Events, Programmes and Marketing Coordinator

This is a fast paced, details orientated role in a dynamic and creative industry. Your role will be to administer, coordinate and support our programmes of events, training, member services, marketing and communications. Reporting into the Events and Programmes Manager it will be an important part of your role to ensure that quality is maintained at a very high level. You will also be a point of contact for the DBA’s membership, answering enquiries and providing an excellent level of customer service across the business. And finally, you’ll provide essential support with tasks across the business, as and when needed.

This integral role will support other team members, and as we’re a small team, you’ll quickly be immersed in the design industry and gain exposure to all parts of the business and how we operate. You’ll learn a lot in a short amount of time and be able to contribute ideas and use your initiative, whilst maintaining and developing key processes.

Download the full job description. 

Key details and benefits

Salary: £30k per annum

Salary sacrifice pension: 5% employer contribution

Fully paid Vitality medical insurance

Contract type: Full time, permanent, flexible working environment (see below for further information).

While many of our events are online, we run a series of regional events around the UK which you will be expected to attend, so you would need to be able to get into Central London easily, whilst being willing to occasionally travel throughout the UK.

Reporting to: Events and Programmes Manager.

Download the full job description for further information including how we work.

How to apply

Please email Sally Lukins, Managing Director at the DBA at sally@dba.org.uk attaching your CV and a covering letter which explains why you want this job and outlining how your skills and experience match what we’re looking for.

Please use the subject line: DBA Events, Programmes and Marketing Coordinator application.

CVs without an explanatory cover letter will not be reviewed.

We will not be using any form of AI to shortlist or review your application. Please use your own thoughts and language to construct all parts of your application. Applications constructed by AI will not be considered.

Deadline for applications: Friday 28 March 2025.

Interviews will take place in person in central London.

First stage interviews on Monday 7 April and second stage interviews on Thursday 10 April.

The Future Of… conference was created to inspire conversation and dialogue on the present path and trajectory of design. Where are we now? How did we get here? What might we learn with, and from others? What might we do together to reshape The Future Of… Design.

Speakers confirmed alongside the DBA’s Chief Executive, Deborah Dawton include PepsiCo’s Mauro Porcini, GE Healthcare’s Chuck Jones, 3M’s Brian Rice, Whirlpool’s Ken Musgrave, Newell’s Kris Malkoski, and current and former heads of Design from Verizon, Duracell, J.M. Smucker, Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, Burger King, McKinsey, BP, and more.

Brands and companies due to join the conference conversations include Frontier Airlines, Gallo, Georgia-Pacific, Haleon, Johnson & Johnson, W.K. Kellogg, Kimberly-Clark, KraftHeinz, Mars, McDonalds, Microsoft, Mondelez, Nestlé, Nike, SJ Johnson, United Air Lines, Weber Grills and others.

Agencies, consultancy, research firms and suppliers will also be in attendance. 

The first day of the conference on 12 March is exclusively for corporate/brand-side design and business leaders, while the second day, 13 March, is open to all client-side design and business leaders, as well as senior leaders in agency, consultancy, and supplier organisations (although the conference requests no sales or business development leaders, please).  

Friends and members of the DBA receive a 10% discount off bookings made by 28 February. Use promo code DBA2025 when securing your place.

The conference is hosted by David Butler, Fred Richards and DBA Board Director, John Gleason.

Says Gleason, “This is not a traditional Design conference. We are not talking about the artifacts that we create, of how brilliant we all believe ourselves to be. We do plan to talk about the things that we often do not say out loud, so that we might, then, do something about them.” 

More information about the conference programme and speakers can be found at thefutureof-conference.com and if you have any questions, contact John Gleason at john@GetABetterView.com 

The Future Of… conference will take place at REVEL Motor Row, Chicago, IL 60616 USA on 12 and 13 March. 

AI in productivity and practice 

• One thing AI can immediately support with is productivity: Fathom and Otter AI were mentioned as note takers that can not only summarise actions points but also enable people to re-watch meetings. Other tools mentioned included Motion (for planning and productivity), Perplexity (for research), Claude AI (for brainstorming).
• Agentic AI was highlighted as an emerging area of AI development to keep an eye on. 
• One member shared their 5 laws of AI and reinforced that human creativity remains central – AI can be the ‘filling in the sandwich’. 
• Another member described how they have integrated an AI brand manager into their internal Slack channels, demonstrating innovative ways of working with AI.
• If you’re looking for specific training in this area for your team, there are of course a multitude of options but Seedily, Pratt and Spark were recommended on the call. And a great point was made about training for all – try and build a studio-wide enthusiasm for this and how it could help in all roles – even the sceptics were enthused at one member agency.

Legal and IP considerations

• The IPO has a consultation open until 25 Feb on copyright and AI – do take part, it’s an important consideration for our industry. We at the DBA will talk to Anti Copying in Design (ACID) about a joint response.
• If you’re concerned about your work being used to train AI without explicit consent, ACID has published an open letter with recommendations. Contact Laura for further details on ACID’s work in this space, and to contribute your thinking.
• From a legal perspective, consider updating your T&C’s, Privacy Policy and internal policy as a triple lock.
• If there is collaboration between employers and employees in designing and building AI systems, ownership and IP rights of such systems should be set out clearly in the employment contract. Perhaps it’s time to review some areas of HR.

