First Bus
Brand and Governance Lead
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Brand and Governance Lead
Location – Home based
We are looking for a Brand and Governance Lead to join our Marketing team on a full-time permanent basis.
The Brand & Governance Lead is First Bus's guardian of brand strategy, brand integrity, and visual identity. They are the go-to authority on the First Bus brand, ensuring it is consistently applied, clearly understood, and strengthened across every audience we serve, including employees, customers, communities, partners, and stakeholders.
First Bus launched a brand refresh in December 2024 involving a new positioning and a refreshed visual identity. The Brand & Governance Lead is a hands-on specialist who plays a central role in completing and embedding the ongoing First Bus brand refresh. The role also acts as a brand advisor to the Business & Coach Division portfolio of brands and provides support for the FirstGroup brand.
This is a key role in ensuring First Bus presents a unified, trusted, and modern brand. With the brand refresh still being rolled out, the Brand & Governance Lead will have a significant impact by closing gaps, building capability, and embedding strong governance that supports our commercial, customer, and organizational goals.
Key Responsibilities
Brand Governance & Leadership
- Act as First Bus’s brand subject-matter expert, providing authoritative guidance on brand strategy, visual identity, tone of voice, and application across all channels and contexts.
- Lead the Brand Governance Framework for First Bus, ensuring it is robust, practical, and adopted across the business.
- Ensure that the brand guidelines evolve, as required, to ensure they continue to stay in tune with business requirements.
- Support brand-related queries for the Business & Coach division brands and FirstGroup.
Brand Champions Network
- Establish and lead a volunteer network of cross-functional brand champions across the wider Marcomms team, People, Customer, and Operational teams.
- Promote a culture of brand consistency across the brand champion network through training, guidance, best practice, and practical support.
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Brand Compliance & Advisory
- Evaluate brand usage across channels and assets, and intervene diplomatically where activity falls outside guidelines.
- Provide constructive, solutions-focused feedback to teams to help them deliver brand-consistent work.
- Work closely with the Production Hub and agencies to ensure that briefs, creative executions, and operational materials reflect the brand accurately.
Brand Refresh Implementation
- Own the bottom-up programme to complete and embed the First Bus brand refresh across depots, vehicles, customer environments, signage, collateral, and employee materials.
- Map gaps and inconsistencies across touchpoints and drive structured plans to resolve them.
- Partner with relevant functions/sites to progress rollout activity; coordinate updates, timelines, and stakeholders.
- Support the development of business cases for investment in the brand refresh where needed (with guidance from the Marketing Leadership Team).
Project Management & Delivery
- Operate as a highly effective project manager, prioritizing tasks, tracking progress, escalating risks, and ensuring delivery against agreed timelines.
- Manage small-scale brand projects end-to-end (e.g., brand asset updates, signage reviews, brand audits, visual identity optimizations).
- Provide expert guidance to Business & Coach division brands when they undertake brand changes, for example, supporting a logo refresh or sub-brand evolution.
Brand Capability Building
- Work closely with the Graphic Designer and Production Hub to maintain accessible, high-quality brand resources including guidelines and examples of best practice.
- Partner with the Head of Content Strategy to ensure brand and content governance are aligned.
- Strengthen brand understanding across the Marketing Pool and support training for marketing managers and non-specialist colleagues.
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Skills/Experience
- Expert understanding of brand strategy and visual identity systems.
- Strong eye for detail and design accuracy.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Ability to translate brand principles into practical, everyday guidance.
- Strong problem-solving ability; able to propose pragmatic solutions while protecting brand integrity.
- Diplomatic, empathetic, and able to handle difficult conversations constructively.
- Confident and authoritative on brand matters while approachable and collaborative.
- A proactive self-starter who thrives in an environment with multiple workstreams and evolving priorities.
- Passionate about brand consistency and about helping colleagues understand the “why” behind brand decisions.
- Pragmatic, hands-on, and comfortable “rolling up their sleeves” to tackle unfinished elements of the brand refresh.
Essential
- Experience in brand governance, brand management, visual identity, and brand-led project delivery.
- Proven ability to drive brand consistency across complex, multi-site, or multi-brand organizations.
- Strong project management skills, comfortable managing concurrent streams of work with diverse stakeholders.
- Experience working with creative teams, brand agencies, production teams, or internal studios.
- Experience influencing non-specialist colleagues on brand application.
Salary
- £47,000 - £55,000
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