Head of Brand, Content, Design & Propositions, Japan

Manulife Life Insurance Co., Ltd. is part of the Manulife Group headquartered in Canada and is a life insurance company that specializes in wealth management solutions, offering various retirement and asset building products and services that address customer concerns around longevity preparedness and legacy provision.

Head of Brand, Content, Design & Propositions reports into the Chief Marketing Officer. This position requires strategic thinking, executive stakeholder management and creative campaign execution excellence. The Brand, Content, Design & Propositions team focuses on 1) brand and marketing, 2) content development and UIUX design, and 3) product proposition development.

This position is responsible for contributing to Manulife JP’s achievement of the company’s must-win priorities by significantly upscaling our company’s ability to attract new customers through brand and product propositions that build and develop a long-term loyal customer base for Manulife Japan.

The position oversees the proposal and delivery of marketing initiatives in line with our localised global brand strategy; creates product propositions tailored to key customer and distributor segments and owns the full customer lifecycle communications from acquisition, engagement to cross-sell/up-sell with advanced analytics, personalized content, and marketing automation.

We’re looking for someone who sees an opportunity to innovate insurance marketing and has the drive and talent to become a digital, customer-centric leader in the industry.

Responsibilities:

Reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer Japan, the Head of Brand, Content, Design & Propositions JP will design and deliver the overall Brand, Content, Design and Propositions strategy to help the company achieve the must-win priorities with a specific focus on the brand awareness to boost sales.

Branding:

• Develop, lead and execute a specific and measurable brand proposition that accurately targets different segments through research and knowledge such as geographical spending power, spending preferences & behaviours, digital savviness in order to create brand awareness and interest in Manulife products ahead of market competitors.

• Establish and deliver initiatives that amplify the brand and associated brand KPIs to support the growth of the business in Japan. This will involve working with appointed creative and media agencies to successfully deliver on campaign calendars.

• Manage brand governance across Manulife Japan to ensure adherence to company and regulatory standards and amplification of all external assets.

• Identify sponsorship opportunities that underpin Manulife Japan’s brand and customer value propositions and ensure alignment to our Impact Agenda, brand strategy and business objectives. Ensure measurable return on investment through associated marketing and sponsorship efforts.

• Advise and support Manulife Japan’s bancassurance and independent advisory partners on multiple brand initiatives to help drive and meet sales growth. 

• Partner closely with regional (potentially global) and local stakeholders on initiative co-creation and delivery.

Propositions:

• Build a robust propositions capability which helps bring the company’s solutions to life through customer and distributor facing assets through seamless collaboration within the Marketing function and across other departments.

Content & Design:

• Create and activate Manulife Japan’s content strategy that brings the Manulife Japan brand to life and drives engagement through the funnel, with the objective of improving acquisition, engagement, up-sell and cross-sell.

• Drive a robust approach to the creation and delivery of content across our platforms, including our agency force.

• Work in partnership with Growth Marketing Team to optimize Manulife’s brand digital traffic across multiple communication channels for customers and the company’s agency force and distribution channel partners.

• Drive the adoption of our design standards across all UX/UI, utilising in house talent and an approved design roster.

Overall:

• Drive continued thought leadership on Brand, Content, Design and Propositions across the company as the established “go-to” subject matter expert.

• Overall budget and KPI management for the above responsibilities including management of various agency partners.

• Lead and cultivate a high-performing team by proving guidance and support on team members’ professional and career development opportunities to stay on top of the most advanced marketing and brand digital innovation.

Knowledge/Skills/Competencies/Education:

• A result-driven professional with a university degree and minimum 15 years of experience in  marketing & branding (of which at least 5 years in a senior leadership role) with experience in evaluating and implementing initiatives to meet the Manulife Japan’s strategic objectives.

• Proven experience and track record in digital branding innovation that reflected in sales growth.

• Proven experience in building and leading cross-collaboration marketing/branding/communication projects across departments.

• Experience and track record in successful Branding, Advertising and Product Marketing initiatives that proved to be relevant, memorable, and distinguished from competitors.

• Comfortable with all areas of the marketing mix including brand strategy, creative, production, media planning and buying, performance marketing, research, sponsorship, content.

• Master-level understanding and experience with ‘Digital’ and data driven design.

• Master-level understanding of statistical methods to facilitate targeting, segmentation, revenue generation, retention and marketing campaigns.

• Extensive experience of successfully managing and delivering results with third party vendors, shared-services, brand & content delivery practice, COE or customer consulting.

• Experience and proficiency in working with Agile methods.

• Customer oriented.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact [email protected].

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