VP Of Marketing & Communications

Description

ReCon is seeking candidates for a direct-hire opportunity for a client in Lake Charles, LA.

Help Shape the Future of Southwest Louisiana!

Southwest Louisiana is a strategic, business-friendly region anchored by Lake Charles, offering strong economic opportunity, robust infrastructure, and an attractive cost of living. Located along the I-10 corridor, the region provides efficient access to Houston, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, supported by interstate, rail, port, and regional air connectivity. With billions of dollars in planned and active investment across energy, petrochemical, LNG, and infrastructure sectors, Southwest Louisiana continues to see sustained project activity that drives long-term growth and ongoing demand for professional services.

Position Overview

The Vice President of Marketing & Communications is a senior leadership role responsible for shaping, stewarding, and executing a regional economic development narrative. Reporting directly to the President & CEO and serving as a member of the executive leadership team, this role leads integrated marketing, communications, and public relations efforts that support business attraction, talent recruitment, partner alignment, and public understanding of the region's economic growth strategy.

This position is both strategic and hands-on. The VP sets direction, builds systems, and leads campaigns-while also actively producing content, managing execution, and ensuring momentum during a period of organizational growth, brand refresh, and regional alignment.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the refresh and stewardship of the regional economic development brand, ensuring it is competitive, credible, and consistently applied across the region.
• Align and clearly differentiate the economic development alliance brands within a unified regional framework that reinforces the Alliance's role as the region's lead economic development organization.
• Develop and maintain clear value propositions for priority industries and target sectors, highlighting sites, infrastructure readiness, workforce pipelines, and innovation capacity.
• Design and execute regional economic development marketing campaigns that promote certified and market-ready sites, showcase business attraction and expansion successes, and reinforce Southwest Louisiana's ability to deliver shovel-ready solutions.
• Oversee development and launch of a business-facing website that serves companies, site selectors, and investors while clearly communicating regional assets, opportunities, and partnerships.
• Coordinate familiarization tours for site selectors, investors, and company prospects in partnership with business, government, and community leaders.
• Establish messaging frameworks and partner toolkits that enable regional adoption, consistency, and coordinated storytelling across parishes, chambers, and economic development partners.
• Lead talent attraction and quality-of-life marketing through place-based storytelling that highlights career opportunities and quality-of-life assets to support talent recruitment and retention.
• Serve as lead strategist and primary editor for content development.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with local, state, and national media to generate earned coverage.
• Manage the marketing budget and external vendors (design, web, advertising) while maintaining internal content and messaging control.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in marketing or related field required. Advanced degree (MBA, Marketing, Communications, or related field) strongly preferred
• 7-10+ years of progressive experience in marketing and communications
• Strategic thinker with strong execution instincts
• Comfortable operating as both senior leader and hands-on contributor
• Strong collaborator able to align diverse regional partners
• Experience with digital platforms, CMS tools, analytics, and basic design tools (Adobe or similar)
• Highly organized, adaptable, and effective in a fast-paced, evolving environment

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