Job title: Senior PR Campaigns Manager

Job salary: £70,000 - £72,000 per annum

Job location: London, SE1 (hybrid working, minimum 2 days per week in the office)

Deadline: 13th February 2026

Purpose of the job

Working as part of the wider Communications department and supporting the Deputy Director of Communications, your job is to drive the positive agenda for the vital smart meter technology that cuts through to the British public and opinion formers.

You will manage an in-house team and work with a roster of agencies (delivering PR, broadcast, content production and influencers) to design and deliver high-quality, high-volume integrated PR campaigns to engage target consumer audiences on the benefits of smart meters and drive conversion to installation.

The role combines strong strategic and creative skills, hands-on delivery and media expertise, deputising at senior level when required and playing a key role in building Smart Energy GB’s public profile and credibility by ensuring consistently high-quality, accurate communications across all channels.

You will work closely with other teams in the organisation and with the Director of Communications and Head of Corporate Communications to closely manage media and stakeholder relationships. You will work as part of a cross-department team to manage a 24/7 press office and manage and mitigate negative media stories.

Key tasks and responsibilities

• Support the Deputy Director and Director of Communications and the development of SEGB’s strategic PR priorities
  
  
• Deputise for the Deputy Director of Communications as required. Provide strategic advice, be a trusted ambassador and contribute to the reputation of the team by building strong relationships and working collaboratively across the organisation and with external stakeholders
  
  
• Line manage the Communications Manager and Senior PR Officer, completing bi-annual development reviews and providing constructive feedback and mentoring to ensure high performance and engagement
  
  
• Lead the development of a highly creative and multi-layered in-house campaign strategy that reaches SEGB’s diverse range of audiences, including specialist audiences
  
  
• Confident management of our roster of agencies, principally for PR, influencer and content production, and occasionally advertising and media buying as required. Foster collaborative, positive relationships and hold agencies to account to ensure excellent performance and results.
  
  
• Lead the annual briefing and procurement of a hero PR agency and work collaboratively with them to support the development of fully integrated campaigns, built around priority audiences and informed by data and insights
  
  
• Manage the budgets and contracting for individual campaigns in accordance with SEGB finance procedures, supported by the finance team
  
  
• Take responsibility and ownership for delivering high quality news materials, press releases, Q&As, talent/expert briefings, creative assets and content to promote and protect the smart meter rollout – ensuring excellent quality control and risk mitigation so as to be ready for sign off by the Deputy Director and/or Director
  
  
• Support the evaluation of PR campaigns by the Insight & Analytics team and commission bespoke evaluation after major campaigns as necessary
  
  
• Manage broadcast interview days as required, working with our broadcast media agency and preparing/briefing senior colleagues or talent ahead of transmission
  
  
• Manage production companies and content shoot days, briefing talent, setting up locations, and ensuring the delivery of high-quality assets that support strategic priorities as necessary, whilst ensuring accuracy and mitigating risk
  
  
• Support the development of influencer strategy and content, led by another senior manager, to wrap around hero PR campaigns throughout the year
  
  
• Select appropriate and authentic talent for in-house and hero campaigns, overseeing contracting and negotiation of the right deliverables and usage periods for the channel mix required
  
  
• Collaborate with colleagues across digital and other Marketing functions to ensure close integration, particularly with social media
  
  
• Lead the collation of media evaluation and reporting for proactive PR campaigns for board papers throughout the year
  
  
• Support the Senior Manager who leads on media partnerships when necessary, including contributing to the development of briefs, quality control/proofing and assisting with the sign off process to ensure all content is of the highest standard and adheres to the necessary regulatory standards and is ready for sign off by the Deputy Director
  
  
• Support and provide cover for the Senior Manager who leads the Microbusiness strategy when necessary
• Take part in the 24/7 duty press office rota (inc. out of hours), responding quickly and robustly to reactive media requests and opportunities while seeking corrections or clarifications to misleading or inaccurate articles

Skills, experience and competencies

Essential

• The successful candidate will have demonstrable experience of working in a senior mid-level position, managing proactive PR planning and delivery for a consumer-facing organization, ideally with a campaigning focus
  
  
• You will have a strategic mindset, capable of seeing the bigger picture and working across teams to deliver results that feed into organisational priorities
  
  
• Combined PR and news management experience and thorough knowledge of GB media including national, regional, consumer and digital media
  
  
• Excellent creative and organisational PR skills, with demonstrable experience of managing an ongoing programme of high quality, successful and targeted PR initiatives
  
  
• Ability to work independently and proactively, you’ll be a self-starter experienced in multi-tasking and juggling priorities - taking the initiative and quickly grasping complex issues with confidence
  
