Media Officer

London, England, United Kingdom

1/14/2025

Job title: Media Officer

Salary: £ 35,233 per annum

Location: London E1 (Hybrid working)

Contract/Hours: 35 hours per week, full time, nine month maternity cover contract

Fairtrade Foundation is recruiting for a Media Officer to work within the Press Office section of the Public Affairs Team on the development and delivery of media strategies and campaigns. You will need to build and maintain relationships with print, broadcast, and digital media outlets, to ensure impactful coverage of Fairtrade and its positive impact for producers.

The role is a vital and highly visible one within the Foundation. You will join a small high performing team that creates, develops, and promotes compelling stories about Fairtrade to increase awareness of Fairtrade's work, our mission and help influence for a fairer trade system, as well as playing a key role in events such as the Fairtrade Fortnight. You will have excellent writing skills, along with experience of working in a busy press office dealing directly with journalists and managing the external media monitoring and press clippings services. You will often be first point of contact for journalist enquiries. You should also have experience of using web content management systems and specialist journalist contact databases such as Cision and Meltwater. If you have experience of organising events for journalists with the aim of securing media coverage, thats great, but its not essential.

Its an exciting time to join the Fairtrade Foundation we have just celebrated 30 years of the FAIRTRADE Mark in the UK. Fairtrade Foundation is a passionate and ambitious development organisation committed to tackling poverty and injustice through trade. We are best known as the independent, not-for-profit body behind the FAIRTRADE Mark, a product label assuring consumers that their purchase helps disadvantaged farmers and workers in developing countries secure a better deal.

Fairtrade changes the way trade works through better prices, decent working conditions and a fairer deal for farmers and workers around the world. Globally, across all Fairtrade members, we share a vision of a world in which all farmers and workers can enjoy secure and sustainable livelihoods, fulfil their potential and decide on their future. To achieve this we connect disadvantaged farmers and workers with consumers, promote fairer trading conditions, and empower farmers and workers to combat poverty, strengthen their position and take more control of their lives.

The Fairtrade Foundation is an equal opportunities employer, offers flexible working and welcomes applications from all sections of the community. We particularly welcome applications from candidates with ethnically diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ candidates and from candidates with disabilities, because we would like to increase the representation of these groups at this level. We want to do this because we know greater diversity will lead to greater results for producers and farmers around the world.

Closing date: 10am, Monday 3 February 2025

Interviews will take place: WC 10 th or 17 th February 2025

Role Purpose

To strengthen Fairtrades public profile and relevance, in order to engage businesses, the public and other stakeholders and influence UK policy processes in support of Fairtrades mission .

To ensure effective media coverage across a range of print, broadcast, and social media channels, and to build and maintain relationships with stakeholders in these areas to ensure impactful coverage of Fairtrade and its positive impact for producers

To manage effective operations of FTFs press office.

Key Responsibilities And Accountabilities

• Acts as a first point of contact for general press enquiries, and handling requests from journalists for facts and figures, photographs and images, footage, product samples, logging and overseeing sample and footage stocks.
• Develops digital press relations, including building and nurturing new and existing relationships with leading journalists, editors, bloggers and other influencers in online media to negotiate and work up coverage. Identifies opportunities for media partnerships where possible.
• Organises and implements media activities such as media training, media interviews, press trips and other events eg press launches, press conferences, press of blogger outreach days, etc. ensuring relevant briefings are prepared and logistics executed.
• Ensures the smooth running of the Foundations media office, including up-to-date lists of journalist and blogger contacts and mailing lists, media calendar of activity across all channels (both traditional and digital), running files, on-call rota systems, daily news review processes etc.
• Works with the public affairs team and wider public engagement teams to contribute ideas for new media campaigns and innovative ways to target the press, in support of policy, influencing and wider organisational objectives.
• Manages delivery of agreed elements of any campaigns, including drafting responses to media queries on and offline, drafting press releases and selling them in to relevant media stakeholders

• Manages the monitoring, dissemination and evaluation of media coverage
• disseminates daily / weekly news summaries
• ensures all press clippings are logged and filed
• manages the relationship with external press clippings service
• ensures audio and visual recordings of broadcast coverage
• ensures up to date media coverage is displayed in relevant places
  

Deliverables in this role

• Media monitoring reports prepared weekly, monthly, and quarterly, as well as for key campaign moments.
• Media coverage secured in target print, broadcast, and online outlets for key areas of focus (targets to be decided with line manager).
• Relationships with key PR and media contacts developed and maintained, with product gifting and PR implemented across the year.
• Support provided for events, activities and relationships relating to influencers, ambassadors, and other stakeholders.
• Administrative support to enable smooth running of all media and public affairs activities: press trips, contracts, training days, meetings etc.
  
  

Person specification

Essential:

Experience & Qualifications

• Experience of working in a busy press office and dealing directly with journalists
• Experience of drafting and disseminating press releases in a relevant sector (eg charity/not-for-profit, international development or FMCG)
• A successful track record in developing and using digital media channels and social media in order to amplify and disseminate press coverage
• Experience of managing administrative systems and acting as the first point of contact for a media team or similar organisation
• Previous experience of using specialist journalist contact databases and previous experience of dealing with external media monitoring and press clippings services
• Previous experience of, and familiarity with using Web content management systems (CMS)
• Experience of media and social media monitoring and analysis, including use of Google analytics, and tools to measure audience reach, value, sentiment and engagement
  
  

Desired:

• Experience of organisation of events with the aim of securing media coverage, and events for journalists
  
  

Interest in UK policy processes and media as a tool for influencing.

Essential:

Knowledge & Skills

• Excellent written and verbal communications skills
• Excellent attention to detail and a high standard of accuracy
• Excellent interpersonal skills and successful team working and the ability to deal confidently with internal and external stakeholders
• Excellent IT skills including MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and use of content management systems (CMS) for web publishing
• Ability to multi-task and prioritise a busy workload
  
  

Willingness to take part in out of hours duty rota

Fairtrade Values

We want everyone to be ambassadors for the organisation and encourage staff & volunteers to speak at events which on occasion might be during evenings and weekends, to promote diversity, equality and inclusion in everything we do, and champion our values.

Fairtrades global values are: Accountability, Integrity, Respect and Partnership . These values should be embedded in your work and behaviour, and any associated policies and processes adopted consistently.

At Fairtrade we are committed to the safeguarding and protection of children & vulnerable adults in our work. We will do everything possible to ensure that only those who are suitable to work within this environment are recruited to work for us.

Review Arrangements

The details contained in the Job Description reflect the content of the job at the date the job description was prepared. It should be remembered, however, that it is inevitable that over time the nature of individual jobs will change; existing duties may be lost, and other duties may be gained without changing the general character of the duties or the level of responsibility entailed. Consequently, the Fairtrade Foundation will expect to revise this job description from time to time and will consult with the post holder as appropriate.