I-CAR Profile:

The Inter-Industry Conference on Auto Collision Repair (I-CAR) is a growing, not-for-profit organization, headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, serving the automotive collision repair industry globally. The organization was established by representatives of the collision repair, automotive, and insurance industries in 1979 and has doubled its revenue over the last six years.

Today, the I-CAR brand is stronger than it has been in 40 years of operation and has gained a worldwide reputation. There is momentum and excitement among its committed workforce, instructors, and volunteers to continue to help the organization grow and expand its breadth of reach and scale. I-CAR leadership believes that the future of the organization will be importantly influenced by its continuing innovation and relevance of its products, technical programs, and services.

Job Summary:

This position will have an instrumental role in developing and executing marketing strategies for a totally new and industry-critical Service Offering, doing so as a strategic member of a cross-functional business unit team. This new and strategic endeavor by I-CAR has been established to address the critical shortage of technicians in the collision repair industry, and ultimately help to ensure the safety and well-being of over 30 million drivers on the road.

This individual will develop marketing strategies, create new branding and positioning, and execute targeted marketing programs to attract new talent into the collision repair industry. This individual will work collaboratively with internal and especially external stakeholders to create distinct, compelling, and coordinated value propositions for different career paths within the collision repair industry.

This position is responsible for developing marketing programs to attract new talent, from different industries, into the collision repair industry. This individual will work collaboratively with internal and especially external stakeholders in the inter-industry to create a new compelling industry branding and value-proposition and coordinated messaging campaigns to attract new talent and feed such talent into career paths in the collision repair industry via leading vocational schools and direct to leading repair facilities.

Scope of responsibilities include, but are not limited to, proactive service offering specific marketing strategies, marketing communication effectiveness, branding, graphics, Marcomm channel management including events and digital amongst others, media relations, and creating awareness of the value proposition for different careers int the Collision Repair industry. Broad knowledge of I-CAR’s service offerings, value propositions, and customers is important to support this work and to ensure I-CAR’s brand is reinforced by this work.

The role entails significant direct industry and customer-facing engagement and leadership in tight coordination with Inter-Industry stakeholders, and the broader Talent Programming execution team, proactive coaching/mentoring/development of direct reports and their teams, and synchronization of activities across all organization functional areas.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Develops and directs marketing strategies and annual plans for the Talent Programming Service Offering then monitors execution and measures success of efforts.
• Articulates customer insights and strategic risks and opportunities at the executive level while providing direction and oversight to the execution and marketing resources.
• Leads marketing communication initiatives. Focuses on designing and executing an effective and integrated marketing mix supporting the needs of the service offerings and the organization. Includes all potential channels to market, including digital and event management. Includes value proposition and message development, emphasizing simplicity and clarity. Special focus on website development and e-marketing is critical.
• Establishes broad relations across the industry with like-minded organizations seeking to help draw talent to our industry. Then coordinates (quarterbacks) inter-industry collaboration working across segments to deliver consistent cadence of marketing communications and awareness campaigns geared towards attracting talent and generating excitement about the program
• Partners with the compliance and legal team to ensure that all strategies and operations related to customer interaction comply with I-CAR policies and trademarks. Maintain and update related documentation and decisions as necessary. Ensures I-CAR Talent Programming trademarks and copywrites are appropriate and actively managed in all markets served globally.
• Performs quality and relevant market research in support of marketing and related organization-wide needs.
• Works with Product Management to implement and measure Customer Satisfaction (CSI) programming and reporting and to synthesize then drive key customer leanings into Voice of Customer (VOC) process.
• Works with I-Car Marketing Director to collaborate on utilization of Salesforce driven customer databases, ensuring systems are maintained to standards and utilized effectively to support all marketing and lead management campaigns. Effectively coordinates such with the Sales and IT teams, and as a system to enable org-wide customer and stakeholder communications.
• Ensures that there is trackability on service offering specific metrics related to Talent Programming and separate from overall I-Car marketing success metrics.
• Defines, collects and reports on collaboration partners' success metrics as they contribute to coordinated awareness campaigns.
• Ensures that CREF unique marketing needs are integrated and/or serviced in appropriate manner and timeliness matching CREF needs with broader marketing/Talent Programming team priorities; CREF should be an integrated component of the overall Talent Programming marketing mix.
• Achieves SDM targets; manages initiative specific Marketing expenses, adjusting, as necessary to achieve annual ROOR goal.
• Streamlines processes and improves synchronization with Sales, Delivery, Curriculum and Technical Services and Product Management (collectively the 4P team) and other functions that support execution on behalf of the segments and customers I-CAR serves.
• Proactively coaches/mentors/develops direct reports and their teams.

General Leadership Duties:

• Executes and fully embodies I-CAR’s Management Principles
• Participates in serving leadership culture, serves as a role model, mentor and coach, helps others see the big picture, and helps them fit in and contribute
• Effectively manages direct reports, executing on Marketing strategies, managing performance accountability within the Marketing team
• Empowers teams through effective delegation, team participation and effective management; executes decision making processes to communicate decisions down to team leadership while protecting against risk; practicing A3 problem solving
• Improves employee engagement at all levels
• Actively knocks down functional silos - drives teamwork, cross functional culture
• Anticipates and plans for necessary change management initiatives; executes accordingly
• Actively identifies relevant external best practices and trends and works with Marketing and Segment teams to develop actionable plans
• Drives customer satisfaction and improved customer relations
• Applies Lean principles and PDCA process improvement across all Marketing functions and programming
• Achieves expected financial and management performance; Budget definition/achievement, SDM definition/achievement, KPI definition, and ongoing monitoring/PDCA, and department Resource/Capacity planning/management

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing or related field.
• 5+ years of professional experience in the automotive, insurance, or collision repair industry
• Minimum 10 years experience in marketing and business development functions
• Minimum 5 years experience managing teams and department-level operations budgets.
• Relevant level of financial and business acumen to inform value prop and messaging clarity initiatives
• Experience with scaling, managing, and motivating teams
• Successful experience with online and offline marketing strategy development
• Passionate, enthusiastic, collaborative, team-builder with leadership experience and potential to grow with the role
• Proven ability to establish external relations and coordinate external relationships to align with and meet program objectives.

Highly competitive compensation package which includes Medical, Dental, and Life, 401k Match, performance bonus, generous paid time off, and voluntary benefits.

For more information about I-CAR, its important mission, and our collaborative culture please refer to: https://info.i-car.com/about-us/careers

EEO Statement:

I-CAR is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under state or local law, where applicable. Those with criminal histories will be considered in a manner consistent with applicable state and local laws.