Senior Director, Brand Strategy
Company Description
Rapid7 (NASDAQ: RPD) is helping organizations around the globe advance securely. Our technology, services, and community-focused research simplify complexity for security teams, helping them reduce vulnerabilities, monitor for malicious behavior, investigate and shut down attacks, and automate routine tasks. With more than 9000 customers across 120+ countries, Rapid7 is a recognized leader in cybersecurity that has proudly earned numerous industry accolades and strong recognition for our technology and culture. Learn more at www.rapid7.com.
Our Mission
By continuously improving our technology, stemming the creation of risk in the community, and making security more usable and accessible, Rapid7 enables technology professionals to gain the clarity, command, and confidence they need to safely drive innovation and protect against risk. Our product suite helps organizations to quickly predict, deter, detect, and remediate attacks and obstacles to productivity.
The Opportunity
The Rapid7 Experience Design Studio cultivates end-to-end experiences that build lasting, meaningful relationships with our customers. The Senior Director of Brand will join the studio’s brand team to lead the charge on bringing our values to life and shaping the Rapid7 identity.
Our story is the beginning. It sparks engagement, drives conversations, helps us uncover our customer stories, and nurtures authentic connections with people. We’re looking for a master brand strategist who is insatiably curious about our customers and technology, applies deep empathy and care for their stories, and vividly weaves them into our identity.
Ultimately, this person will help us champion our Rapid7 Insight Platform through transformative experiences across every customer touchpoint. This is an incredibly important role for someone to work with an established public company and transform and intensify its brand, always with an eye to how we are supporting and guiding our customers.
The Role
As the Senior Director of Brand Strategy, you will craft the brand narrative arc, setting the tone for our customer’s experience and relationship with us. Your direction will shape how we communicate and connect with our customers–through content, visual, and digital experiences. In this role, you will cultivate and amplify our brand by:
● Crystalizing the brand strategy, designing our visual identity, gaining organizational alignment, lead the creation of touchpoints, and launching/managing key assets
● Championing and activating the brand across the company for adoption and use, and driving the transformation of the brand in a crowded security market space
● Developing a deep understanding of business objectives, strategies and opportunities, our customers, and the competitive landscape, and translating it to brand strategy
● Working with our leadership team to develop a cohesive, powerful, and resonant narrative around our mission.
● Crafting compelling stories that articulate and demonstrate our vision and mission through both people and technology
● Conducting research and embracing 360-degree learning of external and internal environments, including auditing of business and marketing assets, seeking to illuminate who are we and what do we stand for?
● Growing a creative brand team for both internal and external brand projects
● Leading the brand governance to drive brand performance, alignment across the company, protection of brand standards and guidelines, and ensuring all creative execution efforts adhere to them
● Building the brand architecture that guides business, product and packaging naming and identity
● Driving the creation of brand narrative training, guidelines, and assets to embed the narrative across our organization and to help bring it to life
● Developing media/advertising strategies that amplify global awareness and perception
● Partnering closely with our content strategy and web strategy teams to deliver the brand to the masses
● Supporting the core roles responsible for telling the brand story day in and day out, such as our analyst relations, public relations, and social media teams
● Developing an emotional guest connection to the brand, in strong partnership with both the business team as well as the creative production team
● Ensure our brand is always represented consistently for partners, prospects, and Rapid7 employees
Traits and Qualifications
● 10+ years experience leading large programs across organizations or developing global brand strategy
● Experienced in transforming brands and elevating them; B2B experience required but B2C is a plus
● Understanding of how to leverage external agencies and coordinate and manage them in assisting with our brand development
● A deep understanding of the power and mechanics of storytelling and a demonstrated track record of developing and tracking brand measurements to drive brand insights and ability to build loyal followings
● An ability to get input and align internal and external teams to the brand message and provide context for choices in the brand direction combined with the knowledge of how to manage a process to keep the effort focused, transparent, and on track to deliver
● A collaborative and passionate person who can build trusted relationships and values partnership over total control and has a commitment to drive change
● The capability to work effectively with C-level and senior execs to gain buy-in and support
● Strong project management skills to drive impact across multiple workstreams in a time-based milestone manner
● An ability to be a positive, enthusiastic leader who knows how to facilitate and synchronize diverse views and talent
● Security industry experience is a plus but not essential if you’re interested in security and becoming an expert; must have a passion for improving people’s lives through technology