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We are working with Brightwire in their search for an Executive Director, Product and Marketing, in Newark, NJ. Brightwire an innovative, fast-growing, venture-backed company that is dedicated to improving access to information around the world. With a combination of proprietary software, multi-lingual analysts and business operations located around the world, we serve global investment funds, law firms, corporations, public relation firms and investment banks.
HARRY’S COMMENTS: Information is power. That was true when Tom Peters said it in Thriving on Chaos back in 1987, and it’s true today. But what do you do if your business competes on timely and accurate information, yet that information comes from an obscure source, in a foreign language, halfway around the world?
Mainstream news sources cater to the mass audience and not your specific interests, while specialist and local news sources require substantial time and filtering to find relevant articles. Meanwhile, news aggregators and search engines are English-centric and only cover 20% of the Internet, and results delivered by search engines are algorithmically determined and often irrelevant for your needs. Beyond that, globally mined companies need to be literate in multiple languages but often are not.
That’s where Brightwire comes in. Brightwire provides real-time English-language summaries of global events, whenever and wherever they occur. From chat forums in China to Danish local newspapers, Brightwire monitors, translates, summarizes, and analyses news from over 100,000 sources to produce curated, English-language news summaries in multiple delivery formats, including real-time alerts, daily summaries, customized newsletters, and client portals.
When you think about it, that’s pretty amazing. The sheer quantity of news available for consumption makes it difficult to find what specifically interests you. Global businesses cannot cost effectively monitor every piece of news that impacts their businesses in a timely manner. It can take days or weeks before some foreign news stories break in the United States. Yet some of Brightwire’s private equity clients often have a 2 or three-week lead time on their competitors thanks to Brightwire’s offerings.
In addition to private equity firms, Brightwire’s clients include law firms, PR agencies, and other professional services firms. But this is not a B2B oriented online retail play. True, Brightwire’s clients are businesses, yet their sheer numbers lends a consumer marketing feel to this search.
For example, the US legal services industry includes about 180,000 law offices with combined annual revenue of $230 billion. The US public relations industry includes more than 7,000 companies with combined annual revenue of about $8 billion. The securities brokerage industry in the US includes about 7,500 companies, while the US accounting services industry includes about 100,000 firms.
294,500 potential customers is more than many Internet Retailer Top 1000 companies have in their wheelhouse, so many aspects of this role will have a decidedly consumer-oriented slant.
ABOUT THE ROLE: Currently, Brightwire operates a direct sales business. Until now, sales reps have gone into hedge funds or law firms to present Brightwire’s offerings to the buyer. Each solution was specifically tailored to the client, and might include daily translated news recaps of queries such as “iPhone + Dalian, PRC + adoption.” Brightwire sees an opportunity to repackage many of these reports for sale online.
As with any online retail play, Brightwire’s management wants customers to be able to by online with a credit card, and site search and recommendation engines will play a huge part in cross selling and up selling the site’s users. From a revenue growth standpoint, Brightwire intends to develop new markets and niches, and the new Executive Director, Product and Marketing will be expected to manage the ensuing branding and collateral development issues for new and existing customers.
Moreover, the new Executive Director will analyze issues such as “How do we develop new products? Is there some way to re-purpose and re-market products that we have already developed?” Promising channels include SEO, e-mail, and mobile, so we would expect the new Executive Director to have a track record of success in those areas.
You can expect to wear a lot of hats in this role: Currently, there is no real marketing department at Brightwire. Peter Shapiro, the company’s new CMO, recently joined the firm, and he is looking to build a strong team. The team will likely include a direct marketer, a graphic designer, a manager of organic and paid search, an e-marketing manager, and an associate marketing manager to spearhead the rollout of new marketing campaigns. Wherever possible, everyone on the team will pitch in to coordinate tradeshows and events, as well as gather information for webinars and white papers.
Initially, the new Executive Director can expect to help identify and select key technology solutions as well as assist in the selection of a new ecommerce platform. Other prelaunch activities would include the scoping and wire framing of an acquisition website in the design of a new client portal.
Brightwire intends to rebranding and redesign all of its sales collateral, and the firm tends to draft and launch a branding and awareness campaign across multiple verticals, including law, public relations, and financial services. Naturally, the new Executive Director can expect to be involved in pricing discussions as well.
If you are a creative, accomplished, well-spoken, analytically-biased digital marketer who knows how to “make the trains run on time,” we want to talk to you.
Please Tweet this job, and you’ll be automatically entered into our monthly drawing. Just do it and see what happens: 2010 prizes included $100 Amazon gift certs, Dean & Deluca steaks, and Keurig coffee machines …
Position Overview:
The Executive Director is responsible for the development, execution and management of all consumer-facing products and marketing and reports to Chief Marketing Officer, General Manager – Digital.
Responsibilities:
- Oversee the strategy, development and management of all digital properties. This includes an “acquisition website” and “client portal”
- Develop strategy and build a self-service commerce platform
- Develop, launch and manage a revenue generating client portal
- Innovate all client-facing products designed to maximize revenues and client satisfaction.
- Develop and execute online/offline marketing campaigns to drive traffic and grow revenues including SEO, SEM, Partnership marketing, email campaigns, online marketing, social media, trade shows and conferences and conversion marketing.
- Work closely with Sales and Management teams on pricing strategy.
- Contribute to the development of a new branding strategy that will enhance the corporate identity across all market segments.
- Work with the creative and operations resources to manage newsletter program designed to maintain and build company awareness.
- Support sales efforts to drive revenues, including review of collateral and presentations.
Position Requirements:
- 7-10 years direct marketing experience with focus in online user experience
- 5+ years online B-B and B-C e-commerce experience
- Strong team orientation, flexible
- Juggle multiple projects in a fast paced environment
- Ability to work at a tactical and strategic level
UPDATE: THIS SEARCH IS NOW CLOSED.
