Social Media Manager

Key Responsibilities

Lead and Develop the Social Media Function

• Lead and develop BAT Japan’s social media capability, setting a clear vision, standards, and ways of working. 

• Coach and develop the Social Media Executive, building confidence, capability, and accountability. 

• Direct the extended agency team, ensuring objectives, priorities, and performance expectations are clear. 

• Build a culture of creativity, accountability, continuous learning, and experimentation. 

• Empower the team and partners to challenge convention, test new ideas, and take ownership of outcomes. 

• Balance cultural relevance and creative excellence with disciplined performance management and commercial impact. 

• Champion the capabilities, tools, and processes needed to continuously improve social performance.

Lead Social Strategy

• Define and lead the social media strategy across all relevant channels.

• Establish clear channel roles, content pillars, and growth plans.

• Build annual and quarterly social roadmaps aligned to brand and business objectives.

• Identify opportunities for social media to lead campaigns rather than simply amplify them.

• Own social performance targets including audience growth, engagement, reach, and content effectiveness. 

Drive Cultural Relevance

• Stay ahead of cultural, lifestyle, entertainment, fashion, music, creator, and digital trends, identifying the signals that matter for our brands and audiences.

• Identify emerging opportunities that can strengthen brand relevance and consumer engagement.

• Translate cultural insights into compelling social-first initiatives and content platforms.

• Act as the voice of culture within the marketing organisation. 

Build Communities and Engagement

• Develop strategies that drive meaningful community participation and advocacy.

• Grow audiences while improving engagement quality and retention.

• Create social experiences that encourage conversation, sharing, participation, and community building.

• Explore new formats, features, and engagement tools to deepen audience connections. 

Lead Content and Creative Excellence

• Set the creative ambition for social, turning cultural insight, platform behaviour, and audience understanding into ideas people choose to watch, share, and participate in.

• Champion social-first storytelling that is culturally relevant, premium, and distinctive.

• Ensure all content reflects brand strategy while remaining authentic to platform behaviour and audience expectations.

• Create the conditions for brave, distinctive work by giving teams and partners a clear creative direction, space to experiment, and accountability for results.

Build Cultural Relationships and Communities

• Develop and nurture an ongoing network of cultural collaborators, creative talent, tastemakers, and community partners relevant to the brand’s positioning and Japan’s cultural landscape.

• Build trusted, long-term relationships through regular dialogue, shared interests, and meaningful engagement beyond individual campaigns or events.

• Work closely with PR, Brand, Consumer Experience, and agency partners to identify relevant individuals and communities for approved cultural initiatives, experiences, and collaborations.

• Take ownership of relationship planning and coordination, ensuring clear responsibilities, thoughtful engagement, and consistent follow-up across internal teams and agencies.

• Bring insights from these relationships into social strategy, content development, and experience planning to strengthen cultural relevance and audience understanding.

• Evaluate talent effectiveness and optimise investments using performance data and audience insights.

• Ensure all engagement and collaboration follows applicable internal policies, approval processes, and local requirements.

• Develop long-term creator ecosystems that support sustainable brand growth. 

Turn Performance into Growth

• Set the measurement framework for social, connecting audience growth, engagement, content performance, and cultural relevance to broader brand and business objectives. 

• Lead the agency analytics resource, ensuring reporting produces clear insights, decisions, and actions rather than data alone.

• Use audience intelligence, social listening, and platform performance to identify growth opportunities and improve creative effectiveness.

• Build a test-and-learn culture across the team and agency partners, using evidence to continuously optimise performance.

• Clearly communicate social performance, implications and recommended actions to senior stakeholders 

Lead Agencies and Stakeholders

• Serve as the strategic lead across all social and creator agency partners.

• Build strong partnerships while maintaining high standards of accountability and performance.

• Collaborate closely with Brand, PR, Consumer Experience, CRM, and Paid Media teams. 

• Influence senior stakeholders through clear storytelling, strategic thinking, and business-focused recommendations. 

What Success Looks Like

• A clear and distinctive social presence that relevant audiences actively choose to follow, engage with, and participate in. 

• Sustained growth in relevant followers, reach, engagement quality, and community participation. 

• Social established as a source of culturally relevant ideas and brand growth, not only a channel for campaign amplification. 

• A confident, accountable, and creatively ambitious team supported by high-performing agency partners. 

• Performance intelligence consistently translated into faster decisions, stronger creative work, and continuous improvement.

Essential Experience and Capabilities

• 5+ years or significant experience in social media, content strategy, creator marketing, brand communications, or digital marketing, with evidence of leading strategy, teams, and measurable growth. 

• Proven ownership of social strategy and delivery of audience, engagement, or brand-growth outcomes. 

• People leadership experience, including developing direct reports and directing agency specialists. 

• Deep understanding of major social platforms and how audience behaviour, creative conventions, community dynamics, and measurement differ by channel. 

• Strong knowledge of Japan’s cultural, creator, and digital landscape. 

• Ability to translate cultural insight and performance data into creative, commercial, and investment decisions. 

• Strong commercial judgement and the ability to connect social activity to wider brand and business objectives. 

• Strong agency and stakeholder leadership, including the ability to influence and communicate with senior audiences. 

• Written and verbal English-language proficiency.

• Japanese-language capability is advantageous but not essential. Candidates must demonstrate the ability to operate effectively within Japan’s cultural, creator, and digital ecosystem, working with local-language specialists where required.

Desirable Experience

• Experience with premium consumer or lifestyle brands. 

• Experience connecting social with CRM, PR, experiential marketing, creators, or paid media. 

• Experience introducing new formats, platforms, tools, or measurement approaches. 

• Experience operating in a regulated or governance-intensive environment. 

• Experience working in Japan or within Japan’s cultural, consumer, creator, and digital ecosystem.