Discovery – Marketing Invest

Senior Marketing Manager

About Discovery 

Discovery’s core purpose is to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives. We seek out and invest in exceptional individuals who understand and support our core purpose, and whose own values align with those of Discovery. Our fast-paced and dynamic environment enables smart, self-driven people to be their best. As global thought leaders, Discovery is passionate about innovating in order to not only achieve financial success, but to ignite positive and meaningful change within our society.

About Discovery Marketing

In Marketing, defying gravity is part of our everyday work because we’re a team of people who love to push the boundaries, to achieve the impossible, and to accept all sorts of never-done-before challenges. Discovery Marketing is a vibrant area who are dedicated to the collective core purpose, values and ambition. We work on numerous projects across distribution channels and across all Discovery products and strive for excellence in all that we do.

Key Purpose

The Senior Marketing Manager leads the marketing team for the Discovery Invest portfolio, turning agreed business priorities into clear marketing plans and high-quality work across brand, product, adviser and client channels.

The role needs both craft and leadership. You will bring strong marketing judgement, and you will lead and develop a team of three or more marketers at different levels, set clear priorities and standards, and embed the Discovery Marketing way of working.

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to:

1. Lead, coach and build team capability

• • Lead and develop a team of three or more marketers at different stages of their careers, including people early in their careers.
  • Coach people through the work and give frequent, specific feedback so they build judgement, confidence and independence.
  • Agree development plans covering marketing fundamentals, investment knowledge, strategic thinking, communication, stakeholder management and campaign delivery.
  • Set clear expectations, priorities, standards and decision rights, and hold people to them.
  • Build a culture of curiosity, ownership and pace, where people feel safe to speak up and are still accountable.
  • Spot development needs early and manage performance fairly and constructively.
  • Create stretch opportunities and exposure to senior stakeholders and build enough product and regulatory knowledge in the team to market investment and retirement solutions responsibly.

2. Drive delivery and marketing excellence

• • Turn agreed portfolio priorities into a clear marketing plan with outcomes, owners, milestones and measures.
  • Oversee campaigns and projects from brief through to delivery and post-campaign review.
  • Keep a strong operating rhythm across planning, approvals, resourcing, risk and reporting.
  • Review and challenge the work so it is strategically sound, relevant to clients and advisers, distinctive, accurate and aligned to brand and compliance requirements.
  • Stay close enough to the portfolio to spot risks to quality, capacity, scope, budget or timelines early, and act on them.
  • Improve processes, templates and ways of working without adding unnecessary admin.
  • Make sure what you learn from one campaign is applied to the next.

3. Provide strategic and commercial marketing leadership

• • Work with business leaders to understand commercial priorities and shape integrated marketing that supports them.
  • Turn complex business and product information into clear positioning, messaging and go-to-market plans.
  • Bring new thinking and informed challenge, so marketing is a strategic partner and not only an execution function.
  • Use business, client, adviser and campaign insight to make better marketing decisions, and track agreed measures to show what is working.
  • Keep an informed view of the investment category, competitor activity, client needs and adviser dynamics.
  • Help stakeholders tell the difference between a business requirement, a communication need and a real marketing opportunity.

4. Lead product, adviser and client marketing

• • Lead the marketing workstream for product launches, proposition enhancements and major portfolio initiatives.
  • Build integrated adviser and client engagement plans across owned, earned, paid, digital and experiential channels.
  • Make complex investment propositions clear, relevant and compelling without losing accuracy.
  • Build connected communication journeys rather than treating each piece of work as a one-off deliverable.
  • Work with product, distribution, technical marketing, digital, data, legal, compliance and operations teams to deliver joined-up activity.
  • Keep governance and accuracy tight across regulated investment marketing, and balance product, brand and audience priorities so the work is commercially relevant and distinctively Discovery.

5. Build stakeholder and partner relationships

• • Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, and give clear guidance, honest challenge and practical recommendations.
  • Align everyone on objectives, scope, roles, decisions and sign-off before work starts.
  • Manage competing expectations while protecting agreed priorities and the team’s capacity, and flag risks, dependencies and trade-offs early.
  • Manage agencies and specialist partners against clear briefs, standards, budgets and expectations, so they build internal capability rather than dependency.
  • Represent Marketing and the Discovery Invest portfolio well and protect Discovery’s brand and reputation.

Who we are looking for

• • You lead with high support and high standards: nurturing without lowering the bar, decisive without creating fear, and close enough to the work to coach well while building a team that can operate independently.
  • Empathetic, with the judgement to adapt your approach to different people and situations.
  • A strong coach who explains the why, models good work and turns feedback into practical improvement.
  • Comfortable setting boundaries, having honest conversations and holding people to agreed standards.
  • Calm and organised under pressure, able to prioritise a big portfolio and make clear trade-offs.
  • Strategically strong and commercially minded, with the confidence to challenge weak thinking and unclear briefs, including with senior stakeholders.
  • A strong communicator who can shape and sharpen a message and get alignment across senior and cross-functional teams.
  • Creative within the real constraints of brand, regulation and operations, and led by what clients and advisers actually need.
  • Focused on building capability through others, rather than becoming the team’s strongest individual contributor.

 Education and Experience

 Required

• • A completed degree, preferably a BCom in Marketing or another marketing, business, finance or investment-related degree.
  • Five or more years of relevant marketing experience, including leading and developing a team of three or more people.
  • A track record of coaching less experienced marketers and lifting their capability, confidence and quality of work.
  • Experience leading integrated marketing programmes and juggling multiple priorities in a complex, fast-moving organisation.
  • Strong writing and communication, campaign and project management, and senior stakeholder management skills, including turning business requirements into clear marketing plans.
  • Evidence of managing performance constructively, from setting expectations to giving honest feedback.

Advantageous

• • Experience in investments, retirement, financial services or another regulated industry.
  • An honours degree, postgraduate business qualification or professional marketing qualification.
  • Experience in product or proposition marketing, adviser or intermediary marketing, and data-informed customer engagement.
  • Working knowledge of investment products, financial planning, adviser distribution and the South African regulatory environment.
  • Experience managing agencies and specialist marketing partners.
  • Familiarity with Discovery’s Marketing processes, standards and ways of working.

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY   
                             
The Company’s approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.