Director of marketing and communications: what the combined role owns, and how to hire for it

A director of marketing and communications owns two jobs that most organisations split: generating demand, and protecting and directing what the organisation says about itself. The marketing half covers the brand, the channels, the campaigns and the pipeline or the enquiries they produce. The communications half covers media relations, internal communications, executive and spokesperson support, stakeholder and board communication, and the plan for the week something goes wrong. The title exists because one person holding both can keep the external promise and the internal reality saying the same thing, and the job works when that person has the authority to speak for the organisation as well as to market it.

This page is written for whoever owns or is hiring this combined role. For the pure marketing version of the job, see the marketing director's job.

Where the combined title appears

The combination is most common where reputation and demand are the same asset: universities and schools, hospitals and health systems, charities and foundations, membership and professional bodies, local government and public agencies, and mid sized companies where the executive team wants one person accountable for everything that leaves the building. In those organisations, a story in the press, a letter to members and a campaign landing page are all the same conversation with the same audience.

What the role owns

Area	Owned	Shared	Delegated
Brand and messaging	The positioning and the approved language	Product and service naming	Asset production
Demand and enquiries	The channel plan and the budget	Targets with sales or admissions	Campaign delivery
Media relations	The media strategy and who speaks	Subject matter spokespeople	Pitching and monitoring
Internal communications	The cadence and the channels	Content with HR and the executive	Newsletter and intranet production
Crisis and issues	The plan, the holding statements, the call tree	Decisions with legal and the chief executive	Monitoring and logging
Executive and board communication	The narrative and the reporting pack	Content with finance and operations	Design and distribution
Website and digital estate	Structure, content standards, measurement	Platform decisions with IT	Build and maintenance

Three of those are the ones only this role can own: the single approved description of the organisation, the decision about who speaks publicly, and the crisis plan. Everything else can be delegated once those three are settled.

The tension in the job, and how to run it

Demand generation wants to publish often, test aggressively and claim boldly. Communications wants every claim defensible, consistent and cleared. Held by one person, that tension becomes a standard rather than an argument, and the way to make it practical is a short set of written rules:

• A claims register. Every number, credential and outcome the organisation uses publicly, with its source, its date and who owns it. Nothing goes in a campaign that is not in the register. This single document removes most clearance delays.
• A tiering of approvals. Routine channel content goes out on the team's authority. Anything naming a third party, quoting a number, or touching a sensitive subject gets a named reviewer and a turnaround time.
• One spokesperson list. Who can speak on what, with a trained alternate for each subject, kept current.
• Internal before external. Staff and members hear it from you before they read it elsewhere. This is the discipline that separates a communications function from a press office.

The operating calendar

• Weekly: pipeline or enquiry numbers against plan, the content and media schedule for the week, the issues log, and anything escalating on social or in the press.
• Monthly: the board or executive pack, channel performance against the plan, spend against budget, internal communications read rates, and media coverage with its tone and whether the key messages appeared.
• Quarterly: message testing with real audiences, a review of the claims register, a crisis plan walkthrough with the executive team, and a reset of the next quarter's priorities.
• Annually: brand and reputation measurement, the full channel and budget plan, spokesperson training, and a stakeholder audit of who the organisation needs to be understood by.

How the job is judged

Four numbers cover the marketing half and four the communications half. Agree all eight when you take the role, because an unagreed scorecard gets written for you later.

• Demand: qualified enquiries or applications against plan, cost per qualified enquiry, conversion from enquiry to commitment, and the share of enquiries that are new rather than repeat.
• Reputation: share of coverage carrying at least one approved key message, coverage in the publications your stakeholders actually read, response time on media enquiries, and a tracked sentiment or trust measure taken the same way each time. For a method on the sentiment side, see online reputation management.
• Internal: read rates and a short pulse question on whether staff know the current priorities. An internal communications function with no measurement is a mailing list.
• Readiness: time from an issue being noticed to a holding statement approved, measured in an exercise rather than in a real crisis.

The first ninety days

• Weeks one and two: read everything that has gone out in the last year, meet the chief executive and the top five stakeholders, and find out what the organisation currently promises in writing.
• Weeks three and four: build the claims register from what is already published, and list every claim nobody can source. That list is your first deliverable and it earns credibility fast.
• Weeks five to eight: fix the crisis plan, the spokesperson list and the approval tiers. Run one tabletop exercise with the executive team.
• Weeks nine to twelve: publish the channel plan and the scorecard, agree the eight numbers with the chief executive, and start the one piece of demand work you are confident about so the role shows output alongside governance.

Hiring for the role

Candidates usually come from one side of the title and have to grow into the other. Both routes work, and the interview should find out which one you are getting:

• Ask for one example of a campaign they ran and the numbers it produced, and one example of an issue they handled, including what they got wrong.
• Ask who they stopped from speaking publicly, and how that conversation went. This reveals whether they have the standing the job needs.
• Give them a two page brief on a plausible issue in your sector and ask for a holding statement and a stakeholder list in twenty minutes. The structure matters more than the prose.
• Ask what they would measure in the first quarter and what they would refuse to be measured on.
• Check they can read a budget and a channel report. A communications specialist who cannot read a cost per enquiry will leave half the job undone.

director of marketing and communications: asked and answered

What is the difference between a director of marketing and a director of marketing and communications?

The second title adds formal ownership of media relations, internal communications, stakeholder communication and crisis readiness. It usually comes with spokesperson standing and a direct line to the chief executive, because those duties cannot wait for a scheduled meeting.

Who does the role report to?

Most often the chief executive, which is the arrangement the communications half needs. Reporting into sales or revenue tends to pull the role towards demand work and leaves reputation underserved.

What size team does it run?

It scales from one person with agency support to a department with separate marketing, press, digital and internal communications teams. The structure that holds up at every size keeps one person accountable for the message and separate people accountable for channels.

What does the role own on the website?

The structure, the content standards and the measurement, with the platform shared with IT. The website is where the marketing and communications halves meet, because it is simultaneously the campaign destination and the public record of what the organisation says.

How much of the job is internal?

More than most candidates expect. Staff and members are the audience that repeats your message to everyone else, and an organisation whose own people describe it inconsistently will be described inconsistently in public. For keeping one message across every channel, see integrated marketing communication.

Does the role own public relations and SEO together?

In this title, yes, and the overlap is useful: earned coverage and search visibility feed each other. The link rules and the way to run both as one programme are in public relations and SEO.

A surface the role now owns by default

The director of marketing and communications already owns the website, the press page and the brand voice. Assistants read all three and then speak for the company in answers the director never sees.

That makes it a reputation question as much as a performance one. Each quarter, ask the main assistants to describe the company, name its competitors, and say who it suits. Put the answers in front of the leadership team next to the eight numbers. Where the description is wrong, the fix is usually a page or a press mention that is out of date. AI Knows Us collects those descriptions so the quarterly review is repeatable.