Job Descriptions

My current role as Online Marketing manager is a varied and exciting one. As the exclusive online rights holder of all Premier and Football league highlights this presented many opportunities and obstacles. My responsibilities include PPC planning, branded rich media campaigns, SEO and social bookmarking use, the managing and reporting of our Social networking profiles and running outdoor events as part of the £500k annual marketing budget. One of the core elements was negotiating with external agencies (essentially two marketing agencies, MGOMD and Perform and an events company called Bugle,) ensuring objectives are met within tight budget constraints, whilst protecting the Virgin brand and navigating the incredibly complex Premier/Football league contractual constraints.

Another key role was the creation of two VM Sport email Newsletters, which have been running for 5 months now and have proved to be very successful with growing databases. Started from scratch this often proved tricky throughout the design and development stage to audience acquisition. On site competitions were another important area, sourcing prizes from scratch (examples include sport tickets, sporting equipment right up to a 2 week holiday to Florida to watch some wrestling!)

On the social networking front we have profiles for our comedy characters on all the major platforms and recently did a deal with you tube to be their official Euro 2008 partners.

Other aspects of the job include internal comms. Recently I administered a staff fantasy football league during Euro 2008 which attracted 800 VM staff entrants, quite an achievement considering no home nation participation. Customer comms and utilising the communication channels available (bill messages, customer magazines and emails etc.) was key, as was aligning all marketing messages with the Virgin Media overall marketing plan.

Senior Media Planner. At Virgin Media I started as a media planner working across their entire portfolio of channels, planning and implementing their on air communication. Using the skills I learnt as an advertising planner, as well as a whole raft of new ones I worked on various challenging projects including the re-brand of Bravo in 2006 and significantly the Launch of Virgin 1 in 2007. Other aspects of the job included the management of junior individuals within the team, analysing various third party opportunities and regular negotiations with channels and other departments, something that can be quite difficult in the political environment of a TV company!

When I first joined, the department was very different and needed to be over hauled. In collaboration with the department head who joined at the same time as me, also from MPG, media planning has been totally reinvented and now forms a substantially more prominent role in the company with a more scientific approach and increased involvement in most areas of practice.

Planner/Buyer roles. Working for three agencies over almost 4 years (two on temp contracts) I worked on some huge, high profile accounts, notably Mercedes and Nissan. In 2003 I brought almost £20m worth of TV advertising, and achieved some strong audit results as well. Building strong relations with contractors was something I excelled and constantly over delivered on campaign quality benchmarks.