Senior Conference Producer

Fastmarkets is an independent commodity pricing and information organisation with over 500 staff. We are fuelled by values that bring us all together and are united by a collective passion to make a difference. We are supported by a working model that is based on a hybrid approach that allows each of us to balance home and office working while encouraging effective collaboration and accountability.
Fastmarkets is the most trusted Price Reporting Agency (PRA) in the metals, mining, agriculture, forest products, and energy transition markets. Our price data, forecasts, and market analyses give our customers strategic advantage in complex, volatile, often opaque markets. Our events provide forums for market participants to come together, trade, and talk through the critical issues of our times.

We are making a difference. Fastmarkets works to create transparent commodity markets through our reliable and trusted price data and market intelligence. The markets we serve are central to how economies work and are essential for our lives. By doing this, Fastmarkets helps our customers build a more sustainable world. We are built on a 130-year foundation while bringing a digital platform to market, combining the currency of trust with the power of digital.

Most importantly, we are fuelled by our teams that, across the globe, making the amazing possible. With a deep sense of purpose and belonging, we are building an extraordinary future – together. If you would like to help build the future, we hope you will join us on our journey.

Fastmarkets was founded in 1913 (as Metal Bulletin) and is a privately held UK-registered company. It is owned by global private equity firm Astorg, a specialist investor in healthcare, software, technology, business services and technology-based industrial companies.

About the role

This is an exciting opportunity to join a highly successful event team in a fast growth global events business. In this role you will be responsible for the developing the best-in-class content, agendas and customer experience across all your events. You will set the vision, commercial value proposition and strategy for each event based on deep customer insight, providing clear customer led rationales for the proposed vision and design principles.

At the event level you will need to ensure you are delivering highly differentiated and stand out agendas, confirm the best speakers and create imaginative and immersive experiences, ensuring in-depth customer and industry research is conducted and used to inform the overall event design.

You will be embedded in your industries and with your customers year-round, becoming a recognisable industry figure with a strong network of connections across key influencers, partners, government bodies, organisations and thought leaders to ensure your events are seen as not only must attend but also co-created by and for the industries and customers they serve.

Your role will involve collaborating with the events and wider Fastmarkets teams to ensure your vision is aligned and the intended customer experience are stand out both in-person and online. You will work closely with editorial to co-create agendas and elevate our experts and authority, with marketing provide clear, differentiated, and actionable value propositions and inputs to key messaging, with sales provide guidance on maximising revenue opportunities whilst ensuring the integrity of your event is retained and work closely with operations to ensure the event achieves its profitability goals.

Principle Accountabilities

Taking ownership of your entire portfolio of events to accelerate strategic growth and develop long-term business plans. Building an engaged year-round community through curated content that culminates in the must-attend and stand out in-person event. Fully driving the commercial value proposition and results for your portfolio and delivering key initiatives with detailed planning.

Customer Research and Insight:

Conduct thorough customer research with event target market to shape the event's commercial value proposition, agenda, and design.
Utilise customer insights and industry research to create audience market maps and identify pain points that align with the overall event design and agenda
Record all insights and market research to create a shared central repository all producers can access

Agenda Development & Strategy:

Deliver differentiated agendas with industry leaders as speakers, ensuring they surpass competitor offerings.
Set up and manage customer advisory boards for all events.
Develop a clear vision and strategy for the event and communicate to all stakeholders in a timely manner

Speaker Recruitment and Management:

Identify and recruit outstanding speakers, managing them throughout the event life cycle.
Ensure over 40% of speakers are new to the event, providing a competitive edge.
Deliver all agendas and speakers within strict project timelines.
Achieve all speaker targets including DE&I goals.

Commercial Success and Partnerships:

Support securing key partnerships and sponsor relationships to enhance commercial success.
Monitor, contribute, ideate, and problem-solve to achieve overall event objectives and revenue / profit targets.

Customer Metrics and Research:

Ensure events meet or exceed Fastmarkets event customer metric scores.

Conduct robust customer research for strategy and event design, maintaining updated records.

Industry Relationships and Mentorship:

Develop and maintain relationships with key industry players and associations.
Mentor fellow producers to build knowledge and share best practices.
Develop a in-market 365 content-led activities such as webinars, briefings and videos to engage your community and key relationships year-round.

