About the role
Consumer PR Manager
£45 - £55,000.00 pa + Bonus + Pension + BUPA + ShareSave + 6.6 weeks holiday + hybrid working (1 day per week in our Southampton Office)
We understand the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance, so all of our roles are open to flexible and hybrid working.
We believe anyone can improve their home to make life better. From our Southampton Store Support office (SSO) we equip our stores, our people, and our whole business with everything it takes to help our millions of customers create a home they'll love. Join us as a Consumer PR Manager and you'll be a big part of this.
Key responsibilities
This exciting role is responsible for ensuring B&Q is seen as the number 1 place for home improvement by consistently generating fresh ideas that drive fame and advocacy. We want to champion B&Q hero products and services in the most engaging way possible through smart thinking and curated opportunities. As a core member of the Content, Social & PR Team, this role will lead B&Q's consumer facing, earned communications output, on time and to budget.
As Consumer PR Manager you will:
Manage Consumer press office:
- Lead PR agency to identify relevant PR opportunities to promote brand reputation and enhance consumer brand preference and/or desire e.g. via topical/cultural moments with content that consumers easily connect with (relevant, real, believable). Requires understanding of the media landscape and the business in which we work.
- Manage Consumer Press Office costs budget
- Work with Corp-sumer press office on issues as required
- Act as a press officer as required for crisis comms
Manage PR response to integrated campaigns:
- Develop ambitious and creative consumer PR strategies that deliver against B&Q's business and objectives
- Manage the PR agency to provide the PR creative response to integrated campaigns, working with our media and creative agencies
Manage PR campaign execution, including Content for wider channels
- Manage the planning of resource required to deliver the agreed PR creative response to campaigns and the agreed PR campaign budget
- Manage the agency production and delivery of agreed PR activity across all earned media (Broadcast, print, digital), using tactics appropriate to the campaign objectives and aligning with the objectives of the campaign.
- Brief and manages the PR agency to create and deliver campaign Content and ensures delivery of agreed output is on message, aligns with B&Q brand guidelines (tone, personality), delivered on time and against pre-agreed KPIs
- Work closely with other marketing channels, through the Content Planning and Content Production meetings, to ensure PR Content is integrated with other channels and is produced in time for other channels to use
Manage measurement of effectiveness of Consumer PR activity:
- Lead on campaign data/insight for all outputs generated by the Consumer PR assets (including results from using in other channels) to inform future campaign development.
- Manage B&Qs media monitoring agency
Manage PR Executive:
- Line management responsibility for PR Executive who supports on maintaining our online press office, building media relationships, product seeding to press and supporting new store openings, amongst other duties.
Collaborate with internal stakeholders to ensure alignment of Consumer & Corp-sumer PR activity
- Work alongside social & digital colleagues to align to the influencer strategy and leverage opportunities for media to deliver against campaign objectives; leads on delivery in earned, and works with other channels as appropriate
- Define messaging and support the drafting of statements and Q&As for issues (product, store, service related), for use by broader channels (contact centre, store colleagues, internal briefings etc), ensuring alignment with key external and internal stakeholders
Required skills & experience
To be successful in the role you will need:
- Proven experience of press office - directly handling reactive media enquiries, both reputationally positive and negative
- Proven experience of managing a PR campaign within an integrated marketing campaign
- Proven experience of Content planning ie. use of PR-led content for use by broader channels eg. social media, email, website, etc
- Proven experience of crisis/issues management
- Competent at interpreting campaign briefs and brand guidelines (eg. tone of voice) to create PR campaigns
- Competent user of media monitoring analytical portals - we use Kantar (they could have used others) to measure effectiveness of PR activity and campaigns
- Proven experience of managing PR campaigns with a budget of up to £500k
What's in it for me?
As part of a great team, you'll be valued for who you are.We're committed to making B&Q more diverse and representative of the communities we serve, where everyone can feel they belong and have equal opportunities. You will have access to a range of networks that represent our colleagues and allies and help us to continue to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of our business.
We also recognise that wellness means different things to different people, and we want to help colleagues be at their best and feel well by offering a range of benefits to help you. As well as a competitive salary, our benefits package includes an award-winning pension scheme, bonus, ShareSave options, 6.6 weeks holiday, payroll giving, an Employee Assistance Programme, shopping discounts, colleague wellbeing benefits and lots more!
So we can support you during the application or interview process, please contact recruitment@b-and-q.co.uk for any recruitment adjustments.