Head of Corporate Marketing, Brand & Sustainability at Kenya Airways

Job Purpose:

Reporting to Director - Marketing, Corporate Communications & Public Affairs, the ideal candidate will lead the development and execution of a strategic plan to build engagement, awareness and trust across the community, through the delivery of integrated communications and Corporate Marketing, Brand & Sustainability strategy programs and campaigns. He/she will form part of the Corporate Communications Leadership Team and will drive the positive positioning of KQ Corporate identity and reputation.

Key duties and Responsibilities:

Strategy Development & reporting:

• Determine the Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing strategies, working closely with Business Heads, ensuring alignment with the Group strategy.
• Contribute to overall Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing visions/priorities.
• Work with the functions Heads and Management Teams to manage and implement key projects and strategy changes across the airline.
• Responsible for driving and delivering the Corporate Sustainability aligned to Sustainability and Brand & Marketing strategies for the airline, ensuring consistent and aligned delivery with the global agendas.
• Deliver a clear, strategy aligning KQ’s portfolio of integrated Sustainability, brand and marketing activities including sponsorships, partnerships, event and campaign delivery, to enhance KQ’s brand.
• Leads the combined Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing team to identify opportunities and bring expertise and creativity at both strategic and execution levels within agreed budget and scorecard.
• Fully accountable to the Director, Business Heads (Cargo, Pride Centre, MRO, and Commercial for Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing activities, whilst ensuring their consistent understanding of both functions’ scope and deliverables.
• Represent the interests of the Orgs, Corporate Sustainability matters and Brand & Marketing functions on the Management Team and within the function Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing Management Teams to help ensures strategies are relevant.

Leadership Support & issues Management:

• Lead the team to develop plans for Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing disciplines, deliver quality activities to drive exceptional client and corporate level experience, backed up by well design actionable metrics that are used for future decision making.
• Deliver quality activities to drive exceptional experiences - on plan, on budget and on time.
• Drive digital strategy and effective use of digital platforms across the unit.
• Provide direction on leveraging research insights to develop Customer Value Propositions and Thought Leadership positions to Business and Country Management Teams, integrating them into Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing plans.
• Integrate the Sustainability & Brand strategy into the overall business strategy of the airlines working across Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing platforms, such as internal and external communication.
• Be a Brand Champion - ensure all segment and product campaigns live up to our Brand promise of Sustainable development of Africa, at the same time, delivering committed business outcomes.
• Lead the delivery of Corporate Sustainability and Marketing activities in a framework that ensure they are executed within the brand specifications (brand positioning, brand architecture) to reinforce the overall KQ brand positioning through consistency in tone, manner, look and feel.
• Drive brand awareness and consideration in the cluster and achieve targeted metric levels for the region.

Risk Management:

• Demonstrate shift towards anticipation of risk.
• Provide leadership around Risk Management, both reputational and operational to ensure they are proactively identified and mitigated in country and all issues are timely reported/escalated in line with Group and local policies and procedures.
• Provide leadership and co-ordination of issues and crisis communications to the functions at HOD and country levels.

Governance:

• Accountable for the Sustainability, Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing budgets and scorecards.
• Ensure adherence to the Risk Management Framework, Group Code of Conduct and various Policies, Procedures and Guidelines of the Airlines by the Cluster Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing teams.
• For Corporate Sustainability, be Reputation Risk Control Owner’s representative, enforcing the associated policies and procedures across the airline.
• Take responsibility for Corporate Sustainability and Brand & Marketing achieving the outcomes set out in the Conduct Principles and Pillars.

Regulatory & Business Conduct:

• Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate, and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters.
• Understand and ensure compliance with, in letter and spirit, all applicable laws, regulations and guidelines including those governing sustainable practices, GRI, ESG, the Group’s policies and procedures, and the Group Code of Conduct. Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk and compliance matters.
• Build in best practices to allow for solutions that are in line with the B&M strategy globally and partner with COEs within B&M to make sure end to end alignment is in place.
• Proactively manage advertising and media agencies.
• Identify areas for process improvement and recommend ways to increase functional effectiveness and improve operational efficiencies.

Talent Management:

• Work with HODs to create a strong professional team of Corporate Sustainability and Marketing professionals.
• Share and advice on best practices and emerging developments across the region.
• Enhance leadership capability and create a culture of talent development and empowerment in both functions. Champion capability and training requirements for the teams.
• Build in best practice to allow for solutions that are on message with the strategy globally and partner with HODs to make sure end to end alignment is in place.

Knowledge, Skills and experience;

• Master’s Degree preferably in Marketing and/or Business Administration from a recognized institution.
• Must be accredited chartered marketer or other relevant marketing bodies.
• Minimum of 10 years’ Marketing or Business management experience of increasing complexity and responsibility mainly in a mass communication or public relations function within a matrix, collaborative environment.
• Relevant tertiary qualifications coupled with extensive experience in leadership and management within large or complex organizations.
• Deep understanding of strategic communications, brand and marketing, and the responsibilities of organizations and leaders.
• Demonstrable collaborative leadership skills – utilizing collective leadership to create connection across all teams within the Corporate Sustainability function and across the organization to provide a seamless, organization wide approach, leveraging specialist capability and establishing work priorities to enable delivery of high quality and timely outcomes.
• Strong interpersonal skills, incorporating excellent communication (written and verbal), complex influencing and persuasion strategies and ability to work with staff and stakeholders across geographically diverse locations on a range of related and nonrelated business functions to gain support.
• Proven track record of building, motivating and supporting high performance teams, fostering an environment and culture that encourages new ideas, knowledge transfer, and provides coaching and support for the development of emerging skills.
• Ability to think laterally and strategically, develop and select an appropriate course of action and provide contingencies, particularly in the face of ambiguity.
• Ability to work under high pressure and able to make critical decisions based on personal knowledge, experience and judgment.
• Must be a person of unquestionable integrity.

Behavioural Competences:

• Teamwork/team player.
• Results oriented.
• Customer focused.
• Strategic thinking.
• Professionalism.
• Decisive and resilience
• Good organizational skills.