DS SMITH

Campaigns Activation Lead - EMEA

London Full time

Location: UK (home-based with occasional travel or hybrid in London, Paddington)

About the role

We are currently looking for a Campaigns Activation Lead to manage the strategic planning and execution of digital marketing campaigns across the EMEA region, ensuring alignment with business objectives and central communications plans.

This role drives excellence in campaign delivery across multiple geographies and digital channels, managing budgets and agency partnerships to achieve measurable impact. You will oversee the entire activation process - from agency briefing through to performance monitoring - while generating actionable insights and sharing updates to support transparency and continuous optimisation.

You will also lead the deployment of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) initiatives, targeting priority accounts and personas across key digital touchpoints. You will manage and optimise social media and digital advertising channels, overseeing paid media strategies, organic content planning, and channel-specific execution in partnership with internal teams and external agencies.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • Lead the activation of digital marketing campaigns across EMEA, ensuring alignment with the central communications plan

  • Collaborate closely with the central campaign planning team responsible for overall strategy and communications to ensure seamless execution and message consistency.  Develop and implement channel strategies (social, paid media, programmatic, etc.) that deliver on campaign objectives and maximise performance across digital touchpoints

  • Maintain and govern all owned social media accounts to ensure proper access control, security, and compliance

  • Co-develop and co-own brand safeguarding practices with the content and brand communications teams to ensure consistent application of brand guidelines, tone, and visual identity across social media accounts

  • Develop and implement a long-term agency strategy to enable scalable, high-impact digital campaign activations across EMEA

  • Select and onboard agency partners aligned with business goals and sub-regional needs. Own strategic budget allocation across agencies and channels to maximise ROI and enable innovation in digital activation

  • Partner closely with the communications team and the Marketing Operations Lead to ensure seamless deployment of ABM campaigns through the company’s marketing technology stack.

  • Define and align campaign KPIs with business objectives to ensure meaningful measurement of impact and effectiveness. Establish governance models for campaign performance tracking, reporting, and accountability across teams and platforms

  •  Build and champion a test-learn-deploy approach to continuously optimise campaign strategies, creative assets, and channel mix based on data-driven insights.

About You

  • A Degree or professional qualification in Business administration, Sales, Marketing, Communications, or other relevant field of study

  • Demonstrated success in strategic campaign activation across multiple geographies and digital channels, with strong experience in setting KPIs, building governance frameworks, and implementing test–learn–deploy models

  • Proven ability to develop and implement an agency strategy for digital campaign activations, including partner selection, governance, and performance management

  • Skilled in cross-functional collaboration with the broader marketing team to leverage MarTech platforms effectively

  • Experience in Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and driving engagement with priority accounts

  • Proficiency in using marketing automation platforms such as Dynamics Real Time Marketing. Hands-on knowledge of paid media platforms (LinkedIn Ads, Meta Ads, Google Ads, programmatic DSPs). Basic understanding of Optimizely Content Marketing Platform (e.g. Optimizely CMP)

  • Experience with campaign dashboards, reporting tools (e.g., Power BI)

  • Strong grasp of data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR) and compliance in digital marketing

  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English.

To fulfil our purpose of redefining packaging for a changing world, we aim to build a diverse, motivated, and engaged workforce. Our goal is to create a culture of inclusion where everyone is treated fairly, differences are valued, and everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. 

Our people come from diverse backgrounds, bring different perspectives, ideas and experiences to generate unique solutions focused on present and future sustainability challenges. We welcome all candidates to apply, even those not meeting all criteria.