Senior Manager – Creative Centre Of Excellence (12 Months Ftc)

This role will be within our Creative Centre of Excellence team, that sits within our broader Personalisation and Performance Marketing (P&PM) team. Within the P&PM team there a number of squads focused on delivering marketing activity for specific objectives, and the creative Centre of Excellence plays a key role in supporting those squads. The purpose of the team is to support the creative teams with achieving personalised communications that are impactful, compelling, and meaningful to our customers to ensure we are driving value in everything we do.

As a Senior Manager in the Creative Centre of Excellence team, you will lead the charge in developing best in class creative through working with our agency to develop and evolve our communications, as well as through training, development and onboarding of new colleagues. You will own, shape and lead creative forums to drive discussion and debate on creative development. A strong collaborator, you’ll develop strong relationships with internal stakeholders and partners to support this. You will have a keen eye for detail and enjoy working in an environment of process and governance. Management of our controls and processes will be critical to the role, ensuring these are fit for purpose now and in the future as we lead through change projects. If you are experienced in direct marketing, passionate and creative who can bring people together, then we want to hear from you.

Leadership skills are key to this role, which has a number of direct reports. These direct reports will be within both the Creative Centre of Excellence and also the role holder will be responsible for the line management of the Content Leads in all the squads,

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.

For this job you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, at one of our offices. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here.

If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can.

What you’ll be doing

You’ll be leading a small dynamic direct team that has accountability for supporting the squads to develop compelling and highly personalised direct response communications that reflects our brand and exceeds customer expectations. You’ll also be line managing the Content Leads across the squads.

 You will lead change projects that supports the 5-year vision. You will achieve this through the following ways:  

• Working with the creative team embedded in squads and line managing the copywriters, bringing the copywriters together to share knowledge and experience.
• Shaping & owning all creative forums and supporting in leading/facilitating the discussion in these sessions to critique and optimise customer communications. You will work closely with the Brand team to ensure we are up to date with latest brand and TOV guidance and ensuring we consider tools, templates, frameworks, and guidance for the squads to ensure best in class creative.
• Taking ownership for the risk and controls within the team ensuring we are in a strong position, with processes in place and optimised. Having a direct relationship with our risk partner to ensure we are meeting all requirements. Training plans and inductions will be developed and reviewed to ensure the squads are set up for success.
• Leading all the key supplier relationships, ensuring ways of working are effective and continually optimised. Being part of commercial discussions and business reviews to ensure we are getting the best value from our partners.
• Lead the implementation of change projects into the squads to meet the tech roadmap, representing our creative colleagues to map requirements and drive delivery.

You’ll be familiar and have experience of below the line channels like; direct mail, email, digital prompts in our internet bank and mobile app.

You will be part of our Marketing community, but you’ll work with other teams too, including our Brand team, Planning Centre of Excellence and Squads.

About you

We’re looking for somebody who has;

• Experience of shaping and leading creative forums to encourage debate, challenge and critique.
• Experience of direct marketing channel communications, best practice, and their place within the marketing mix.
• Experience in developing high quality copy and creative
• Line management experience
• Leadership skills and change management experience
• A good communicator and influencer, confident at both writing and presenting, experience in creating engaging communications that capture an audience.
• Experience of being able to train out key messages and changes to teams.
• Experience of managing and influencing internal stakeholders, agencies and third parties.
• Excellent planning and organisational skills and ability to manage and own multiple competing priorities and deliverables. Able to work within a well governed environment and optimise processes and controls.
• Proactive and empowered to make decisions within a framework. Resilient in your approach, able to overcome setbacks and have a solution focused mindset.
• Experience working within a marketing or direct marketing environment. Financial Sector experience is desirable but not essential.
• Be a self-starter and highly motivated. Able to work autonomously as well as part of a team.

Our Customer First behaviours are all about putting customers and members at the heart of how we work together. You can strengthen your application by showing the behaviours that resonate with you, and how you might have already demonstrated these.

• Say it straight - This is about being honest and direct with good intent and saying what needs to be said in the room. It’s also about being clear, precise, and using language that we and, importantly, our customers and members can understand.
• Push for better - This is about aiming high and constantly looking for better in how we work together and serve our customers and members.
• Get it done - This is about prioritising what will have the greatest impact, being decisive and taking accountability for delivering on the end-to-end outcome.

We know applying for jobs can sometimes feel like you’re sending an application into a black hole. We review each application individually. So, it’s a good idea to call out your most relevant experience on your application to give yourself the best chance.

The extras you’ll get

There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including:

• A personal pension – if you put in 7% of your salary, we’ll top up by a further 16%
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year
• Life assurance worth 8x your salary
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Gympass – Access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness.
• Access to an annual performance related bonus
• Access to training to help you develop and progress your career
• 25 days holiday, pro rata

What makes us different

Nationwide is the world’s largest building society. With over 15 million customers, we have a relationship with almost a quarter of the UK’s population. We’ve got the scale to compete with the big banks, but we’re not a bank.  

As a building society, we’re owned by our members – that’s our customers who have their current account, mortgage or savings with us. It means we can do things differently to deliver our Purpose – Banking – but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society.  

When you work at Nationwide, you can experience that difference for yourself. You’ll be part of a high-performing, purpose-driven organisation that offers rewarding career experiences and a highly competitive range of benefits to match. You’ll also be joining us at an important time as we seek to reach more and more people in the UK. We want everyone in the UK to know that they don’t have to bank with a bank. They can choose a modern mutual instead.  

What to do next

If this role is for you, please click the ‘Apply Now’ button. You’ll need to attach your up-to-date CV and answer a few quick questions for us. We’d also like to see a portfolio of some of your work.

We respond to everyone, so we will be in contact shortly after the closing date to let you know the outcome of your application. If it’s already been defined please provide an overview of the assessment process and a timeline of when assessments will be.

Please note that should you be successful in securing this role the job title on our internal systems will be Marketing and Corporate Affairs Senior  Manager 

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