Post-Event Insights and Analysis:

Own pre, at, and post-event customer insight, including consistent post-event surveys and analysis

Communication and Coordination:

Provide clear briefings to sales, marketing, operations and wider stakeholder teams, ensuring alignment and buy-in.
Conduct effective project meetings, utilise project management sheets, and adhere to timelines.

Competitive Landscape and Alignment:

Keep a comprehensive competitive matrix, stay informed about opportunities and threats, and understand industry changes.
Align events with wider Fastmarkets divisional objectives and prices.

Event Briefs and Marketing Support:

Write clear, actionable event briefs for marketers and salespeople.
Provide inputs for website content and support with key messaging for promotional activities.

On-Site Oversight and Innovation:

Oversee events on-site, acting as the "face of the event."
Generate ideas for new events and features within the portfolio.
Drive innovation in event experience design based on your deep understanding of your customers motivations and goals.

Launching new events and content-led initiatives

Validating and launching new large-scale events.
Creating new content-led initiatives to engage your community year-round as well as strategically add new revenue streams.
Developing commercial add-ons such as awards, focus days, summits and briefings to increase our market position and create additional value.

KEY INTERFACES

Events Managing Director
Head of Production
Events Marketing
Events Sales
Events Operations Team
Accounts & Finance
Editorial, strategy, analysts and pricing teams.
Fastmarkets Risk and Compliance
Fastmarkets Operations Team
Central sales and marketing teams
Customers and prospects
Conference speakers and prospective speakers
Clients and prospective delegates
IT/Development teams
Internal and external advisers including senior industry leaders and experts.
Event partners

About you

We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission to provide the world’s leading and most trusted price reporting, events, and intelligence service for the markets we serve. We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully. You must be open-minded, curious, resilient, and solutions-oriented, and committed to promoting equality.

If you're excited about the role but your experience, skills or qualifications don't perfectly align, we encourage you to apply anyway.

KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated, driven, and have a passion to be part of a fast-paced, successful team. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly.

The ideal candidate must have a Bachelor's degree (2:1 or above) or equivalent, at least 3 – 5 years producing and managing commercial large-scale events. Experience and exposure to commodities or financial sectors is desirable.

Self-motivated Professional:

Proven experience in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.

Project Management:

Proficient in managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders whilst adhering to strict timelines.

Tenacity and Ambition:

Demonstrates perseverance and a goal-driven approach.

Innovative and Entrepreneurial:

Exhibits the ability to reimagine and reinvent events to foster growth.

Highly Organised:

Efficient and well-organised in handling responsibilities and a keen eye for detailed planning.

Collaborative Team Player:

Proven ability to collaborate seamlessly within a team.

Clear Communicator:

Articulates a defined vision and commercial value proposition for events, ensuring stakeholder alignment.

Research and Synthesis:

Excellent research skills, adept at distilling vast information into easy-to-understand event concepts, experience design, and compelling agendas.

Effective Communication:

Proficient in conducting research calls, face-to-face meetings, and strong written communication.

Digital Event Design:

Experience in designing digital events to enhance sponsorship opportunities.

End-to-End Event Strategy:

Competent in developing and delivering an event strategy from conceptualisation through development to successful delivery.

Networking Prowess & Presence:

Excellent networker with the ability to build strong relationships internally and externally, becoming the go-to person for their events.

Our values

Fastmarkets people come from all different walks of life. It’s this mix of brilliant personalities, experiences and insights that gives us that warm, open, and friendly culture you can feel as soon as you meet us. But however wonderfully different we all are, there are six things we all have in common – and they form our Fastmarkets values.

Created by our own employees to reflect some of the personal traits that Fastmarkets people have, our values are key to what makes our culture unique. They reflect who each of us are and they're embedded in everything we do.

Our values are:

METRICS DRIVEN. We use insights to improve our customers’ experience and our business performance

ACCOUNTABLE. We are accountable to ourselves and those we work with: we keep our promises and get things done

GROWTH MINDSET. This value enables us to be nimble to the changing realities and operate with a sense of urgency

INCLUSIVE. We are inclusive and respectful, celebrating each of us and giving everyone a deep sense of belonging with the desire to bring their best self to work every day.

CUSTOMER CENTRIC. We are customer-centric in all that we do

COLLABORATIVE. We are collaborative, able to work across teams and capitalise on the diversity of intellect, perspectives, and experiences.