  
• Experience of effective news management gained from working in a busy press office, with strong rebuttal and crisis management skills and a highly developed sense of risk – and knowledge of how to mitigate
  
  
• Accustomed to collaborative team working and an ability to act as external ambassador for Smart Energy GB
  
  
• Excellent communication skills (verbal/writing) and the ability to hone written materials to a high standard with little or no need for amendments
  
  
• Understanding of the objectives and activities of Smart Energy GB
  
  
• Appreciation of the diversity of the people and communities of Great Britain and embrace this diversity in your approach to work

Desirable

• Demonstrable experience of working to a campaign budget and of finance/procurement/contracting processes to ensure value for money
  
  
• Ability to act as a media spokesperson for SEGB
  
  
• Experience of working with marketing or advertising teams and/or incorporating digital and other integrated channels within campaigns. Ideally, some knowledge of media partnerships
  
  
• Good knowledge of PR evaluation techniques

Welcome to Smart Energy GB. It’s our task to engage everyone in England, Scotland and Wales with the national rollout of smart meters - and we are all thrilled to have this once-in-a-career chance to communicate with the whole of our diverse nation.

Every British home and microbusiness has the opportunity to upgrade to new gas and electricity smart meters, which will utterly transform the way we all buy and use energy and pave the way to a smarter, more energy efficient future. It’s one of the biggest technological and infrastructural investments of our time; the smart meter rollout has already converted approximately 70 per cent of British households. The goal for this voluntary technological upgrade is to engage every household in Great Britain, and so there is a continuing critical role for Smart Energy GB in the years ahead.

Our campaign is one of the most far-reaching of any campaign in the country. We are talking to consumers from all backgrounds, across the whole of Great Britain. Our legal duties mean that we have a particular need to make sure that consumers who are harder to reach or need greater support are not left behind (already an important part of our responsibilities and likely to be an increasing focus over the period leading beyond 2025).

It’s an important time to join one of the most talented and creative teams (c70 FTE) in the country to deliver marketing and communications campaigns. We have an exciting mission, and we pride ourselves on having a fully inclusive working environment.

We’re looking forward to meeting you and hope you’ll be as fired up about the challenge ahead as we are.

The Smart Energy GB team

Smart Energy GB is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity. We use data to measure the effectiveness of our attraction and selection methods to ensure that they are fair and equitable and that opportunities at Smart Energy GB are accessible to people from all backgrounds.

We actively encourage applications from currently under-represented groups. We have identified ethnic minority, lower socio-economic background, disability and gender as the key areas we would like to focus our recruitment efforts in.

What do we do at Smart Energy GB to promote diversity and inclusion?

Every person who applies for a role at Smart Energy GB is asked to complete a diversity questionnaire and they are asked whether or not they consent to their diversity data being taken into consideration at the shortlisting stage.

Disability Confident Scheme

We have the Disability Confident Leader status and we are committed to making our recruitment practices as inclusive and fair as possible for all applicants. Disability Confident is a government scheme designed to help us make the most of the talents of those with disabilities and/or health conditions in the workplace.

All disabled applicants who meet the minimum requirements of the job as set out in the job description and person specification will be guaranteed an interview. If there’s anything we can do to make our interview process or working environment more inclusive and to meet your particular needs please let us know. Our offices have full wheelchair access.

We consider our commitment to the Disability Confident scheme in many aspects of our work life, including our offices. We moved to a new London office in September 2021, and having an accessible layout was a high priority in this search.

All In Champions

We’re committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels like they belong. That’s why we’re proud to be one of the first organisations awarded All In Champion status, as part of the Advertising Association, ISBA and IPA’s initiative. To achieve this, we provided evidence that we have adopted the first six actions from the All In Action Plan – improving the experience and representation of:

• Black talent
• Disabled talent
• Working-class talent
• Women
• Asian talent
• Older talent

You can read more about how to become an All In Champion and what it means here.

Rooney Rule

We are building a team that is able to understand the needs of and effectively communicate with the whole of our diverse nation. We want our team to reflect the diversity of the wider population. This includes the representation of people from ethnic minorities and lower socio-economic backgrounds. We apply the Rooney Rule to achieve this.

Subject to consent, out of the candidates who meet the essential selection criteria for the role and who are from ethnic minority or lower socio-economic backgrounds, at least one will be shortlisted for the next stage in the recruitment process, which is usually an interview. 

For more information on Diversity and Inclusion - watch this video of our CEO Dan Brooke talk about the importances of D&I and how we prioritise it within our organisation.