WHAT DOES A COMMUNICATIONS LEAD DO?
Published: August 16, 2024 - The Communications Lead provides leadership in managing multi-media communications and stakeholder support in a Cloud Service Offering environment, ensuring the effective dissemination of program information and public affairs guidance. This role involves expertly coordinating the production and updates of the organization's website and online portfolio while guiding strategic IT and functional operations for enhanced performance. The lead also leads change management initiatives and media training, and leverages industry expertise to support senior executives with strategic direction and operational assessments.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Communications Lead
1. Communications Lead Accountabilities
- Sales Support: Provide overall support to the sales team and its operations, introducing efficiency and guidelines across the wider business.
- Sales Communications: Manage, develop, and deliver all sales communications nationally, ensuring the sales team has the information.
- Collateral Delivery: Deliver against customer value proposition including internal and external sales focus packs, customer presentations, eDM, social content, and other collateral.
- Marketing Collaboration: Work closely with the marketing team to ensure sales collateral for campaigns meet all requirements.
- Internal Communications: Manage internal communications, tone of voice, and consistency of collateral.
- Insight Translation: Work closely with the insights team to take customer insights and analytics and translate them into a story for the wider team.
- Stakeholder Management: Manage and present to various stakeholders in the business.
- Document Quality: Ensure documents follow the Amazon writing tenets and are logically structured based on purpose (e.g., deep dive, decision point, status update, etc.).
- Editing Management: Manage the editing and iteration process while keeping to deadlines.
- Quality Checks: Perform continuous quality checks and provide feedback to help raise the bar of the Segment team’s writing overall.
- Feedback Integration: Seek ongoing feedback from within the Segment Specialist Group as well as from external organizations to sharpen writing and editing skills.
- Executive Documents: Deliver high-quality, executive-ready Amazonian documents.
- Purpose Clarity: Collaborate with stakeholders to drive clarity of purpose and supporting elements in advance of document writing.
2. Communications Lead Job Summary
- Storytelling: Source storytelling opportunities to showcase the impact United Way has in the community.
- Media Strategy: Develop and implement the annual media and public relations strategy.
- Editorial Management: Maintain the editorial calendar, media training schedule, experts list, and media distribution list to ensure stories, news, and programming activities successfully reach target audiences.
- Media Relations: Establish and maintain relationships with media, field media calls, pitch stories to the media, and prepare media kits.
- Speech Writing: Write speeches for organizational leaders.
- Brand Protection: Protect the United Way brand and reputation and proactively develop and maintain key messages to prepare for potential crises.
- Marketing Communications: Develop marketing communications material and prepare communications materials for various platforms.
- Confidential Issues: Work closely with the Director of Content and Communications on confidential and sensitive issues to develop key messaging and strategy.
- Media Monitoring: Set benchmarks and prepare media monitoring reports for distribution.
- Public Relations Projects: Work with senior leaders, external partners, and internal groups on external and public relations projects.
- Content Creation: Create content for MarComm projects, including internal communications, social media, and marketing materials.
- Event Coverage: Help with content coverage of live and online events.
- Social Media Support: Provide backup support for social media.
3. Communications Lead Overview
- Brand Leadership: Provide leadership of branding, communications, and content marketing functions in the GCR market.
- PR Strategy: Develop and implement fully integrated PR/communications plans in numerous markets across GCR- from strategy to tactics to execution.
- Opportunity Identification: Identify, leverage, and prioritize opportunities to provide value that garners exposure in the business, technology, marketing, advertising, and mobile industries and beyond.
- Thought Leadership: Articulate and scale AppsFlyer’s thought leadership, defining issues and topics for engagement through bylines, speaking opportunities, rapid-response, media interviews, announcements, events, awards, white papers, digital interactions, co-marketing initiatives, etc.
- Agency Management: Manage agencies and POCs throughout GCR, ensuring positioning and messages are conveyed effectively and consistently across various markets and channels, while constantly measuring results and optimizing for success.
