Communications Lead

For full job description, please see the listing on our website.

OPPORTUNITY:

This is a fabulous opportunity for a dynamic comms professional who knows how to use communications to drive change. We seek a climate communications lead who is keen to bring their skills in campaigns, narrative-shift, media and digital comms to the world of steel decarbonisation. The steel industry is a major driver of climate emissions and yet few in the industry feel urgency and few outside the industry know that. Your job will be to help us change that.

This is an international role in an international climate campaign organisation that challenges steelmakers and the wider industry. We seek a dynamic communications lead based in the Europe/Africa time zone, who will work closely with Asia-Pacific colleagues, lead delivery in Europe, and coordinate our comms work internationally.

ABOUT THE ORGANISATION

SteelWatch is an international climate campaign organisation established in June 2023, driving corporate accountability and action in the steel sector. Our vision is a steel industry that underpins a thriving zero emissions economy. Our priority is that the steel industry gets on track for a 1.5 degree trajectory this side of 2030.

We run corporate campaigns and challenge the global industry to replace complacency with urgent action. We currently focus heavily in Europe and Japan, with team members in UK/Europe and Asia Pacific timezones. As a young organisation, we are evolving, testing, and learning, and seek team members who will enjoy breaking new ground with us.

ABOUT THE ROLE

This role will combine three core elements: (1) ensuring coordination of SteelWatch communications activities, across all our multiple initiatives and timezones, ensuring great content, targeted reach, timeliness, coherence of message and coordinated plans; (2) ongoing and surge delivery of comms products and messages, such as media outreach, social media, thought pieces, particularly in Europe/Africa and sometimes US timezone. This will align with delivery of comms work in Japan/Asia led by colleagues in the region. (3) sharpening our communications strategy, our targets, and our ability to deliver our messages to the right people, shaped jointly with our Asia/Pacific based comms strategist.

The role requires coordination across the small and growing comms team, which is diverse in terms of experience level, region and expertise. It also requires hands-on delivery in your region/timezone and based on your own specialist skills. Media engagement is currently a gap we need to fill and an ideal candidate will lead and deliver our media work, as well as coordinating our wider comms. If the successful candidate excels in other strengths but not media, then we - and you - will need to build the team differently in terms of future recruits and consultants.

Responsibilities:

Coordination of the communication outputs and comms team resources

• Ensure coordination and coherence of the overall SteelWatch editorial and content calendar, with co-management of comms planning, team meetings, and ongoing communications outputs.
• Co-manage comms team resources, including identifying and bringing onboard additional capacity where necessary, to deliver on our fast evolving needs on communications.

Delivery of timely coherent comms outputs

• Design the communication strategy and a range of creative outputs for our corporate campaigns, particularly the ones focused on Europe-based companies, in line with campaign’s theory of change.
• Develop communications materials to shift the dominant narrative of the steel industry which may include data visualisation, rankings, storytelling etc.
• Build and maintain strong relations with journalists in key media and trade media outlets, manage a database of journalists, and ensure regular flows of news/information to establish SteelWatch as a credible voice in steel decarbonisation.
• Coordinate timely responsive comms outputs in relation to external news and events.
• Coordinate with ally organisations, where relevant, to coordinate, input into, align and amplify their outputs
• Collaborate with our Asia Comms strategist and other communications colleagues to ensure consistent, smooth and cohesive approaches to SteelWatch’s voice across the geographies and outputs.

Development of strategy and capacity

• Working closely with our Asia comms strategist, develop our messaging, tone of voice, and overall approach to comms as a driver of change.
• Build organisational capacity to articulate and challenge narratives in and around the steel industry and to influence others with our point of view.
• Analyse data and insights and develop segmentation and understanding of audiences needed to achieve our change goals.
• Commission and manage external expert inputs as needed.
• Develop and incorporate ongoing learning into communications strategy
• Other responsibilities assigned by the Director

APPLICATION CRITERIA

Essential skills and experiences

• At least 8 years’ experience (and potentially much more) in strategic communications, including journalism, digital media and storytelling;
• Experience in designing and delivering communications for achieving campaign goals;
• Demonstrated ability to pursue narrative change;
• An appetite for change-making, ability to articulate systemic problems, and understanding of how communication contributes to driving transformative change;
• Proven record of developing communications for technical issues. Ability to grasp technological issues sufficiently, and to nuance and ensure credibility of our messages;
• Strong editorial, writing and audience segmentation skills;
• Ability to collaborate effectively with a wide variety of partners, from campaigners to analysts to communication experts;
• Experience working across geographies, languages and cultures;
• An appetite to work in a start-up, with all the curiosity, adaptivity and learning that it entails.
• Availability to work at hours that enable collaboration in other timezones and to travel occasionally.

Desirable

• Experience in handling media relations and developing pitch;
• Skilled with media monitoring and analysis for influencing narratives;
• Skilled in creating engaging social media assets;
• Demonstrate high level of editorial and legal standards, ensuring adherence to internal and external requirements and advocate for best practice;
• Familiarity with hiring and coordinating with freelancers;
• Experience in corporate-targeted comms.