Director PR

Purpose:
- Reporting into Head of EU Publishing and driving against a holistic publishing strategy for Europe.
- Build and protect the brand across Europe by supercharging the local Newsroom network and enabling industry leading PR outcomes.
- Connect Europe to the Global Newsroom network and Global Corporate Communications to deliver against the brand’s PR strategy and manage the brand’s reputation.
- Provide PR leadership and expertise to EU stakeholders and country publishing teams.
- Key Responsibilities:
- Newsroom Network_
- Create a European PR network across all key countries facilitating best practice in the region and guiding PR representatives to deliver against priorities.
- Lead and implement rollout of global PR strategy into EU and represent the region in global publishing dynamic
- Through a consistent interaction model with the country teams drive forward the consistency and quality of PR outcomes and impacts.
- As a functional expert, be the pivotal escalation point for PR representatives across Europe
- Support Head of EU Publishing through a quarterly meeting cadence consult EU Newsroom Managing Editors on planning, resource management, and the scaling of local publishing opportunities/activations
- Support Head of EU Publishing to create a holistic publishing approach (DP/PP/PR) and maximise opportunities for functional cohesion
- EU Integration_
- Be a thought leader for BADs/Comms Lead to advise on the role for PR within their planning and execution as well as being available to support on scaling opportunities or managing crisis in coordination with the Head of EU Publishing
- Be a thought leader for and adviser to EU BU Category teams across sport and style with PR strategy and the proactive creation of PR toolkits/campaigns/activation guidelines for EU BU driven campaigns and moments. In addition, provide consultancy for reactive opportunities.
- Identify opportunities for efficiency across EU PR (i.e press office, samples, media trips, etc) alongside driving delivery of brilliant basics across all countries.
- As a functional expert, be a resource for EU teams managing major brand moments in the region (i.e. World Athletics Championships ’23, Euro ’24, Olympics ’24)
- Through the Head of EU Publishing work with MAT to identify where media partnership investments can be leveraged for earned and consolidate input from local teams on investment opportunities
- Through the Head of EU Publishing work with DAT lead to support with PR frameworks, strategy and direction for EU specific topics and activations (i.e. Redemption, Membership, etc)
- Work alongside EU Procurement to create PR agency roster for efficiency and consistency
- Brand Reputation and Corporate Communications_
- EU representative and connection point for Global Corporate Communications working closely for brand reputation topics and any collaboration with EU internal communications (i.e. Gender Pay Gap, adidas anniversary moments, etc)
- EU Leader and responsibility for Issues and Crisis response across both proactive (i.e. Issues Book creation, Training, Issues mapping) and reactive (messaging, spokesperson requests).
- Support Head of EU Publishing on Accountability for Issues and Crisis management
- Align with adidas legal on key topics
- Approve all brand media facing statements and provide the guidelines for DP Community Management teams
- Execution_
- Day to day contact point for any PR topics in Europe and for cross functional stakeholders
- Advise role of PR on selected EU specific initiatives (i.e. Breaking Barriers)
- Support Head of EU Publishing to accelerate the impact of partners (SpoMa and CM) through holistic publishing in coordination with EU SpoMa Captain
- Be able to identify key sporting and cultural reactive opportunities to build the brand via earned media e.g. EUROs reactive.
- Support Head of EU Publishing in identifying opportunities for publishing support of the retail network including advise and best practice on local store openings/modifications.
- Management of EU PR budget and EU PR agency who will be an extension of the team through business critical brand reputation support and issues and crisis live management process. Includes provision to avoid single point of failure challenges based on limited head count.
- Management and implementation of PR element of EU Publishing KPIs in coordination with Head of EU Publishing
- Resources, relationships, experience
Manage resources:
- Owner of EU PR budget
- Lead stakeholder in retained PR agency teams
- Key Relationships:
- Brand adidas: EU First Line
- Brand adidas: Managing Editors
- Brand adidas: EU Business Units
- Brand adidas: Global Newsroom team
- Brand adidas: Local EU PR teams
- adidas SEO team
- adidas Legal
- adidas Global Corporate Communications
- Global Digital Analytics
- Digital Activation Team
- Media Activation Team
- Sports Marketing (EU Captain) & Cultural Marketing
- Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
- PR expert