Director, Marketing & Publicity - Books and Consumer Products

Director, Marketing & Publicity - Books and Consumer Products

Department: Consumer Business

Reports To: Vice President, General Manager - Books and Consumer Products

FLSA Status:

Revision Date:

Position Summary:

We are hiring a Director of Marketing to lead demand generation efforts for frontlist and key backlist titles, to maximize school and library marketing, to equip our sales teams with the highest-quality sales assets, and to insure the highest level of consumer-facing marketing assets. The Director will be responsible for ensuring that a high level of demand is generated for our key titles, for developing long-term and vibrant relationships with institutional customers, and for equipping the sales team with everything they need to sell. The ideal candidate will have deep experience in kids' non-fiction book marketing, a verifiable history of generating demand through a variety of creative tactics, strong experience in school and library marketing, and a history of successfully marketing major brands and series.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Core Focus:

• Demand Generation - Creating strong pre-order and POS results for key frontlist and backlist titles using a combination of earned and paid media
• School and Library Marketing - Developing a vibrant, long-lasting and ever-growing relationship with public and school librarians as well as teachers as a mechanism for consumer demand generation as well as to grow institutional sales
• Sales Support - Arm the sales team with the best marketing assets possible including high impact sales conference programming and the best visual and written marketing assets
• Partnership - Grow the business by deeply partnering with Product Development and with Direct-to-Consumer marketing teams within the enterprise

Specific Responsibilities:

Demand Generation

• Set ambitions pre-order and POS goals for key frontlist and backlist titles and deliver the demand to meet each by:
  • Executing highly effective PR campaigns that result in strong POS
  • Cultivate long-term relationships with key social influencers and deliver impactful influencer support of targeted titles
  • Create opportunity for organic social, UGC, and community building around the brand, key series, and key titles

School and Library Marketing

• Deliver increasing consumer demand and institutional sales by developing an interactive and engaged relationship with school and public librarians as well as teachers by:
  1. Maximizing review coverage in key industry trades of non-consumable content
  2. Execute trade advertising campaigns that are efficient and high in ROI
  3. Execute an industry trade show strategy that focuses on engagement and lead generation
  4. Direct an email marketing program to an ever-increasing list of institutional partners
  5. Create relationships with key institutional influencers and leverage such for awareness and demand generation of key titles

Brand Marketing

• Leverage all available marketing tools to create a strong presence for the Highlights Press, Highlights Learning, and My Highlights
• Create and execute series marketing strategies to establish and bolster key series in the marketplace

Sales Support

• Conduct high-impact sales conferences that inspire teams to sell a high level and arm them with arguments needed to deliver strong performance
• Deliver best-in-class sales and marketing copy that uses every word to convince buyers to purchase
• Oversee the delivery of sales materials and ensuring that the teams have everything they need to make the sales
• Execute a retailer email marketing program to drive sales of key titles and series
• Execute trade advertising as appropriate for books and lifestyle products

Internal Partnership

• Partner with Product Development to explore new categories, series, and products by providing market intelligence and marketing assessments as needed and to maximize positioning including titles, covers, and associated content
• Partner with corporate D2C marketing groups to amplify a wholistic market presence for Highlights that deeply integrates the brand voice throughout retail, institutions, social, community, subscription, and more; be a part of creating a healthy marketing flywheel in which the tactics that each team deploys for its own products also elevate the brand itself and drive demand for products in other Highlights business units in a verifiable way

Consumer Asset Management

What you should show up ready to teach anyone on your first day:

Within your first month, you'll:

• Assess current frontlist title count and refine marketing strategic foci as appropriate
• Assess current year trade show commitments and strategies and make recommendations for adjustments that increase effectiveness
• Evaluate internal and external resources to lay the foundation for team structure and maximizing expertise and time

Within your first year, you'll:

• Develop a reliable system of strong, verifiable demand generation and associated reporting
• Significantly increase the effectiveness of B2B and online copy, sales materials, rep communication of marketing impact, and sales conference programming
• Develop a vibrant, multi-faceted public and school library marketing program that increases institutional sales and consumer demand
• Forge strong relationships with the corporate direct to consumer marketing teams in order to coordinate efforts for maximum impact that begin showing the link between retail sales expansion and healthy demand generation for non-retail products

Supervisory Responsibilities:

Supervises 1 marketing associate with potential for more direct reports as the business expands

Education and Experience:

• Bachelors' Degree in Marketing, Publicity, Journalism, or Media or commensurate experience
• 10+ previous years direct work experience in book publishing marketing and at least 5 years in kids books; experience with brand marketing strongly preferred.

Qualifications:

• A high level of personal business ambition/drive, self-motivation, and autonomy; this is a team that is playing to win at the highest level which brings a need for strong drive and expectations
• Verifiable ability to deliver big PR results, to establish relationships with social influencers, and to deliver high-engagement social campaigns
• Deep understanding of and experience in school and library marketing and its various tactics including advertising, reviews, shows, and email marketing
• Experience in brand/major series marketing strongly preferred
• Ability to thrive in a tangible results-oriented environment that judges the effectiveness of marketing activities through verifiable impact metrics
• Strong copy-writing skills
• Strong attention to detail and excellent follow-through
• Strong interpersonal skills and a demonstrated ability to work collaboratively and cross-functionally at all levels
• Ability to travel up to 15%

Physical Requirements:

Add any physical requirements that are applicable to the position.

• Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer
• Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times
• Prolonged periods of working while standing while exhibiting at trade shows

Reasonable Accommodation Notice Federal law requires employers to provide reasonable accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities. Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job or to perform your job. Examples of reasonable accommodation include making a change to the application process or work procedures, providing documents in an alternate format, using a sign language interpreter, or using specialized equipment.