Communications and Media Officer

The Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust is looking to recruit a Communications and Media Officer to join our small and driven team supporting young people aged 8-24, who are living through and beyond cancer.

Use your storytelling, editorial, copywriting and creative skills to help inspire young people to join our lifechanging trips and generate the fundraising support we need so the door is open for more young people to benefit from our adventures.

No sailing experience or knowledge is required, just a passion for applying your talents to make a real difference in young people believing in their brighter future after treatment for cancer.

You might be a graduate journalist, PR account executive, communications assistant, or someone with equivalent experience who is ready to take your next step in a varied and rewarding role with one of the country’s leading young people’s cancer charities.

What you will do

A year-in-the-life of our Largs-based Communications and Media Officer has two distinct parts. October to April - where it’s all about getting the word out there to support fundraising and encouraging young people to sign up for our life-changing adventures. Then it’s the summer - May to September - when the magic happens and you’re around the trips, interviewing young people and telling their stories. You can go sailing on the trips too!

You will be responsible for identifying story opportunities year-round, and writing press releases, media advisories or editorial content to pitch those stories to a range of media outlets, from local newspapers and regional broadcasters to national, charity, marine and other specialist publications, and facilitating inbound requests for interviews or other profile-raising opportunities.

You will serve as our go-to copywriter for print, online and digital marketing materials as well as writing other articles and feature content as requested. This includes responsibility for writing and overseeing the production of our annual in-house publication, Inspire.

You will also work closely with the social media team, gathering (and if you have the experience, producing) multimedia content for our digital and online platforms. There will be wider responsibilities across the communications team too.

Key responsibilities and duties

Copywriting

• All editorial and copy creation (internal and external requirements/requests).
• Organisation-wide marketing collateral process management and copy support.
• Inspire – content planning, writing and overseeing production (Sept-Apr). 
• Trust News (monthly e-newsletter) stories.
• Website – regular news stories and copy updates as required and/or requested.
• Internal copy oversight and/or proofreading, including but not limited to young person onboarding and
  fundraising communications.

Media & PR

• Identifying cross-organisation year-round storytelling and profile-raising opportunities and proactive media outreach (local/regional/specialist/marine).
• Facilitate all inbound interview and other media requests including setting up interviews and briefing
  interviewees.
• Facilitate Largs-based PR and/or experiential requests.
• Media monitoring, recording and reporting (Google Alerts).
• Onclusive PR & media platform – relationship and media list management.

Trip season (all of the above plus...)

• Interviewing young people and seasonal team (volunteers, skippers and trip leads) to gather stories and content for PR and/or social media.
• For Largs-organised trips…
  • photo management (sort, uploading and image tagging)
  • media phone management
  • Social media posts (including photos and/or short-form video) in liaison with the Senior Digital and
    Social Media Lead.
  • Wider Largs team support.

Wider comms function

• Year-round story management including case studies and website updates.
• Campaigns – ideas generation and support with delivery (with comms team)
• Sad News process management – ensuring respectful use of photos/videos.
• Largs office/marina branding – organisation and coordination as required.
• Crisis comms - part of incident response media team.
• Looking for new opportunities/platforms to raise our profile.