Pr Lead

**Location**: La Lucia Ridge

**Business Context & Main Purpose of the Job**

The Beauty & Wellbeing and Personal Care (BW&PC) division at Unilever houses iconic and loved Skin Cleanse and Skin Care brands. This role will focus on our identified Big Bet brands. PR and Influencer Marketing is a critical pillar in brand marketing plans to drive brand equities, engagement, and overall business objectives.

**Business Context**:
Unilever Southern Africa BW&PC is looking for a PR & Influencer Marketing expert to drive the use of the voice of others to amplify brand messages to authentically build credibility and trust with its audience to drive business and communications goals.

**Responsibilities**:
This role is hyper focused on execution of:

- External communications, PR & Influencer Marketing in the Southern Africa markets
- Executing the integrated communications plans for all priority/identified brands including events
- Building relationships with stakeholders in the market
- Leveraging knowledge / experience of multicultural beauty and the cultural landscape is a must.
- Partnering with the local brand marketing and media teams, and global PR & Influencer teams to deploy specific plans and assets in market.
- Managing annual PR and Influencer Marketing budgets
- And manage the network of agencies that your brand will work with to meet goals
- Leading the PR & Influencer measurement and in-market optimization
- Setting KPIs for PR and influencer marketing programs in the market
- Maintaining strong media contacts and being the external-facing PR and Influencer marketing expert for Unilever BWPC
- Manage local issues & risk.

**Critical success factors**:

- Strategic thinking combined with strong bias for execution.
- Brand PR crafting.
- Social Influencer content expert and management.
- Keep abreast of cultural, beauty, and lifestyle trends.
- Strong storyteller (verbal and written).
- Strong ability to influence and manage stakeholders.
- Channel management: knows how to build, maintain, and evaluate external channels including social media.
- Be in control of risk & issues management - identify potential risks, mitigation, contribute to live issues management led by corporate comms incl. seeking the correct inputs from brand and Research & Development.

Key requirements:

- Relevant Degree
- 6-8 years expert experience in PR, communications, and influencer marketing either at an agency and / or in-house), with an understanding of what does and does not work in PR and Influencer Marketing channels.
- Communications generalist, with an all-round excellent working knowledge of the various disciplines of communications such as reputation management, media / public relations, social media/digital and issues management
- Proven track record with executing resonant PR and influencer marketing programs in SA.
- A passionate beauty and personal care publicist and influencer marketer who can create and pitch compelling stories to deliver maximum earned coverage across earned and paid channels. Must be knowledgeable / expert in multicultural beauty, hair and personal care and the cultural landscape.
- A relationship builder with media that has a network of 1) existing media contacts in the Southern Africa media landscape, 2) consumer and trade print and online media, and 3) broadcast outlets.
- A self-starter who has a business mindset, is obsessed with tangible business results, OKRs and pioneering new models - pushing the boundaries of what it takes to land impactful PR and influencer content (that drives engagement and ultimately sales)
- Ability to see all the priorities across the total brand(s) to deliver the most optimal annual execution across PR and influencer marketing with breakthrough results.
- A collaborator who thrives on working together with different teams and marketing specialties to execute programs with excellence and clarity, with the ability to work independently and own Projects.
- A strategic executor that leverages the thinking skills to develop strong programmes for beauty and personal care brand campaigns and has an eye on cultural relevancy and purpose.