Put your skills to work for a fast-paced communications firm with a stellar reputation – a place where you can really make a difference. High Road Communications shapes integrated communications programs for the world`s leading brands, serving clients across North America from offices in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and San Francisco.  

High Road has an immediate opportunity in our Toronto office location for a Manager, Digital Marketing to provide strategic consulting and hands-on integration of digital marketing plans into the marketing communications and public relations mix for our clients.  This net-new  position that has come about due to business growth.

The Manager, Digital Marketing will lead plan development to drive measurable ROI for clients.  The Manager, Digital Marketing will also work closely with traditional PR practitioners to ensure a holistic communications strategy.  A key component of this role will be to drive organic and external new business.

 Overview:

• An experienced professional with expertise in applying digital marketing solutions within a strategic communications framework.  Particular strengths in digital marketing include word-of-mouth/viral campaigns, content syndication, online advertising, lead- and traffic generation, blogger relations, social media and use of Web analytics.
• Part strategist, part hands-on tactician, capable of envisioning, leading or implementing as the situation requires.
• Excellent relationship skills; good listener; respects the expertise of others; ability to motivate and generate effective action from all levels of the organization. 
• A consummate team player who brings a passionate, positive, high-energy approach to client service and delivering results.
• Comfortable in the role of teacher, trainer, mentor – your enthusiasm for what you do is infectious.
•  The successful candidate should possess enough hands-on experience implementing digital marketing to translate terminology into a language that all can understand. He or she should enjoy training / teaching both account staff and clients.

 Responsibilities:

• Identify marketing problems, perform research, and analyze trends/results to determine strategic implications.
• Implement internal/external engagement models and processes around strategic planning.
• Develop, package and integrate digital marketing consulting and tactical services within the communications mix of several high-profile clients.
• Perform marketing analysis, including segmentation, social media, survey, market share, web behavioural analysis
• Collaborate on proposals and pitches; proactively identify new opportunities for client growth.
• Manage projects for on-time and on-budget completion.

 Qualifications:

• Seeking 5+ years of overall experience working with clients and developing business within a digital firm, PR agency, or advertising/marketing agency.  Agency experience is a must.
• In-depth knowledge of digital, social and mobile marketing communications strategy, analytics and user behaviour (segmented analytics and channel marketing).
• You’re a specialist in paid media (paid digital marketing space/advertising search engine and knowledge of paid content sponsorship), and you work very well weaving your channel expertise into integrated programming.
• Strong understanding of integrated advertising.
• Strong understanding of brands and branding as a discipline.
• An ability to envision and develop holistic, offline and online marketing communications strategy, weaving in digital strategies to drive ROI for clients.
• Proven track record of excellent client counseling, including strategic thinking, verbal and writing skills; you’re a natural at building relationships.
• A passionate and persuasive advocate of digital media.

 If you have the above qualifications, please submit your resume to Raman Uppal, Senior Human Resources Specialist at careers@highroad.com

 For more information on High Road Communications – please visit our Web site at www.highroad.com.

So I generally hate going to these things… a boring re-hash of the basics we’ve been talking about for years, out-of-date examples, etc. But I was pleasantly surprised at the pretty much awesome line up the Strategy Mag peeps were able to wrangle for this year’s AToMiC conference held yesterday at the Koolhaus in Toronto (good call timing it right before AdWeek in NYC).

From Alexander Manu’s interesting keynote on disruption, to “vision” guys like PHD’s Mark Holden, MS Advertising’s Jeremy Grubaugh & Saatchi & Saatchi’s Tim Leake, to corporate movers like Pepsi’s Frank Cooper III, to tech wiz’s like Toronto’s own InteraXon, everyone brought insight and an interesting viewpoint that built on the overall future-of-marketing conversation.

• It was a breath of fresh air to be somewhat confused by Manu’s complex theories first thing in the morning… but at least he was thinking about the why & how not just what & where. Not a lot of people go there!
• Pepsi’s Cooper was as smooth as I wish our Cdn politicians could be… he even evoked Jerry McGuire a couple of times, yikes. But he broke down success to a few simple rules that made sense: Humanity (people first), Imagination (change through creativity), and Truth (transparency & openness). Plus he gave a shout out to Drake, way to know your audience.
• Holden brought out gems like Graphene & went in-depth on how NUI (& Kinect in particular, near & dear to my heart, obvs) has the potential to change marketing.
• Grubaugh had some actually really good 1-, 2-, 3-screen ad examples & showed how storytellers can be thinking of incorporating new tech. I especially liked the mashup of Bing Maps, PhotoSynth & Deep Zoom… you could have a lot of fun w/ that!
• Leake I liked & agreed with his approach to more nimble marketing, but it was somewhat painful to watch coming from a PR background: “lean marketing” & “one-week challenges?” Grass is always greener dudes, you’re welcome to it.
• Really, there’s not much to say about InteraXon except go check that shit out! It’s pretty damn cool. (My fave tip from today also came from these guys: don’t even bother trying to flex the delta quadrant of your brain… duh.)

All in all, pretty entertaining & thought provoking. Even still, it was reassuring to hear we’re on the right track focusing on content & storytelling while also knowing the latest channels or opportunities and how to use them from a business perspective. Now I just need to get my own brain sensor…

After months of meetings, brainstorms, research, coding, writing, editing, shooting videos, designing and dreaming, High Road was excited to be a part of the official launch of BrighterLife.ca.

A content marketing site powered by Sun Life Financial (a High Road client for the last four years), BrighterLife.ca is designed to deliver relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage an audience in a way that avoids jargon and a hard sales push. The content is all presented in plain language and focuses on topics people think about– family, health, money, working life and retirement.

BrighterLife.ca invites everyone to get involved – by reading, posing question to its columnists, contributing ideas and experiences, answering poll questions and sharing insights with those who face similar challenges.

High Road is proud to be a part of the BrighterLife.ca launch, and looks forward to working closely with Sun Life as the site continues to expand.

 Check it out at http://brighterlife.ca and in French at http://simplementbrillant.ca/.