- Strategic Alignment: Partner across the organization to employ communication strategies that align with key regional and global objectives (product launches, educational content and research reports on industry topics, conveying customer success stories, etc.).
- Narrative Development: Strengthen the company’s overall narrative while maximizing impact on the AppsFlyer brand and business.
- Media Relations: Develop proactive, deliberate media plans and written materials- including story pitches, messaging guidelines, press releases, Q and A, and presentations- and maintain thoughtful relationships with journalists.
- External Relations: Manage relationships with external partners and customers to support program success and communication objectives.
- Team Management: Lead a team of driven communicators, creating an environment for continuous growth and development.
- Resource Management: Track and manage communications resources including op-ex spending and agency support.
- Messaging Strategy: Create and maintain a cohesive strategic messaging narrative and ongoing updated corporate messaging that aligns across programs and solutions, working with the Senior Leadership Team and relevant functions
4. Communications Lead Details
- Program Governance: Governance of the adoption and communications of plans for the program, ensuring each is integrated and incorporates campaigns and operational and strategic messages.
- Change Communications: Business change communications, providing governance and quality assurance of deliverables and content produced by the various projects within the program.
- Channel Strategy: Providing support, advice, and direction on the use of channels to achieve specific behavioral change outcomes.
- End-to-end Processes: Devising and implementing end-to-end communications processes from initial business change communications through to measuring the readiness of end users, spanning a variety of parallel initiatives and tailored approaches.
- Communications Framework: Owning, devising, and implementing a program for business change communications framework.
- Message Design: Designing and creating compelling messages to drive program awareness through news, blogs, presentations, events, and e-learning.
- Corporate Communication: Develop corporate communication plans and strategies to support company and product milestones and objectives.
- Thought Leadership: Oversee thought leadership strategy, including executive visibility and events, to ensure engaging in high-value, relevant forums to support visibility for the products and services.
- Strategy Ownership: Own communication strategy for both CX and UX.
- Support Needs: Support the CX and UX team's internal and external communication needs.
- Content Development: Develop content to support the leader’s communication across all channels.
- Forum Engagement: Actively engage with external forums to find appropriate opportunities for Lenovo CX/UX leaders to participate.
- Training Alignment: Training, align messaging with company culture pillar content/messaging, and other related activities with L and D organization.
- Recognition Programs: Design and drive recognition programs globally.
5. Communications Lead Responsibilities
- Stakeholder Support: Work in a Cloud Service Offering environment and assist government leaders with preparation for stakeholder and communication engagements.
- Speech Writing: Prepare and write speeches, talking points, briefings, articles, and proposed public affairs guidance in support of client's programs and command information communications.
- Multi-Media Management: Develop, coordinate, produce, and manage the dissemination of multi-media communications, including program information publications, handouts, posters, banners, news releases, articles, web-based and social media content, videos, and photographs.
- Web Coordination: Coordinate the production of the organization's website and updates to the online portfolio, including providing media relations expertise to the Webmaster and graphics designer.
- Media Training: Provide insights and review of team efforts for recurring and special media training and staff development events for the client workforce.
- Article Writing: Write articles for both digital and paper dispersal to highlight the organization's efforts and results.
- Change Management: Able to lead change management and transformation initiatives through clear and effective internal and external communications.
- Team Leadership: Provide leadership and day-to-day management of the team.
- Industry Expertise: Recognized for strong expertise in industry issues and trends.
- Operational Assessment: Utilize functional area expertise gained through direct industry experience to assess the operational and functional baseline of an organization and its components.
- Strategic Guidance: Work with senior customers and executives to provide industry vision and strategic direction regarding their enterprise.
- IT Strategy: Guide the determination of information technology inadequacies and/or deficiencies that affect the functional area’s ability to support organizational goals.
- Functional Strategy: Generate functional area strategies for enhanced IT operations in a cross-functional mode throughout the organization.