The Opportunity:

Clarion Events is one of the world’s leading event organisers, headquartered in London covering customer engagement platforms in a variety of sectors including defence & security, digital marketing, energy, fashion and technology.

Clarion is renowned for being entrepreneurial and flexible in our approach to focusing on our customers and ensuring we only deliver platforms of the highest quality within our markets. We also look to innovate and create new offerings to directly meet the ever evolving needs of our wide ranging customers.

Our marketing function has seen many developments over the last two years – these include the creation of a marketing operations function both centrally and within each portfolio and also a large investment in new technologies, including a customer data platform. The introduction of the marketing operations team clearly shows the emphasis and focus that Clarion now has on marketing as a function especially data insight and how we look to always put our customers at the heart of what we do. The new technologies ensure we are able to interrogate and analyse our customer information through the multitude of touchpoints, in order to deliver efficient campaigns and relevant products that will maximise our customers opportunities to gain ROI and added value to meet their business goals.

The Defence & Security Portfolio has a series of market-leading events currently based in the UK, Europe and Asia. These range from confex style events to large scale exhibitions. All are market leaders within their ‘space’ and the next 12 months will see us continue to expand and innovate both in new geographies and on new platforms.

Combining the new technologies and our ambitious growth plans – now is an exciting time to be joining both this portfolio and Clarion Events.

The Candidate:

We are looking for an experienced Brand Marketing Manager to work alongside the Campaign Marketing Manager to co-lead the marketing department of a series of annual confex-style events within the Clarion Defence & Security portfolio.

They will help to develop the marketing strategy alongside the Event Director, ensuring each event within the portfolio has a relevant and compelling brand identity and strategy that can be communicated and executed to the market it serves. There are currently 4 annual shows within this portfolio and these are based in the UK and Europe.

In addition, the role has responsibility for working with other marketing teams across the department to trial and implement new initiatives and best practice through facilitating collaboration and co-ordination of marketing activities.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop, communicate and ensure effective delivery of world class marketing strategies that increase brand awareness, engage our customers and maximise retention to grow our events.
• Create the key messages, brand guidelines and tone of voice to be used for each event brand.
• Ensure that we appropriately govern and support our brands across all touchpoints, and act as a brand and customer champion, both internally and externally.
• Map out our customer value journey for key audience groups within each event, identifying and monitoring KPIs throughout to constantly optimise performance.
• Initiate, develop and manage partnerships that benefit the event – including media partners, associations, affiliates, technology providers and other key stakeholders within the communities.
• Support in training and equipping our agencies, including PR, creative and digital marketing, to deliver against our brand requirements and maintaining the consistency of brand assets and communications.
• Work with our internal teams, to map the size of the market for each event, identify opportunities to grow our customer database and work with the Head of Sector Marketing Operations to put together plans that ensure consistent growth on a continuously evolving cycle.
• Lead on any research & insight projects related to customer experience or brand development/enhancement.
• Play a key role in driving collaboration between marketing teams within the Clarion Defence & Security portfolio to ensure all promotional opportunities are maximised and best practice shared and implemented.

Knowledge, Skills, and Behaviours:

• You will have extensive brand marketing experience from identifying brand opportunities to managing and developing brand strategy and assets.
• A proven track record of implementing (or working with a delivery team) to drive successful marketing campaigns.
• Experience of:
  • Developing a year round insight programme to ensure we learn about the ever evolving needs and requirements of our customers.
  • Partnership building /stakeholder engagement success.
  • Research and analysis/ability to measure effectiveness of channels to increase efficiency.
  • Creating and developing customer care strategies and focus on customer experience.
  • Collaborative working within a small-medium sized team.
• Knowledge/Experience of:
  • Capabilities of marketing automation and CRM platforms (Pardot and Salesforce highly desirable).
  • Experience of digital event platforms (desirable).
  • General knowledge of all GDPR laws including preference centres and privacy policies.

About Clarion Events:

Clarion Events is one of the world’s leading event organisers, producing and delivering innovative and market-leading events since 1947. (https://clarionevents.com/welcome)

Clarion Events embrace diversity and equal opportunities in all that we do. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. The more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.

Clarion is private equity backed and owned by Blackstone. Blackstone is one of the world’s leading global investment funds, investing capital for the long term in order to build successful, resilient businesses. (https://www.blackstone.com/) 

Our purpose is to deliver exceptional customer outcomes and experiences, by making every connection count.

Our vision is we want every one of our products to be a market leader in customer satisfaction and delight.