HEAD OF BRAND & CAMPAIGNS
A senior opportunity to relaunch a heritage brand, and own integrated campaigns across JMC Academy. Close the awareness gap on Australia’s best-kept higher education secret, and stick around long enough to enjoy the result.
About JMC Academy
Founded in 1982, JMC Academy is Australia’s premier institution in Creative Industries education, offering a diverse range of Degrees and Diplomas in Music, Songwriting, Audio Engineering, Film and Television Production, Acting, Entertainment Business Management, Visual Communication (Design), Animation, Game Design, and Music Production.
With a 40-year legacy, JMC Academy provides cutting-edge and technologically advanced programs that meet the global demands of the creative industries. JMC operates from 3 large footprint campuses across the east coast of Australia (VIC, NSW & QLD), teaches ~2,500 students per annum and is positioned as one of the largest private higher education providers in Australia.
With advanced-design campuses, ongoing technology upgrades, a dedicated team of academics and industry professionals, and a network of international master class lecturers, JMC Academy is committed to ensuring our graduates make their own indelible mark on industry.
YOUR ROLE, HONESTLY
JMC wins on conversion. When prospective students come through our doors, on Open Day, or on a personal campus tour, they fall in love with our community and courses, and enrol at rates we’re proud of. Where we need your help is earlier, at the awareness end of the funnel, and across every step that connects a curious teenager (or international applicant, or career-changer) to the moment they accept their offer.
That’s the strategic challenge you’re stepping into, and we have the right change agenda in place to support you: a rebrand that’s just finishing its research stages (ready for you to execute on); a major digital uplift program due to deliver this year; a new CRM and data lake being built around you; a Market Intelligence & Proposition Manager and a Data & Performance Analyst already at the table; an existing team to reshape and grow; agency partners engaged; support to play with the latest tools including AI, and a home office in Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane that’s creative down to its bones.
You’ll own brand stewardship and integrated campaigns across the year, domestically and internationally. You’ll design the customer journey end-to-end (not just the Open Day at the start of it) and partner with our CRM team to make that journey land. You’ll lead a multi-disciplinary team, build the content and PR capability we’re missing, and close the awareness gap without losing what makes JMC distinctive: a supportive, diverse, practitioner-led creative community that only needs to be better known to be better loved.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
- Lead brand strategy, creative direction and the rebrand implementation across every touchpoint.
- Own the integrated campaign calendar, domestic and international, anchored in the student journey and recruitment cycle, not the seasonal one.
- Design and own the customer journey, and partner with CRM and marketing automation to bring lead generation and nurture flows to life.
- Build the content, PR and editorial engine JMC currently doesn’t have, including the in-house copy and PR capability that will get us there.
- Steward the brand voice across every touchpoint: web, social, paid, OOH, radio, print, agent and on-campus.
- Manage agency, PR and production partner relationships, the brand and campaigns budget, and reporting to senior leadership and the board.
- Lead and grow a multi-disciplinary team across brand, campaigns, content, social, design, video and (newly built) copy/PR, and reshape the in-house/agency mix as you go.
- Partner with the digital and web team so the digital ecosystem actually reflects the brand and converts the journey.
- Champion cross-discipline storytelling. Our students collaborate across courses, and our content should reflect that.
WHAT YOU’LL BRING
You’re a senior marketing professional with a background in brand and/or content, typically 8–12 years in brand, integrated campaigns and marketing leadership. You don’t need to have come from higher education. You probably need to have done work like this before, ideally somewhere creative, cultural, or considered-purchase, and to have led it, not just contributed.
- Senior brand and campaigns experience, with at least one role where you owned the strategy end-to-end and translated it into measurable awareness, consideration and conversion.
- Journey design and lifecycle craft, you’ve shaped a customer journey, run nurture flows through CRM, and know how to bring brand and demand together.
- People leadership skills. How have you helped your team grow, and reshaped a team when the work demanded it?
- A portfolio that shows taste and range, not just performance metrics.
- A clear point of view on how brand-building and demand generation relate, and where PR, content and earned media fit in.
- Confidence managing agencies, PR and producers. You can write a brief that gets you the work you actually want, and you can shift from collaborator to leader and back again.
- Practical commercial literacy, comfortable with budgets, ROI conversations, and saying no to spend that won’t earn its keep.
- Strong writing and editorial skills. JMC’s voice is one of our biggest brand assets, and this role sets the standard.
YOU’LL THRIVE HERE IF
- You believe creative careers are real, structured, and worth pursuing, and you can talk about them in named roles, not vague outcomes.
- You see strong creative as a strategic lever, not a finishing layer.
- You’re comfortable with change, and also with leading others through change. You can show people where you’re going and take them with you on the journey.
- You like working alongside other senior brains. You’ll have peers in Market Intelligence & Proposition, Data & Performance and CRM, and a CCO who wants the function to win as a team, not as a hero.
- You’re at ease in a smaller organisation where you’ll lead strategy and sometimes write the copy yourself.
- You’re in this for a chapter, not a stop-off. The rebrand, the team, the journey design and the operating model are multi-year work, and we’d like the person who starts this to be the person who sees it through.
- And importantly, the idea of working away while a troupe of musical theatre students run rehearsals outside your office, while you write a brief for Design students to create some fresh merch, then head off to promote their work at a film festival, sounds like a great day. Our campuses are frequently noisy, never static, and always inspiring.
YOU’LL FIND IT HARDER IF
- You prefer polish to truth. JMC’s voice is human, slightly imperfect, and rarely uses superlatives.
- You expect to always delegate the craft. This role is hands-on as well as strategic.
- You’re motivated mainly by prestige briefs. Our work is closer to a community than to a campaign reel.
- You’d struggle with the idea of coaching. Our students might be your biggest asset (especially for content), and you might find a star or two, but you will often be in a coaching role.
- You’d rather be the only senior voice in the room. This is a function built around partnership, with the CCO, with your peers, with academics, with agencies, with international and admissions.
THE PRACTICAL BITS
BASE Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, with cross-campus travel.
REPORTS TO Chief Customer Officer.
TYPE Full time, permanent.
SALARY Competitive, commensurate with experience; we’ll talk specifics early in the process.
APPLY TO EMAIL: STahana@jmc.edu.au
WHAT TO SEND
A CV, a short cover note (no longer than a page), and one or two examples of brand or campaign work you led. Links are fine, we’d rather see live work than PDFs. In your note, tell us briefly: a team you’ve built or reshaped, and what good looks like when you lead one.
