About the Team
The VMD team are the drivers of the execution of the Future strategy within and across the audience verticals and work with functional leads to deliver revenue outcomes. This select group of highly motivated talented individuals lead the organisation in our quest to meet our audiences needs, growing our audience reach through creative excellence, ensuring it meets their needs and also has a commercial objective. We have huge ambitions across the globe, and it is essential that this team is able to realise our potential by inspiring, leading and managing our business.

Job Purpose
This role is a deft combination of leadership, management, communication, commerciality, creativity and insight. A good leader creates a clear commercial vision underpinned by a strong creative strategy which in turns acts as motivation for their team. A great leader does this AND builds a strong management team to deliver on the strategy. A brilliant leader does all of this with the additional ability to not just communicate effectively but also uses their understanding of the audience to identify insights that lead to the successful execution of the strategy.

To provide strategic leadership and strong management across the organisation to deliver the goals of the vertical; with direct accountability for the editorial function ensuring the delivery of successfully monetised scale communities with a diverse revenue mix.

Ultimately this role is responsible for delivering growth in profitability at the vertical level of the business.

Key Accountabilities

• Every VMD is responsible for delivering agreed profitability and management of P&L.
• Grow a sustainable, valuable audience within the vertical ensuring it is relevant to users’ needs and meets the audience where they want to experience our content, while at the same time ensuring commercial outcomes.
• Creating both brand & content strategies that deliver across a given portfolio.
• Drive organic brand growth by the astute application of consumer insights (e.g. by growing the overall market or stealing market share) & the motivation of editorial brand teams.
• Together with Trade Marketing, lead Future public relations initiatives and drive awareness of our brands where it matters.
• Drive innovation to ensure we maximise the channels, and thereby monetisation, wherever we reach our audiences.
• Providing leadership to proactively identify/develop products and solutions to generate digital revenue tied to endemic and non-endemic prospects and opportunities, working within the wider matrix.
• Work in partnership with all horizontals, e.g. Ad Sales & Ecom to ensure stable, recurring & incremental revenue streams.
• Manage, lead and develop a team of senior managers and content creators to deliver against an agreed calendar of editorial activity.
• Leverage the insights from data and analytics to drive traffic & revenue. performance across the year but particularly during peak trading events (e.g. Back to School, Holiday, Prime Day or whatever is relevant in your market).
• Oversee project timelines and work streams at a high level, ensuring timely delivery as well as best in class execution with a focus on ROI.
• Manage the annual budget process with your team & liaising with horizontal leads, ensuring the division maximises growth potential.
• Actively participate in weekly, monthly & quarterly management meetings led by senior leadership colleagues and prepare materials accordingly.

Requirements

• Management of budgets including revenue and costs.
• Strong product knowledge/product development & experience in launching/relaunching magazines, websites, events, brand extensions including an understanding of new product development process & roadmapping.
• Strong sector knowledge and ability to use this to drive positive outcomes for your vertical e.g. use competitive set data to shape strategy
• Stakeholder management skills. The ability to influence, challenge and coach at all levels of the organisation.
• Excellent communication skills both written and oral. A passionate storyteller with the ability to ignite passion and fellowship from their team and the teams they service. The ability to distill pertinent information into a report.
• Problem solving. The ability to take a problem, assess the risks and make an informed plan of how to approach it.
• Data driven. Possesses the ability to take data, form insights and act as a result.
• Tenacity. Able to drive change forward whilst taking time to bring the team along on the journey.
• Global thinking. Ability to think multi-channel, multi-region.
• Commercial acumen. The ability to adapt best practice to best fit approach.
• Ability to build and coach a diverse team while supporting inclusivity and diversity
• The incumbent should have experience of working with multi-functional teams within a matrix structure to achieve results.

Benefits

What will I get in return?

As well as our standard benefits, we have a number of awesome perks available to our staff including:

• Unlimited paid time off (yes you read that right!)
• A share in our success- every member of staff receives a profit pool bonus at the end of our financial year
• Free digital magazine subscriptions and access to back copies of our print magazines and bookazines
• Regular staff socials arranged by our wonderful Employee Community & Culture committees (when we get back to the office)
• Huge opportunities to learn and develop whether through professional qualifications, exposure to incredible business projects or informal lunch & learns, hosted by your colleagues

We are Future

Connectors. Creators. Experience Makers

Future is a global multi-platform media company and leading digital publisher, with scalable brands and diversified revenue streams. We are dedicated to connecting over 300 million people worldwide with their passions, through expert content, world-class events and cutting-edge proprietary technology. We have big ambitions to transform media and change people’s lives.

We have a market-leading portfolio of over 220 brands spanning across technology, gaming, TV & entertainment, women’s lifestyle, music, sport, creative and photography, home interest and B2B. You may have heard of us…

But a stellar heritage isn’t enough. We continue to grow our portfolio and launch new brands, restlessly looking to improve, innovate and push the boundaries of what can be done. We develop leading-edge technology which is disrupting the media marketplace.

Together, we’re exceeding the expectations of everyone we exist for – our audiences, clients, staff and shareholders. In a short space of time, Future has transformed into an innovative global media platform.

We reap the rewards too, of course, with a fun and creative place to work with endless opportunities to forge a career. We believe in teamwork that transcends location, so we don’t have a Future HQ but a globally connected workforce across the UK, US, Europe and Australia

Every kind of talent is celebrated here.. We hire for person not for the role, looking for people who share our ambitions to be bold and innovate, making Future a global success story.

Let’s do this!
To apply for this role, please submit your CV and a covering letter explaining why this is your dream job!

Inclusion & Diversity
At Future we are passionate about ensuring that as a business, we are continuing to promote diversity and inclusion not just in our recruitment processes, but everything we do.

Future is an equal opportunity employer and we will continue to ensure our recruitment process will be free of bias and our workplaces are inclusive, positive, free of discrimination and respects all backgrounds and beliefs. Our culture is underpinned by our values which will continue to ensure that all applicants, current and future employees are treated with respect and fairness.

We are continuing to be inclusive in our approach to flexible working, ensuring that we are making adjustments where required and providing our employees the tools and support to enable them to grow and flourish in their careers.

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