Digital Communications Director (Maternity Cover)
Digital Comms Director (Maternity Cover)
Contract Type: Maternity Cover
Part-time/Freelance – 4 days per week
London based, hybrid working from a Victoria based office
About Hawthorn
Hawthorn Advisors is one of London’s fastest growing strategic communications consultancies and one of the most dynamic and rewarding places to work in the sector. We are based in London and are launching in New York and internationally. We are completely focused on helping businesses, organisations and their leaders navigate the complex and rapidly changing economic, political, and social landscapes in which they operate, whilst developing our people to help them achieve these objectives.
A career at Hawthorn presents opportunities to work across different specialisms and a range of sectors, and to broaden and deepen experience, working with some outstanding talent. The specific services we offer derive from our own expertise and include advising our clients in the following areas: Corporate reputation and leadership; Crisis and Litigation; Political advisory; Growth Companies and Capital Markets; Digital Strategy; Purpose and ESG; Employee Communication and Engagement and International.
Hawthorn comprises an ambitious senior leadership team, all with acclaimed expertise from the highest levels of the corporate, political and media worlds. We combine the knowledge and wisdom of our senior leadership team with an exceptional team of strategic communications and digital specialists across our consultancy to deliver truly impactful and commercially successful projects for our international client base.
Renowned for honest and experienced counsel, Hawthorn uses in-depth intelligence, creativity, and its connectivity and knowledge to build communication programmes across all platforms that respond effectively to our clients’ needs.
Our People
At Hawthorn, we put our clients and our people at the heart of everything we do. We empower our colleagues with the freedom and autonomy that enables them to deliver outstanding results for our clients. We thrive on challenges, embrace innovative ideas, and believe in having fun along the way. If you’re seeking a dynamic environment that values creativity, ambition, and entrepreneurial spirit; offers diverse and challenging opportunities; fosters continuous learning; and encourages collaboration among big thinkers, then Hawthorn is the place for you.
Building an inclusive and connected culture is crucial to our success. Hawthorn is a sum of its people, and we believe the best way to drive collaboration, unlock creativity, and enable innovation is through combining different perspectives, experiences, and ideas. Therefore, we are committed to building a diverse and equitable environment where everyone at Hawthorn feels they belong.
Our Values
- Creative: You are an innovative thinker who brings originality and flair to every challenge.
- Ambitious: You are driven and passionate, with an unwavering commitment to achieving both your personal goals and the company’s objectives.
- Entrepreneurial: You are a proactive self-starter, always looking to build networks and capitalize on new opportunities.
- Collaborative: You are a dedicated team player who supports colleagues, builds strong partnerships, and is committed to helping others succeed while delivering impactful results.
- Connected: You excel at forging and maintaining strong relationships, ensuring that ideas and opportunities flow smoothly within the team and with clients.
Overview
Hawthorn is an integrated communications consultancy, with a strong technical digital comms offering. We work as a multi-disciplinary team to offer our clients the very best channel-agnostic communications advice, crafting strategies that play out across earned, owned and paid media. Hawthorn’s technical digital experts are both integrated into client teams, and act as an advisory hub within the agency, supporting the whole agency’s digital output, crafting creative digital strategies to support client teams, upselling digital services to clients and upskilling junior team members.
We’re looking for an interim digital communications director to support the growth of Hawthorn’s offering and join our leadership. We would like a seasoned comms professional, with experience working with the agency world and leading digital comms teams. The person we’re looking for must understand the corporate communications landscape and be well-versed with the competitive agency landscape Hawthorn operates within. They must have extensive experience in client management, team leadership and PNL management.
This is a maternity cover role, 4 days a week.
Key Responsibilities
Supporting Hawthorn’s senior management and the growth of our digital services:
- Working closely with Hawthorn’s senior management to:
- Shaping Hawthorn’s digital comms services and strategy, supporting the team on making pricing decisions.
- Interrogating client scopes and RFPs, and work with teams on New Business acquisition, including actively participating in writing proposals and pitching for new work.
- Structuring client contracts and put campaign/retainer delivery plans in place.
- Improving client outcomes and profitability on exiting accounts.
- Attending relevant management meetings as appropriate
Supporting client teams deliver high-quality work:
- Offering counsel to clients (typically in-house Heads of Comms/Marketing/External Affairs or C-suite leaders) on using owned channels, digital comms and campaigning, growing their digital footprint, and managing brand or personal reputation.
- Helping account teams set digital KPIs and tracking progress against these to support client reporting and annual planning/budget cycles.
- Supporting Hawthorn’s litigation and issues & crisis comms work; typically helping high-profile individuals and business leaders understand the impact of legal matters on their digital footprint and search profile.
- Offering counsel to client teams on crafting and deploying integrated comms strategies, using digital channels within wider comms plans and reporting on success to clients.
- Upselling / cross selling digital services to existing clients, working alongside other senior members of the Hawthorn team and client leads.
- Introducing Hawthorn to suppliers who might support content creation, including web developers, graphic designers, photographers, videographers, animators, translators, etc.
- Managing the digital team.
Supporting learning and development at Hawthorn:
- Conduct training sessions for Hawthorn’s staff to improve their understanding of:
- SEO & SEM – both organic and paid strategies
- Algorithm updates across ubiquitous digital channels like Google and social media.
- Relevant tech news, issues and current affairs as they pertain to us deploying digital communications strategies.
- Ongoing fluency with AI and relevant implementation
- Host brainstorms and workshops to improve staff understanding and fluency with digital comms, data and analytics, social and search algorithm changes, and the changing digital marketing landscape.
- Supporting Hawthorn’s recruitment efforts, helping us identify and nurture digital comms talent.
Candidate specification
- At least 10 years of digital communications experience, ideally having worked within a PR agency with a focus on corporate communications.
- Strong technical digital knowledge spanning organic and paid social media, search/SEO/SEM, website build, digital data analysis for campaign planning and impact measurement.
- A track record of having led digital and integrated comms teams – in-house or within an agency.
- A working understanding of how AI has impacted the comms industry and is integrated into digital comms; so that you can advise clients on how AI works within search, reputation management, media and social media monitoring and social media.
- An inspiring team leader, who will guide and support the growth of junior technical digital experts.
Benefits
We offer competitive salaries that fully reflect your skills and experience, and benefits that support your mental, physical, financial, and social wellbeing, including:
- Benefits including Pension, Salary Exchange, medical and life insurance, plus cycle to work and technology schemes
- Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns
- Time-off including annual, parental, sabbatical, and volunteering leave
- 25 days annual leave in year one, 26 days thereafter (pro-rated)
- Annual charity day where an employee can volunteer their time to a chosen charity of their choice
- A continuous learning culture to support your growth
- Proactive wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), sick leave provision, mental health first-aiders, and menopause app Peppy
- Office perks including breakfasts, lunches, snacks and drinks
- A packed social calendar which includes sports and cultural activities, charity bike rides, plus not-to-be missed summer and Christmas parties each year
