Associate Director, Communications, APAC

Job Title

Job Description Summary

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

Operational Leadership

• Partner with the Head of PR, APAC to direct and guide the region’s communications strategies and initiatives, ensuring alignment with the firm’s business objectives and brand goals.
• Connect and engage with the local PR/comms team, ensuring local narratives supports global and regional messaging and all activities and campaigns are effectively executed according to company guidelines and protocols.

Internal Communications

• Partner with the Head of Comms, APAC & EMEA to design and implement an internal communications strategy for APAC.
• Support APAC & EMEA CEO with APAC needs including townhalls, communications, presentation content and social media.
• Conduct regular reviews of internal communications outreach initiatives and upgrade or improve as needed to ensure continued positive employee engagement.
• Support high-level regional internal communications needs where required, including providing media monitoring and updates on matters with reputational risk.
• Advise on in-country internal comms needs if needed.

Media Relations and Industry Outreach

• Drive the media and industry profiling of the regional business lines and verticals, ensuring top-tier media coverage and optimum business leverage and speaking/profiling opportunities with key industry associations. This includes:
• Partnering with the regional business leads to develop and implement the PR strategy and plan in Asia Pacific to promote the regional business and key spokespeople across all PR platforms.
• Sourcing, leading and executing on media opportunities for the regional businesses, including press release development, pitching, handling media queries, organizing media events, monitoring coverage and managing relationships between the key spokespeople and the media.
• Working closely with the regional research leads to develop strong news angles, key talking points and press releases for research outputs and if needed, arrange and lead PR briefing sessions for the outputs.
• Support Head of PR, APAC on any liaison with local markets on PR initiatives including cross-border efforts and crisis communications needs.
• Source and co-ordinate relevant submissions to award panels and other recognition platforms.
• As and when required, support globally led PR initiatives.

 Thought Leadership & Campaign Content

• Contribute to the development of thought leadership pieces by ensuring that the news/media aspects are considered, addressed and incorporated sufficiently.
• Work closely with the global/regional research leads, key authors and local PR leads to develop press releases, op-eds, bylines, Q&As, and talking points tailored to APAC audiences.

Reputation Management

• Manage reputational risks and provide strategic counsel on sensitive or high-impact media issues, including crisis communications and major incident responses.

Measurement & Reporting

• Track and report on PR performance metrics, media coverage quality, and other relevant PR outcomes.
• Complete global and regional reporting requirements on time.

Team Management

• Manage the performance and career development of the regional communications manager.
• Foster a positive culture of engagement within the PR team across APAC to drive collaboration and high-performance.

Training & Budgeting

• As needed, conduct media training or refresher workshops for key/new spokespersons across the region and provide counsel on engagement with PR agencies.  
• Set and track PR budget and expenditure.

Requirements:

• 8-10 years of communications experience, with at least 5 years in a regional role. Real estate experience is not a pre-requisite though experience working within an MNC environment with a global and regional network and cross-functional teams is a major advantage.
• Degree and/or qualification in Journalism, Marketing or Communications or related field
• Sound corporate PR mindset and proven track record in media relations, brand positioning, executive communications and campaign execution.
• Deep understanding of employee communications with demonstrated capabilities in strategizing and implementing leadership and internal communications campaigns and initiatives. 
• Results-driven with a wide degree of creativity and latitude; able to think out of the box and have an agile and flexible approach and mindset to execution of responsibilities and stakeholder management.
• Strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills across diverse cultures and business levels.
• Familiarity with digital communication tools, intranet platforms, multimedia content creation and data and analytics relevant to role.
• Good people management and team-building capabilities