Finally, if you’re wondering whether AI is going to take our jobs? Remember what designers can do that others can’t – watch this webinar with Kevin McCullagh from last year.  

Coming up

There was much, much more covered in the hour. Our next meeting will be on Monday 3 March, 4-5pm GMT when we’ll be joined by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of ‘Work Less Do More: Designing the Four Day Week’ to challenge the ways that we think about productivity. 

The forward-thinking, dmi:Design Management Conference “SHIFT: Transformations in Design & Innovation Leadership” will address evolving challenges, emerging frontiers, and the future of innovation, equipping design leaders with the insights needed to navigate change and lead with agility in a dynamic landscape.

The conference will take place from 1 to 2 April 2025 at Oosterdokskade 163, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

There is also an optional workshop on 31 March from 2 to 6pm. 

Conference attendees will: 

• Explore and share how Design Leaders are embracing or plan to embrace AI as a catalyst for transformation.
• Share or gain insights into new methods, processes and tools, essential for navigating the shifting business landscape.
• Hear how leaders are driving innovative solutions to meet evolving market changes and disruptions.

Browse conference topics, speakers and registration fees.

Access the DBA member discount code for 10% off the conference registration fee. 

• Blair frames the sales process as a sample of the engagement to follow; how you behave throughout the sales process sets up conditions for doing your best work and making the most money.
• There are only two roles agencies can occupy in client/agency relationships: vendor or expert.
• The goal is to occupy the expert role and a key way to achieve this is by building your reputation through strategy, positioning (relative to your competition) and marketing – put content out there to be judged by people. 
• While it is possible to move from a vendor to an expert after you’ve been appointed – it might be difficult. Use Blair’s ‘one client at a time’ approach and frame how you’d like to work more expansively and creatively, but still giving them the option to work in the way you’ve always worked. See each client as an opportunity to move to working in this way.
• Using multi-option proposals with different price points is crucial for increasing closing ratios and proposal values. Anchor high.
• The value conversation framework (uncovering your client’s desired future state, KPIs, value of hitting KPIs, pricing guidance) is a game-changing skill for transforming your financial fortunes. Plus, do this well and you’ll have the foundations for your effectiveness case studies.
• We had a conversation on the role of business owners in sales and Blair raised that this role shouldn’t be offloaded too quickly – qualifying conversations could be conducted by someone else, but the value and closing conversations should be typically handled by owners.
• He suggested you should only outsource the sales function when you (the owner) have a process you can pass on to ensure success. 
• For all the detail on how to navigate each of the four conversations, the frameworks and principles you need to embody, you can buy Blair’s book on Amazon. 

Coming up

There was much, much more covered in the hour. Our next meeting will be back in the regular slot on Monday 3 February, 4-5pm GMT.

Design effectiveness has never been more important.

If you want to set yourself apart from the masses, there’s nothing more compelling than being able to prove the effectiveness of your past client work to build trust in your capabilities.

That’s why, in 2025, we’re giving every DBA member one free entry to the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards. Because every DBA member has work in their studio that could and should be awarded. Whatever your size, and whatever your design discipline. And we’ll help you prove it.

The ability to talk about the effectiveness and value of your work is key to the success of a design business or in-house team. In 2025 we’ll be running a programme of online content, free for members, which will support your ability to work with your partners to gather data, build case studies, and understand how to properly articulate the results of your work.

Membership of the DBA will not only give you the practical means to develop your focus on effectiveness this year, it is here to support your whole business. From benchmarking key indicators of performance across your business, to training your team to thrive in our industry. From essential tools and templates, to networking, inspiration, community building and access to industry expertise.

Make sure you are taking full advantage of all the benefits membership brings.

You can access a handy snapshot of the ways the DBA can support you and your team this year.

And here’s a taster of what we’ve got lined-up for January:

The first of our monthly, online DBA Members’ Forums on 13 January at 4-5pm GMT will be an opportunity for members to talk with Blair Enns founder of Win Without Pitching and author of three bestselling books, including the hot-off-the-press ‘The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise’.

In the member exclusive hour, Blair will dive into the core of his newest book and take us through the fundamental differences between selling design expertise and selling products and transactional services. He’ll share his approach to effortlessly navigate sales in a way that is intuitive to selling expertise, the same way you deliver it – with confidence and integrity.  

And our first webinar of the year on 30 January at 4-5pm GMT will be a fireside chat with Dr Mary McBride from the Pratt Institute.

For those of you who attended The Design Effect event at The British Museum in October 2024, you will know what a treat this will be. It is essential viewing for anyone in a leadership or strategy position.

Head here for more details about these events. You can also reserve your place for the launch of the 2025 What Clients Think Report on 27 March, with early bookings now being taken for this unmissable event.

And there’s much, much more to come… we look forward to seeing you, and supporting all of our members this year.