Director, Brand and Marketing

• Lead a team to develop and implement a comprehensive brand and marketing strategy that increases and inspires target audiences to advance JAX’s mission and growth while mentoring, coaching, and developing a high-performing team by fostering a culture of creativity, collaboration, performance, and excellence.

• Develop JAX-wide marketing strategies and campaigns that elevate JAX research and increase JAX target audiences, cultivate support, expand participation in programming and education, and propel legislative support of the mission.

• Craft powerful visual and verbal brand narrative that bridges the JAX legacy with a modern vision.

• Refresh and maintain JAX’s unique value proposition, positioning and differentiation and optimize brand relevance to support and drive strategic priorities, including fundraising.

• Closely collaborate across the communications and marketing team, external partners and JAX-wide teams to enhance the brand and its effective, consistent expression across all JAX platforms and channels and externally to deepen engagement among existing stakeholders, expanding brand recognition with prospective stakeholders.

• Establish a customer-focused approach and build strong relationships with colleagues across JAX to understand goals and ensure priority needs are met.

• Identify stories to champion and reinforce mission impact leveraging a wide array of creative and marketing tactics and tools while helping facilitate cohesive, proactive integration with all communications and marketing efforts, including public relations, social media, editorial and JAX.org.

• Oversee a paid media and advertising strategy aligned with strategic objectives from campaign creation to implementation and results assessment, making recommendations for investments that should be adjusted or are needed, and pursue PSA or donated opportunities to grow brand awareness, supporters and lead generation.

• Leverage a variety of tools and insights to anticipate trends, guide creative messaging development and regularly evaluate the brand and marketing strategy performance to recommend and inform new approaches.

• Provide guidance and recommendations for evolving the JAX brand identity (logos, colors, fonts, imagery) while defining and managing the brand voice and tone across all touchpoints.

• Develop, maintain and enforce brand standards and best practices for the use of graphic design, photography and videography, protecting JAX trademarks and brand integrity including through regular audits.

• Maintain high standards of excellence, ensuring all work meets or exceeds expectations and best practices.

• Develop benchmarks and deliver measurable improvements against key performance indicators and team objectives, reporting on return on investment of brand-building activities, collaborating with peers to create dashboards and regular reports for performance tracking.

• Stay apprised of emerging trends, technologies and best practices.

• Act as the lead point of contact for JAX brand guidelines, partner with stakeholders across JAX to establish internal awareness, buy-in, engagement and compliance.

• Select external partners and vendors strategically based on quality, cost-effectiveness and alignment with JAX values and standards, establishing and maintaining strong, collaborative relationships to ensure deliverables are met and expectations exceeded.

• Conduct regular vendor performance reviews and adapt strategies as necessary to optimize contributions to objectives.

• Manage the brand and marketing budget, ensuring effective resource allocation and partner with the communications and marketing senior management team in all budget planning and management activities.

• Potential additional responsibilities as the team seeks achievement of its ambitious goals.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (What you're good at)

• Experience leading creative and marketing teams at nonprofit organizations, preferably with a focus on health or biomedical research.

• Proven track record of developing and implementing successful brand and marketing strategies that drive measurable results and impact.

• Demonstrated ability to lead, inspire, and motivate large teams and create collaborative relationships between cross-functional teams with a passion for mentoring and developing talent.

• Superb interpersonal and client relation skills with a focus on customer satisfaction, preferably in an agency setting.

• Excellent leadership skills to work effectively with internal and external stakeholders while managing and inspiring teams to deliver excellence and achieve objectives.

• Thrive in a fast-paced, changing environment with the ability to multi-task and balance competing priorities.

• Strategic thinker with a data-driven, analytical mindset and the ability to translate insights into actionable strategies and recommendations.

• Creative thinker with a passion for innovation and a commitment to best practices in brand and broader marketing.

• Experience supporting and driving fundraising goals are a plus.

• Proven experience leading creative teams in photography, videography and visual design to motivate audiences with a portfolio showcasing successful projects in all.

• Expertise in market research, data analysis and brand measurement methodologies with proven performance setting and tracking skills.

• Deep understanding of design principles, visual communication and copywriting.

• Experience with digital and social platforms and emerging technologies.

• Excellent writing, editing, communication, negotiation and presentation skills.

• Extremely detail oriented with project management skills and expertise.

• Experience working with CRM, email marketing and related tools.

• Must have deep experience managing budgets.

• Proficient with Microsoft Office suite and Adobe.

• Ability to travel as necessary.