger concepts and KPIs will be part of the role.

Over time the things we changed was elevating some of the goals into those more lagging indicators of awareness and share of voice. Adding in a bit more of the team building nature of the work and a bit more of the cross-functional leadership type work where you're trying to manage up and around to get advocacy for your brand.

The idea of growing sustainably was probably unique to this company at the time but I think everyone wants to grow sustainably now.

I believe that you can get a lot of momentum behind your brand without needing to spend a whole lot. And I think that mindset is really important so that you don't come into a brand role assuming you have millions of dollars to spend on big campaigns and things like that.

So I'm interested in: do you know how to make the most of the resources that you have in place and are you thinking about ways to scale exponentially rather than linearly when it comes to the channels that you run? So that's the idea behind sustainability: can you grow in a way that you're not having to put in a dollar for every extra view and impression you want to get?

To find this out I typically ask candidates about their channel experience and if they are able to identify some of those scalable channels, if it's earned media, if it's social media or comms work, if it's community work versus do they only talk about out-of-home campaigns and commercials and big global campaigns.

I also get a sense from when I talk to candidates about a project they were proud of or a highlight of something that they have achieved with their team over the past year or so. They would ideally raise things that are not enormous and gigantic in nature and huge integrated campaigns, but a bit more along the lines of those channels and that scalability.

And then I also listen to the questions that they ask. Are they very curious about how much budget they have to spend? Are they very curious about our appetite for creative resourcing? Or do they exhibit a sense of curiosity and drive to get stuff done regardless of that?

One of the harder skills to find was analytical skills. I think it's somewhat of a unique skill set to find in a brand marketer. They tend to be a bit more on the creative side, at least in my experience. So, do they have the ability to to assess a data set and do they have the ability to think in more of a quantitative kind of way?

I wanted these skills for this role because, one, it makes my job a lot easier when someone else is doing the analytical part along with me for brand, otherwise I have to do it myself. But I think the bigger reason is probably for driving internal alignment and working with stakeholders. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what brand marketing is. Data is the language everyone knows how to speak internally. And so when you're having those conversations with other folks and trying to get support for brand work, I think it's really helpful to be able to bring that analytical lens to those conversations so you can be more effective in your role.

I think a lot of times people think of brand work as just super expensive, super top of funnel, not tied to any sort of business outcomes. Just go do fun, big, splashy, creative things which is not true. A lot of people think of brand as not tied to ROI at all, not tied back to revenue and disconnected from reality in a sense. It could be so aspirational and beyond the day-to-day reality of what people are experiencing in a customer facing role, for instance. So those are some of the big misconceptions that you have to fight against.

But if you bring the data you can show this is what our numbers look like with brand and without brand. You can do pre- or post-incrementality testing. You can show the connection between brand strategy and product positioning. And this is why we use the language that we use.

And then I think the last piece is using brand the connective tissue to getting you where you want to be as a company. A lot of times people are behind the company vision, mission and values and you need to show how brand is a future iteration of where we want to be. And it's pulling us toward that future rather than just out there doing it's own creative thing.

Kevan Lee

I wrote this job description to find the Brand Marketer at Oyster to round out my leadership team.

Role description: Brand Marketing Manager

You will shepherd the [Company] brand, developing and executing a brand strategy that creates lifelong customers and fans. Thanks to you, people know the [Company] brand, love the [Company] brand, and feel a connection to the purpose we serve.

Successful brands are those that develop relationships. We measure this through engaged audience metrics — we want to see our audience scale, sustainably, by ensuring that we’re building a brand that encourages interaction. Specifically, your goals might take the form of:

Email opens / clicks, podcast listens, social engagement rate

Positive brand mentions, branded keyword searches, and referral / website traffic

As the role grows, additional goals may appear for share of voice, aided / unaided recall, and brand sentiment.

Grow the brand through original campaigns and strategy, aligning work with the overall purpose, mission, values, and positioning of Oyster the company & the product

Be on the cutting edge of the latest brand strategies, frameworks, and thought leadership. Filter these learnings into the constant evolution of the brand

Create the space for conversations around brand development and provide resources to elevate the conversation about “branding” internally

Conduct regular market research and consumer insights

Use customer insights and data to evaluate ongoing marketing success of our key brand channels for content and podcasting

Design and execute brand strategies and campaigns

Ensure that all campaigns are delivered at a high quality bar and positioned in line with our current strategy

Oversee the production of brand content from concept through completion

Provide content development, technical implementation, and stakeholder management as needed to ensure successful, consistent brand projects and campaigns

Collaborate with product marketing and lifecycle marketing to create holistic campaigns that improve the audience/customer experience along all parts of the journey

Understand and report on the key metrics associated with the brand and your impact

Be an expert on [Company] brand style and content style

Excellent written and verbal communication skills

In-depth understanding of the company’s current strategy, historical context, and future plans for strategic shifts, new audiences, and product roadmap

Ability to think creatively and to embrace the unexpected

Analytical skills to forecast and identify trends and challenges

Strong experience in digital marketing, content development, and audience-building

Familiarity with the latest trends, technologies and methodologies in digital marketing, design, production, etc.

Ability to form a deep understanding of our customer and how to connect with them through all forms of marketing content

Proven track record of developing effective and engaging storytelling

Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, or equivalent. MBA preferred.

3-5 years of brand management, marketing communications, or related experience

Brand Marketing Manager Job Description at Oyster

Role description: Brand Marketing Manager

About the brand marketing role

Goals

What you’ll do

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