View Vacancy - CPK - Communications Officer – Prosperity Programme, C4

We are looking for a confident, ambitious self starter working within the Central Team of the Prosperity Programme.  The role will lead on the development and delivery of a communication strategy for the programme covering the areas of Rule of Law for Business, Infrastructure, Financial Services, Low Carbon & Energy, Skills, Health and Future Cities. 

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate creativity, initiative and dynamism to maximise the impact of our communications across the China network.  They will need to be proactive, looking for new opportunities to promote the Prosperity Programme in China as well as respond quickly to requests from the UK teams based in London for freedom of information requests and reaction to media reports.  S/he will work closely with the Embassy’s Communications team, with suppliers and partners to ensure branding and communications guidelines are being followed and the programme’s impact is appropriately magnified.

S/he will also need excellent communication and influencing skills in order to build strong relationships with the teams within the Embassy to grip their priorities in order to advise them appropriately develop effective messaging.  S/he will be required to build and develop existing relationships with representatives from the media to successfully pitch stories reflecting UK government priorities to print, TV, online and social media and deliver our messages persuasively and robustly.

Prosperity Programme Comms strategy : 

Proactively engage with the various Prosperity Programme and wider Embassy teams on their communications priorities, develop, deliver and evaluate communications strategies and activities to promote the UK as a partner of choice for China in prosperity programme related areas.  S/he will need to be creative in identifying opportunities to promote the UK’s prosperity programme work in China and in finding ways to maximise the impact of these messages. Engage with suppliers and partners to ensure that Prosperity programme branding and communications guidelines and requirements are being met, working closely with the relevant programme teams (who will be managing the contracts).  Engage with UK government departments as appropriate to ensure that communications are also aligned with Ministerial steers and other British Government priorities.   

Activities include (but not limited to) :

• Media planning (analysing media options) and developing a campaign for key events of the year;
• Developing materials including briefing and scripts;
• Writing communication materials (press releases etc);
• Event management (media briefings, external stakeholder workshops);
• Message planning  (working with programme teams to create clear, impactful communications messages);
• Lead on Freedom Of Information requests, providing briefing materials to  London and responding to information/reporting requests from London;
• Evaluating success of communications activities and feeding into Monitoring, Reporting, Evaluation and Learning activities as appropriate.

Visit co-ordination: 

Lead on media activities for regular visits by senior Ministers, VIPs, experts and visits by senior Embassy officials to regional cities, where there is a clear Prosperity programme element.  Develop ideas for media opportunities to deliver the visitors objectives, provide high quality briefing and advice and leverage high impact coverage.

Development of external and internal relationships to support successful implementation of project portfolio: 

Form external relationships with Chinese and foreign project implementers and other partners, including government departments, research institutions and consultants.

• Degree level qualification or equivalent
• Minimum of four years experience working in a communications/media role
• Experience of working with a range of external stakeholders including within UK and China government organisations
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills to engage with China network teams