John White
With over 30 years of birdwatching experience, John White, CEO, and Co-founder of Birda, merges his passion for nature and technology with expertise gained from companies like Coca-Cola and Deutsche Bank. With a passion for writing content that helps people connect with nature and an MBA from the University of Cape Town, he's known for his ability to simplify complex concepts. As Birda’s CEO, John’s been featured on Fox News, ABC News, and BBC Radio, as one of the leading voices in birdwatching today. With a flair for bird photography and a love for all things avian, he's not just a CEO but also a dedicated field tester for Birda. Off-duty, he enjoys swimming, running, windsurfing, skiing, and family time. Follow his adventures on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn for a glimpse into one of the people behind Birda's success.
This position has been filled
📄 Summary
- Senior Marketing Manager
- 5+ years experience
- £65k+ DOE
- Work in conservation while still paying your bills
- Mostly remote – 1 day a fortnight in London (Kings Cross)
- Candidates must be resident in the UK
🦉 About Birda
Our purpose is to help people experience the natural world so that they’ll fight to protect it. We are building a birding app for anyone who is curious about the living world. Enabling people to record and share their birding experiences so that they can motivate themselves and others to spend more time outside.
We are building ‘Strava for Birdwatching’. Even in 2022, a birder’s main field tool is a notebook. We think we can do better than that. We are building an app that will enhance the humble notebook by adding GPS-enabled mapping, gamified challenges and social features too. Think ‘Pokemon Go’ in real life.
We’ve been going since Jan and are growing quickly. We are live in Europe and Southern Africa and heading to the US imminently. We move quickly but take a great deal of care and responsibility in what we do, quality matters to us and so does our users’ data security.
The team is currently made up of:
- 👨🏻💼 John – CEO and spreadsheet menace
- 👸🏻 Natalie – Design queen
- 👨🏻💻 Dom – CTO
- 💁♀️Silvia – UX/UI wiz
- 👨🏻🎤 Dave – Senior Software Engineer
- 🧔 Tim – Associate Software Engineer
- 👨🔬 Morgan – Associate Software Engineer
- 👩💻 Sarah – Community Engagement Manager
🔭 What we are looking for
We’re looking for an experienced senior marketing manager who’s at the top of their game. You have a track record of taking consumer products from 🐣 to 🐓 and have ideally launched products in the USA. You will play an instrumental role in growing the Birda user base as we roll out globally.
We believe the best marketing is done by word of mouth so you need to have a deep understanding of social influence, consumer behaviour, and how products (ideally the digital ones), ideas, and behaviours catch on.
You thrive in fast-paced and uncertain environments. You have the drive, ambition and self-motivation to get things done to a high standard. You are comfortable working independently and you (ideally) have experience in a start-up environment.
You’re an excellent communicator. You’re creative and have excellent writing skills. You’re very happy producing written copy as well as overseeing video/graphic production.
You’ll need an interest in conservation and nature. You don’t need to be a full-on bird nerd but outside should be your happy place and you own a sturdy pair of shoes or boots.
Requirements
- Excellent all-round marketing knowledge & experience, ideally at an early stage start-up.
- Experience owning KPIs, outputs and managing budgets accordingly.
- Excellent understanding of key growth & marketing concepts, KPIs and their drivers.
- Knowledge & experience with standard marketing products, platforms and tools (e.g. Ad managers, CRM, Analytics platforms etc.)
- Ability to work with and lead a team of freelancers to create/ manage content.
- Excellent writing skills and the ability to write great copy would be a big plus.
- Excellent analytical skills. Ability to track and analyse performance and KPIs.
Responsibilities
- Define our brand message to ensure it is strong and consistent across all channels and marketing efforts (like events, email campaigns, web pages and promotional material).
- Develop a marketing strategy with the founding team to engage current & new markets.
- Build out our marketing channels to acquire new customers with a focus on reducing acquisition costs and driving retention.
- Setup and management of digital advertising campaigns.
- Manage our PR consultant.
- Manage our SEO consultant and content writers.
- Manage and set social media strategy.
- Prepare and manage monthly, quarterly and annual budgets.
- Analyse consumer behaviour and determine customer personas.
- Monitor competition (new products and features).
💵 / 💚 What we give in return
Purpose – Your life is too precious to spend it making something that doesn’t matter. Many of the greatest challenges that all humans will face both now and in the future will involve managing climate change. Encouraging an appreciation of the natural world is a small but vital part of rising to these challenges. We believe that getting people excited about the plants and animals that inhabit our planet will lead to people making different decisions about how they lead their lives.
Money – Of course, you can’t pay your rent / mortgage / deliveroo habit on good feelings so we’ll be paying a respectable salary. We won’t be able to compete with banks or large tech companies though, so our mission will need to matter to you.
Share options – We have an employee-friendly (gradual vesting, long exercise period) share options grant. If you stick with us, you’ll share in any success we achieve. It’s still very early days for us which means that the amount of equity on offer will be meaningful – it’s your baby too.
Flexible working – Work when you are productive. For Dom that’s 6.00 in the morning but he’s weird 🙄
Other stuff – There’s all the usual holiday (we’ll make you take it) and equipment stuff too. Although not every startup has loaner cameras 😉 (Bridge, DSLR & Mirrorless).
🦠 Post-pandemic working
We continue to all work remotely as we are spread all over the UK and chat over Slack and Google Meet. We’ve liked saving time, money and our carbon footprint by not travelling, but we’ve also really missed not hanging out together – both professionally and socially.
So we currently divide our time up into ‘doing’ and ‘collaborating’. Doing can be done wherever you choose, but collaborating should be done in person, somewhere quiet with whiteboards and coffee. Like an office. Right now that’s a day (Wednesday) a fortnight in London (Kings Cross).
👩🏽💼 Interview Process
This will all be remote…cute pets joining in is a bonus. While there are a few stages, we’ll move as quickly as you can. Nobody likes an interview process that takes months.
👋🏻 Step 1 - Say hi to Birda
15-minute introduction with John White our Founder and CEO. Find out if you think it’s worth going through the hassle of the rest of the process…
💼 Step 2 - On-site interview
This will be at our office in Kings Cross, London. You’ll be speaking with the Senior Management Team and should allow for 2 hours. Don’t worry we’ll bring snacks!
There’ll be 3 sections:
- The usual interview stuff like talking through your experience / portfolio, what makes you tick etc.
- Present a high-level marketing plan on how you would help us launch Birda in our next market (we’ll send you a brief). This is for all of us to get an idea of what it’s like to work together.
- Your turn to interview us, don’t hold back.
🤔 Step 3 - Ask us anything
This is a follow-up call with some combination of Dom / Natalie / John. Any concerns or issues you want to be clarified – now’s the time. It’s a big decision for everyone and we want to take every opportunity to ensure it’s the right one for everybody.
✍️ Applications
Please email us a cover letter and your CV via the button below.
