Director, Brand Marketing

Job Description:

Brand Marketing Director, Collective Voice

Rakuten International oversees 7 businesses with over 4,000 employees globally. The brand is recognized for its leadership and innovation in e-commerce, digital content, advertising, entertainment and communications, bringing the joy of discovery and access to more than 1 billion members across the world. Our teams deliver on the company’s mission to delight merchants and customers through innovation, optimism, and teamwork.

Collective Voice is a full-service Creator Marketing agency that does it all, from affiliate to brand partnerships. We connect brands to our network of diverse Creators to produce content that will get – and keep – people talking. We believe in creating real, impactful storytelling – which, by the way, takes more than just great content. That's why we're looking for a Brand Marketing Director to scale the Collective Voice brand and help us tell our story! The Brand Marketing Director will help us achieve our brand goals by developing and executing compelling brand campaigns, product launches, and events that build awareness and affinity. You will partner closely with the Vice President, Marketing to refine the overall brand strategy and differentiation. This role is responsible for uncovering deep creator insights to initiate relevant and effective communications, managing our brand campaigns, press, events, social channels, blog, partnerships, and continually evolving the brand identity to grow our overall positioning in the marketplace. This position will help lead and accelerate growth and market share gain for Collective Voice across all our creator + retail client sectors with executional excellence.

Key Responsibilities:

• Create and lead the brand strategy including all communication, brand channels, partnerships, and events. Humanize the brand voice through owned channel activations
• Bring to life, maintain, and evolve a differentiated brand identity that embodies our mission, values, and team
• Partner closely with the VP, Marketing to evolve our brand strategy, positioning and messaging, continually assessing its effectiveness and impact
• Grow our brand awareness through brand channel investment and strategy. Develop and nurture key brand channels (PR, partnerships, social, events and blog) that build brand awareness and drive new creator acquisition.
• Own brand measurement and reporting across the company, helping lead prioritization, budgeting and resourcing
• Lead our PR and positioning strategy by creating features and stories based on data, insights, and brand storytelling that we can pitch to publications, partners, and the broader audience to build awareness, trust and engagement.
• Partner with the performance marketing + paid media teams on full funnel strategies in pursuit of customer acquisition & growth goals
• Build and grow social media presence by developing voice, brand pillars and video-first content creation
• Lead the marketing research pipeline, partnering closely with the data team to develop and share deep understanding of our creators
• Manage a team of 3-4 individual contributors to deliver on our brand potential
  
  

Minimum Requirements:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Strategic Thinking + Influence:

• You can craft a brand strategy with your eyes closed, and architect a 360 GTM ensuring alignment with overall business objectives.
• You anticipate market shifts and proactively identify opportunities for brand expansion and market gains.
• You have a proven ability to prioritize and right size competing initiatives based on XFN needs, asks, and expectations.
• You are a brand-centric marketer and creative who advocates customer-first thinking and influence others to come along on the journey
  
  

Holistic Brand Oversight:

• You have proven success in activating existing and emerging brand channels to drive brand awareness at scale and elevate company reputation within industry.
• You are equally comfortable leveraging insights as you are providing creative feedback.
• You are a brand champion constantly reinforcing and threading brand positioning + unique POD across all channels and marketing assets.
  
  

Data Informed Decision Making and Storytelling:

• You infuse vigor and a test and learn framework into exploring new initiatives to ensure marketing programs remain ROI positive.
• You are a compelling storyteller, ability to leverage proprietary insights and internal data to craft culturally relevant narratives.
• You can "connect the dots" of our business, customers, industry, and partners to create new story angles that catch the attention of press and customers
• You are a self-starter and creative problem solver
• You bring a positive attitude to any challenge
  
  

Servant Leadership + Project Management:

• You are a team champion and embody the culture of Collective Voice and the Shugi Rakuten Principles
• You have a high aptitude in influencer marketing and experience leading teams across multiple marketing disciplines (PR, media relations, influencer events and social channels)
• You are able to tailor your leadership style to best serve different team members’ needs
• You have strong project management skills with a keen eye for detail
  
  

Qualification Requirements:

• 6+ years of experience in brand strategy and/or brand marketing
• 3+ years managing a team
• Bachelor's degree required, MBA preferred.
  
  

Five Principles for Success

Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen

Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best

Hypothesize - Practice - Validate – Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory

Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile

Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team

Rakuten provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type. Rakuten considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, provincial or local laws.

At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the base compensation for this role to be within the range shown below. Individual compensation will vary based on job-related factors, including the skills, qualifications, and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location. The successful applicant for this role will be eligible for discretionary bonus, health, vision, dental insurance, 401k matching, PTO, Volunteer Time Off (VTO), and other employee benefits as the company implements.

USD $99,306.00 - $171,612.00 annually