Senior Corporate Affairs Executive

The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) is the voice of the UK food and drink industry: We help our members operate in a highly regulated marketplace to maximise their competitiveness and profitability. 

This is a fantastic opportunity for a candidate at senior account executive or account manager with excellent corporate communications experience, ideally with some experience of working with food & drink brands to make the transition in-house and is looking to benefit from flexible working, and being part of a collaborative and supportive culture.

The Role

This role is crucial in liaising between FDF’s expert policy teams, member companies, the media and political stakeholders to help communicate our priorities for Brexit, diet and health, industrial strategy, sustainability and food science. Supporting the Head of Corporate Affairs and Media Manager, the ideal candidate will be responsible for the following:

Media relations

• Handle media queries, seeking advice from specific FDF colleagues as appropriate or external organisations, alerting and involving the Media Manager/Head of Corporate Affairs as necessary.
• Provide extra mentoring support to the other Corporate Affairs Executives, where necessary, assisting them to anticipate proactive opportunities and plan for contentious issues.
• With the other members of the Media & Campaigns team, provide a 24-hour on call media service for FDF, to ensure we are able to communicate FDF’s position to the media/public at all times.
• Develop FDF press notices, position statements and media responses, and with the Media Manger, and where necessary, oversee those produced by Corporate Affairs Executives within the team, in consultation with appropriate FDF colleagues.
• Write articles and letters to the editor for publication on request.
• Prepare and execute proactive media plans for FDF campaigns and interests to ensure maximum publicity for FDF.
• Provide specialist advice for member associations, and FDF committees / groups on media issues of concern to FDF and on specific issues relating to their sectors.
• Help Media Manager to oversee the team to ensure that databases, licenses, contacts lists and monitoring processes are kept up to date and meet the organisation’s need.

Campaigns/events

• Work with the Media Manager to scope out forward plans for FDF’s core campaigns. This will include setting objectives, deliverables, and planning timescales and resource requirements.
• Contribute to the tactical delivery of the campaigns/events as well as working closely with FDF policy colleagues to keep abreast of Government activity and the national and European agenda related to each campaign. 
• Progress the forward plans for each identified campaign/event including developing communication solutions, planning events, creating web and hard copy and sourcing case studies.

Management responsibilities

• Effectively deputise for the Media Manager in their absence.
• Run weekly team meetings (in the absence of the Media Manager) and update the weekly work list Media Team plan (following all meetings).
• Assess the need for media training for colleagues within FDF.
• Take a team wide view of workload and pressure points in order to promote well-being within the Corporate Affairs function.

General

• Assist with any other reasonable duties that may be required by the Head of Corporate Affairs and Media Manager.
• Deliver specialist advice to members and other stakeholders in order to ensure they are up-to-date on pertinent issues and opportunities, while seeking to collaborate and encourage contributions in order to build a consensus and influence outcomes.
• Work with colleagues to promote FDF’s policy agenda and achievements to wider stakeholders and members
• With the Media Manager, supervise the production of copy for newsletters (FDF and FDF Scotland).
• Support/coach senior staff ahead of/following media appearances.

The Team

FDF’s Corporate Affairs team are the link between our members and government. We aim to put member issues at the forefront of the government agenda, and work with government in helping our members to meet government set targets for food and drink.

Requirements

• Excellent knowledge of the workings of the FDF media team including: experience of working in a front-line media role (Corporate Affairs Executive)
• Experience of managing challenging portfolio areas and contentious issues
• Experience of campaigns work preferably related to a specific policy area
• Able to apply in-depth technical knowledge to own work and that of the wider Corporate Affairs team
• Able to manage own workload and complex/self-defined projects
• Ability to build trust and devise practices, working effectively with colleagues including Corporate Affairs team, the Media Manager and Head of Corporate Affairs
• A persuasive communicator with experience of giving presentations and leading meetings
• Ability to plan resources and timescales
• Strong administrative and IT skills  

Our Benefits

FDF is a great place to work where we take well-being seriously and have a great benefits package to match, offering a pension scheme, life insurance, 25 days holiday, private healthcare, leisure travel insurance, gym subsidy, interest-free season ticket loan and cycle-to-work scheme.

Our Workplace

We’re based in the heart of central London in a modern, bright open-plan office. We have a friendly work culture with great break-out spaces, quiet booths and opportunities for flexible-working. Our ‘Feel Good for Life’ team regularly organises events and activities to promote positive health and wellbeing.

Premier Resourcing is working in partnership with the Food and Drink Federation to recruit for this role, this is an urgent requirement so please send your CV for immediate consideration.

directly to Louise Hannant MD at  [email protected]

No agencies please.