Job title: Senior Marketing Manager
Responsible to: General Manager, UK
Department: Virgin Music Label & Artist Services
Location of work: Sarm Music Village, 105 Ladbroke Grove
Music is Universal
It’s the passionate and dedicated team at Universal Music UK who help make us Britain’s leading music company. From A&R to finance, legal to digital, sales to marketing, Universal Music is the place to grow and develop your career within a truly commercial and innovative business that leads in everything it does.
Everyone is welcome to apply for our roles, and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment because of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion, belief, age, marital status, background, pregnancy or caring responsibilities. We also recognise the importance of diversity of thought within our teams and are fully committed to embracing the talents of people with autism, dyslexia, ADHD and other forms of neurocognitive variation.
We will always seek to make appropriate adjustments to recruitment, workplaces, and work processes to be fully inclusive to people with different needs and working styles. If you need us to make any reasonable adjustments for you from application onwards, including alternatives to the online form or to disclose a neurocognitive condition, please email UniversalMusicCareers@umusic.com
The A Side: A day in The Life
Working closely with the UK General Manager and the wider marketing team, the Senior Marketing Manager is responsible for overseeing and managing the release of our artist projects, both physically and digitally from inception to completion. You will initiate, plan and/or coordinate the creative marketing of the projects that you are assigned from inception to release in full and help to manage the development of the Marketing Assistant along with your senior Marketing colleagues.
This role will cover a roster of mainly dance, electronic and pop/alt-pop UK and international artists but given the diverse roster of Virgin Label Services, you will be expected to take on and/or oversee projects from a broad range of musical genres. You will report to the UK’s General Manager and also work closely with all of Virgin Music’s teams based in the UK.
The B Side: Skills & Experience
Be Organised
- Prepare a timeline and marketing plan for each project in conjunction with GM and project team
- Maintain an up-to-date Marketing & Promo (M&P) budget on each project, ensuring the budget is in line with approved marketing fund or spend
- Be highly creative and inject marketing ideas and strategy into the single and/or album/EP project campaigns.
- Ensure that service deal marketing budgets are updated and sent regularly to the artist/management/label partner and any budget overages are agreed in writing
- Liaise with artist management and the internal sales team on tour stock orders for live dates, ensuring all stock is ordered in a timely manner for shows and where possible, barcode scanners are supplied so that sales can be UK chart eligible
- Liaise with the Marketing Assistant on tickets buys for all projects, ensuring appropriate quantities are purchased and amounts held in marketing budgets
- Liaise with the Marketing Assistant to plan and organise regular campaign planning meetings for active projects, including preparing and chairing the meeting agenda and debriefing with the GM in advance of or after the meeting
- Work with the UK Label team to ensure that we maximise promotional and marketing opportunities for all the artists, by keeping abreast of all new developments both inside and outside the industry that could help us to maximise sales
Be Analytical
- Prepare and send regular, weekly project updates on all active projects, highlighting key performance stats, milestones and next targets
- Closely monitor project performance on DSP’s and social platforms using UMG’s suite of data tools and working closely with the Data Analyst and Sales & Streaming team and work with the team on re-pitching any projects with significant upward momentum
- Where relevant, commission the UK Insight Team for artist audience insight and liaise closely with the label’s Data Analyst on streaming and audience data insights
Be Collaborative
- For Virgin Label Services roster, ensure the leading A&R is kept closely informed of all release plans, meetings, budgets, timelines and creative direction
- For UK signings, liaise with Production to ensure releases are properly set up and all assets (audio, artwork, label copy) are submitted in the correct formats and in a timely manner
- Liaise with the Promo team (either internal or external) on all UK artist promo runs including radio sessions, TV performances, press interviews, ensuring that costs are closely managed within budget and that the team/Marketing Assistant are briefed to slickly organise travel and logistical arrangements (gear hire etc), as required
- Liaise with International Marketing team to keep them up to date on the progress of all UK projects and where necessary, to agree budgets for the UK
- Liaise with the labels digital marketing team and artist management on creative ideas for the artist’s online and social media presence, influencer campaigns, D2C store, website and asset creation, ensuring our digital campaigns always incorporate the latest innovations formats and platforms to connect artists with audiences and artist website and social media remain up-to-date and on message at all times
- Update the Sales & Streaming team on all project developments and supplying them with the tools they need to best sell our products e.g. POS/exclusives/D2C bundles/artwork and accurate sales notes
- Work closely with our UK’s Synch Manager to ensure they are fully briefed on projects at the earliest possible stage
- Brief the Universal UK brand partnerships and content production team (Globe) on all projects and actively seek out brand partnership and content platform opportunities
Be Creative
- Working with our insights and data, develop creative marketing strategies and partner pitches for your artists
- Work with artists and managers, as required, to come up with an agreed creative direction, including but not limited to video commissioning, artwork commissioning, photo shoots, launch/listening event concepts, social media content and digital asset creation
- Plan creative concepts for campaign advertising, where relevant briefing external media agencies and the internal digital media agency (Fused) regarding delivery of ads and artwork for TV, outdoor, print and digital campaigns
- Monitor relevant industry awards, ‘ones to watch’ and marketing programmes for opportunities for your artist projects, preparing compelling entries/pitches/one-sheets as required
- Develop ideas for creative brand partnerships to support creative marketing ideas that you have developed. working with your own network of contacts and Globe
Person Specification
Necessary
- Significant, demonstrable experience in a marketing role within a record label or artist/label services company
- In-depth understanding of the release and production process, for both digital and physical releases
- Strong network of culturally-relevant marketing and creative contacts
- Excellent communication skills – written and verbal
- Excellent organisation skills and attention to detail
- Efficient and able to work independently to a high standard
- Highly organised
- The ability to learn quickly and use own initiative
- Ability to remain calm when working under pressure and to deadlines
- Flexible and able to prioritise a large workload
- Hard working and enthusiastic team player
- Self-motivated with the ability to deal with the routine tasks as well as the more challenging aspects of the role
- Passion for UK and US dance, electronic and pop/alt-pop
- Passion for contemporary culture and creative work relevant to our roster e.g. artwork and packaging design, photography, music video, lighting design, event concepts
Desirable
- Direct experience of digital marketing and social media strategy
- Creative skills such as digital asset creation, editing, Photoshop, Powerpoint
- An established contact network within the dance, electronic and pop/alt-pop music scene would be an advantage also
- Experience of managing Junior team members e.g. interns or assistants, would be an advantage
Bonus Tracks: Your Benefits
- Group Personal Pension Scheme (between 3% and 9%)
- Private Medical Insurance
- 25 paid days of annual leave
- Interest Free Season Ticket Loan available
- Holiday Purchase scheme
- Dental and Travel Insurance options
- Cycle to Work Scheme
- Salary Sacrifice Cars
- Subsidised Gym Membership
- Employee Discounts (Reward Gateway)
