Senior Brand Manager - Christopher Ward

Up World; Maidenhead; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 65,000; Full time

Job summary

Christopher Ward is a Maidenhead-based luxury watch brand seeking a dynamic marketing leader to shape its voice across channels. This role is hands-on, requiring someone who can manage the in-house team and external partners with energy and precision.

The brand launches four to five new watches each quarter, and you will balance short-term opportunities with long-term marketing ambitions to raise overall impact.

Qualifications

• Experience in a fast-moving retail or DTC business.
• Global experience is useful, particularly with the US as a growth market.
• Strong creative sensibility and comfort with a modern luxury brand.
• Strategic and commercial thinking.
• Collaborative, positive, personable style.
• Experience leading in-house and agency creative teams and cross‑department alignment.

Responsibilities

• Act as the connector across brand, social, CRM and events, ensuring campaigns are integrated and customer-first.
• Identify opportunities to build cultural relevance and earned attention beyond paid and owned channels.
• Write briefs for launch and BAU campaigns, and manage product photography and video from concept to execution.
• Own campaign ideation, execution and measurement.
• Build understanding of the audience with segmentation strategy and community dynamics.
• Manage the agency and in-house teams delivering content, including for teams outside marketing.
• Oversee paid media strategy and budgets as part of a broader channel mix.
• Use data to spot and act on new commercial opportunities, driving growth and brand.
• Maintain relationship with the agency partner's creative director and collaborate with in-house designers.

Skills

Retail marketing

DTC brand

Strategic thinking

Leadership

Budget management

Collaboration

Job description

Maidenhead (4 days a week in office) | £60,000–£65,000

About Christopher Ward

Christopher Ward is an English-Swiss watch company and the UK's largest watch brand. Since its inception in 2004, Christopher Ward has defied industry norms, becoming the first premium watch brand to operate exclusively online, offering exquisitely hand-crafted, Swiss-made mechanical watches at previously unheard-of prices.

In its 22nd year, Christopher Ward boasts a global customer base spanning over 100 countries. Known for its trailblazing style of watchmaking, the brand created the first commercially viable mechanical watch movement by a British brand in over five decades, the renowned Calibre CW-001 (previously SH21). In 2023, Christopher Ward's innovative approach was honoured with the Petite Aiguille Award at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) for its chiming watch, the Bel Canto. The success continued with lifestyle outlet T3 naming it Brand of the Year in 2024, before being crowned British Watch Brand of the Year for a third consecutive time at the 2025 WatchPro Awards.

The role

Christopher Ward is growing fast and needs a new addition to their marketing team to be a central and driving force. This is a role for someone who loves getting stuck in; hands-on, brain-on and confident executing and managing the in-house team and external partners.

The brand launches four or five new watches a quarter. You'll need to manage short-term opportunities as they come up while still building for the longer term and raising the ambition of the marketing over time.

This is a dream role for a well-rounded marketer who wants headroom and who is full of energy and ideas - and likes making things happen. If you get the brand and the business, you'll have plenty of both.

Christopher Ward is luxury, but not traditional luxury. It is a modern luxury brand; a challenger in the ultra-traditional watch category. It was the first global online watch brand when it launched in 2004 and continues to innovate and challenge. Chritopher Ward has been built by its community and the power of earned and organic media. Events play a huge role and the business believes in the power of brand storytelling. You'll need genuine creative sensibility to get that nuance right.

What you'll be doing

• Act as the connector across brand, social, CRM, PR and events, ensuring campaigns are integrated and customer-first rather than channel-first
• Identify opportunities to build cultural relevance, community engagement and earned attention that strengthen the brand beyond paid and owned channels.
• Write the briefs for launch and BAU campaigns, and manage product photography and video from concept through to execution
• Own campaign ideation, execution and measurement
• Build understanding of the audience, working closely with digital colleagues on segmentation strategy as well as the community dynamics of the sector
• Manage the agency and in-house teams delivering content, including for teams outside marketing
• Manage paid media strategy and budgets, as one part of a broader channel mix rather than the main driver of growth
• Use data to spot and act on new commercial opportunities, driving growth as well as brand
• Manage the relationship with the agency partner's creative director, and work closely day to day with the in-house copywriter and two designers
• Lean on the marketing assistant based in Switzerland, who holds a lot of institutional knowledge on photography and marketing ops.
• Present with confidence. You'll need to sell ideas internally, not just produce them

What we're looking for

• Experience in a fast-moving retail or DTC business. Comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment where priorities evolve and not everything is fully defined.
• Global experience is useful, particularly given the US is the key growth market
• Strong creative sensibility, and comfort with a brand that isn't easy to read: modern luxury rather than traditional
• Strategic and commercial thinking
• A collaborative, positive, personable style. This person manages in-house and agency creative teams and needs to join up digital with PR, events and organic social, raising the ambition and output of the wider team.
• Genuine enjoyment of working with stakeholders across departments, disciplines and time zones, including showrooms, product, merchandising and customer care
• Natural leadership. Someone who can influence and rally people, not just direct them
• Physical retail or showroom experience is a bonus, not a requirement
• Ambition. This person should be aiming at head of brand level next.

Practical details

• Based in Maidenhead. Free parking on site, and reachable via the Elizabeth line if you're commuting from London
• Four days a week in the office.
• Ideal start date: mid-September