Strategic Communications Planning Manager

Job Description 

Job Title:  Strategic Communications and Marketing Planning Manager

Directorate:  Communications 

Team/Department (if specific):  Marketing and Planning      

Date Written/ Amended:   August  2025

Context and Background

Every childhood is worth fighting for. This is our belief. It drives us. And it inspires our Communications and Marketing  team to find ever-more creative ways to promote our work and share how people can get involved in making a difference to children’s lives. 

The award-winning NSPCC Communications directorate is known for its talent, expertise and creativity in inspiring and challenging people to act on child abuse. We work collaboratively, both organisationally and across integrated communications disciplines, to deliver shared outcomes and measurable results through all available communications channels. 

The Strategic Communications and Marketing Planning Manager   forms part of our Brand and Marketing Planning team. The role is central to developing a strategic framework to support prioritisation of our annual communications and marketing plans, ensuring we’re optimising our activity to drive impact. 

The Communications Planning Manager will lead on the communications and marketing planning process for all teams. Working with teams across the organisation, they will lead on the communications planning process. As part of this responsibility, they will work closely with senior stakeholders within Marketing and Communications and the Fundraising and Engagement directorate to maximise brand awareness and income driven by our communications and marketing activity. 

Job purpose

1.     Lead the development and implementation of the strategic framework for annual communications and marketing planning, ensuring it is clear, comprehensive, and aligned with organisational priorities and budget allocation to drive the maximum impact for children and young people.

2.     Coordinate and oversee the planning process across all communications teams, facilitating workshops and meetings to engage stakeholders, and ensuring plans are efficiently resourced and delivered.

3.     Maintain effective planning systems and processes, ensuring timely communication of plans and priorities internally and externally, and supporting the identification and delivery of strategic communications objectives.

4.     Build strong cross-organisational relationships, particularly between Communications and other directorates, to ensure alignment, coordination, and shared ownership of strategic goals.

Key relationships - Internal

·      Reports to the Associate Head of Brand and Marketing Planning

·      Works closely with the Director of Communications and Marketing on the overall strategy for communications and Marketing and delivery of directorate objectives

·      Works closely with cross organisational campaign managers and key stakeholders, including our Senior Leadership Team to inform planning and strategic alignment. 

·      Works closely with teams to inform, support and manage communications activity.

·      Pro-actively works with managers and staff in other NSPCC Directorates , such as Fundraising and Engagement, Strategy and Knowledge, People, Finance and Services as necessary to further communications relationships.

Key relationships - External

·       Creative, media and research agencies.

·       Peers within the UK charity sector.

·       Industry opinion formers, media and other stakeholders. 

·      Professionals/trade bodies/organisations in charitable sector.

Main duties and responsibilities

1.     Work with the Associate Head of Brand and Marketing Planning to implement the strategic framework for the annual planning process, ensuring our marketing investment is aligned to strategic priorities, led by market research and media insight, and drives impact. 

2.     Facilitate workshops and meetings with relevant comms and marketing teams across the organisation to ensure all stakeholders are aligned and engaged in the annual comms and marketing planning process.

3.     Support in the delivery and implementation of the communications strategy, ensuring our annual Communications and Marketing directorate business plans support our audiences to get closer to our cause.

4.     Support the Associate Head of Brand and Marketing Planning in the analysis of marketing and communications impact data and insight, to share complex information in a clear and compelling way with the Communications and Marketing Leadership Team, the Director of Marketing Communications, Director of Fundraising and Engagement  , Executive Leadership Team and Trustees.

5.     Ensure that there are appropriate processes in place to monitor communications and marketing performance, and delivery against business plans and the strategy.

6.     Maximise income and add value to departmental activities by sharing knowledge, specialist expertise and best practice with others as appropriate.

7.     Support the marketing and operations planning meeting by influencing and negotiating to deliver the comms planning process with internal audiences. 

8.     Work closely with finance, our media agencies and internal stakeholders to understand the investment plans and budgets for marketing across the organisation. 

9.     Support the Associate Head of Brand and Marketing Planning in the development of the brand and media investment strategies. 

Responsibilities for all Staff within the Communications

·      A commitment to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, young people and adults at risk.

·      Actively participate in regular department and team meetings, contributing to strategy, discussions and decisions which will be beneficial to the Directorate and wider NSPCC activities.

·      Adhere to all the NSPCC’s service standards, policies and procedures. 

·      Evidence an understanding of and commitment to the demonstration of the NSPCC’s values.

·      Maintain an awareness of and comply with NSPCC data protection regulations. 

·      Be responsible for personal learning and development, to support the learning and development of others and the whole organisation. 

·      Work in a manner that supports equality, diversity and inclusion 

·      Be pro-active in identifying ways to improve personal and team performance

·      Maintain an awareness of own and others’ Health and Safety and comply with the NSPCC’s Health and Safety policy and procedures.

·      Maintain awareness of NSPCCs safeguarding duties and comply with Safeguarding Code of Conduct.

·      Take personal responsibility for keeping up to date with NSPCC work to end cruelty to children, including securing updates on project and service developments and general NSPCC news

A commitment to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people

Person specification

1.     Excellent written communication skills to analyse, interpret and present proposals, reports and strategic plans in a clear and persuasive way for a wide range of audiences. 

2.     Excellent ability to verbally present information, to a range of audiences in a clear, inspiring, and confident way to achieve desired outcomes.

3.     Excellent ability to align, prioritise and plan marketing and communications activity against strategic organisational priorities.

4.     Excellent ability to establish, develop and maintain relationships with a wide variety of stakeholders, including senior level individuals and external media agencies and partners to achieve desired outcomes.

5.     Well-developed ability to develop, control and manage a communications and marketing plan, keeping within financial limits, monitoring and forecasting income and marketing performance, identifying possible shortfalls or overspends and taking timely and appropriate action.

6.     Excellent organisational skills with the ability to manage projects, organise and plan own work and the work of others to deliver objectives on time.

7.     Experience in marketing and communications planning and strategically scheduling marketing activities on behalf of a large national brand. 

8.     Project Management skills

9.     Significant experience in leading integrated multi-channel campaign planning for a large organisation. 

10.  A personal commitment to ending cruelty to children.

Safer Recruitment

As an organisation, we are committed to creating and fostering a culture that promotes safeguarding and the welfare of all children and adults at risk. 

Our safer recruitment practices support this by ensuring that there is a consistent and thorough process of obtaining, collating, analysing and evaluating information from and about candidates to ensure that all persons appointed are suitable to work with our children and adults.

The recruitment and selection of our people will be conducted in a professional, timely and responsive manner and in compliance with current employment legislation, and relevant safeguarding legislation and statutory guidance. 

Our principles: 

·       Always seek to recruit the best candidate for the role based on merit including their skills, experience, motivation and competencies. Our robust recruitment and selection process should ensure the identification of the person best suited to the role and the organisation. 

·       Committed to diversity and equality of opportunity and will interview all applicants (internal and external) who self-declare at application as having a disability and who meet the minimum requirements in the person specification of the vacancy they are applying for.

·       We will make reasonable adjustments at all stages of the recruitment process in order to enable successful candidates who declare disabilities to start working or volunteering their time with us.

·       Any current member of staff or volunteer who wishes to apply for vacancies and is suitably qualified will be considered and addressed fairly and objectively based on their merit.

·       As an organisation committed to safeguarding, we will ensure all under 18’s joining the organisation will have ongoing risk assessments to ensure their role and activities are safe and appropriate.

·       All documentation relating to candidates will be treated confidentially in accordance with the GDPR legislation.