Director of Marketing and Communications

About African Leadership Academy

African Leadership Academy (ALA) seeks to transform Africa by identifying, developing, and connecting a new generation of future leaders. The Academy was founded on the philosophy that a new generation of ethical, committed leaders is the key to Africa’s development. Each year, ALA draws the most outstanding students from across Africa to its campus in South Africa. Here, they build a powerful intellectual foundation and develop their leadership capacity through ALA’s unique curriculum. ALA then works with these young leaders throughout their lives as they enable lasting positive change on the African continent. With its audacious mission and lifelong engagement model, ALA is unlike any school in the world.

About the Position

African Leadership Academy seeks to appoint a Director of Marketing and Communications who will be responsible for developing, designing, and implementing ALA’s marketing strategy and activities. The Director of Marketing and Communications will work closely with other teams across ALA to ensure that our messaging is clear, consistent, and impactful. They will also coordinate internal and external resources to equip teams with the collateral they need to engage with stakeholders. The Director of Marketing and Communications will support teams and leaders in distilling ALA’s core message and communicating it impactfully across audiences. This includes leading and supporting content production across various channels and against an annual calendar of projects.

Position Responsibilities

Clarify, distill, and manage ALA’s message and key channels to communicate the message to various audiences.

• Develop and manage ALA’s annual marketing strategy, plans, budget, and timelines.
• Coordinate the annual calendar of all productions, including but not limited to the quarterly newsletter, Annual Report, Annual Appeal, and various other campaigns.
• Write, design, and manage all communication materials including, but not limited to, newsletters, email campaigns, blog posts for the ALA website, brochures marketing our different programs, thought leadership pieces, articles for the Annual Report, etc.
• Serve as the Project Manager for the ALA website, ensuring that information is up to date and the blog is updated regularly with stories that demonstrate our leadership development model and our impact.
• Share student stories and institutional knowledge such that ALA is recognized locally and globally for quality, value, and outcomes in identifying, developing, and connecting future leaders.
• Work with internal capacity or external photographers/videographers to capture different ALA events and campus/student life for social media and ALA’s media repository.
• Work with internal departments to ensure consistency across ALA’s brand and messaging.
• Manage all of ALA’s social media platforms and implement a robust social media strategy.
• Produce a monthly/quarterly/annual social media content calendar and work with an external service provider or another team member to create content across social media audiences (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram).
• Design, write and distribute email marketing campaigns via Active Campaign – and measure engagement on each email campaign.
• Develop robust systems to collect and analyze data across channels on lead generation, digital performance, conversion optimization, etc., to measure the effectiveness of marketing activities.

Serve as a strategic partner to other departments across ALA in helping them think through their marketing & communication needs.

• Support teams at ALA with their marketing calendars, including helping them to define their message and audience, collating resources for the content, managing the timeline, developing the outreach strategy, distributing the content, and providing robust reports on the success of the campaigns.
• Assist with content creation for campaigns, including copywriting, organizing photographers or videographers, and/or designing and branding support for the campaigns.
• Manage ‘top of the funnel’ marketing for ALA’s Two-Year Diploma Program & Global Scholars Program, ensuring a pipeline of talented applicants each year.
• Manage lead generation strategy, campaigns, and ads for the Two-Year Diploma Program and Global Scholars Program. With the support of an agency, manage paid advertising on Facebook, Google AdWords, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
• Try different types of outreach, including paid social media, offline media, traditional media, etc., and measure the effectiveness of each approach.

Team & Stakeholder Management

• Directly manage a Marketing Associate who will assist with the operations of the marketing function at ALA. Ensure ongoing feedback, developmental conversations, mid- and end-of-year reviews, and career advice to the Marketing Associate.
• Manage several external service providers ranging from photographers/videographers to graphic designers, ensuring they deliver strong work and meet their SLAs.
• Develop and manage the annual marketing operating budget (operating budget of ~R2m per annum), ensuring clear ROI targets for all spending.

The ideal candidate:

• Minimum of Bachelor’s degree
• 5-7 years of experience in storytelling and copywriting. Experience working with diverse audiences is a plus.
• Outstanding writing and editing skills, with proven experience producing content that clearly communicates complex ideas.
• Experience managing multiple service providers to excellent results.
• Proven ability to translate vague ideas into clear, concise, and compelling narratives for various audiences.
• Excellent attention to detail
• Proven project and people management skills
• Hands-on experience working with various marketing and communication tools (Google Analytics, ActiveCampaign, Buffer, Meltwater, WordPress, etc.)

Reporting: This role reports to the Chief Executive Officer

Start Date: 1 September 2023

Location: ALA Campus, Johannesburg, South Africa