Senior Category Manager - Gum, Candy

Job description / Role

Senior Category Manager Gum, Candy, Beverages and Meals North Africa & Levant

What makes working at Mondelez International so special? Many things. The iconic brands and global nature of our business. The continuous innovation and endless opportunities to grow. The chance, each and every day, to put a smile on people's faces. We're the world's leading maker of Chocolate, Biscuits, Candy and Gum with billion-dollar brands like Cadbury, Milka, Prince and Oreo and we now have an exciting opportunity to join our team.

As a leader within the snacking industry worldwide, we are looking for key, talented Brand Managers to join many of our iconic brands, such as Cadbury, Mondelez Meals (including Philadelphia and Dairylea), Biscuits (including Ritz, Belvita amongst many others), Gum & Candy (Trebor, Maynard Bassett, Trident) amongst many more iconic brands.

We have an exciting career opportunity in the Marketing Function, in the capacity of North Africa & Levant GCBM Category Lead , based in Cairo BU. The main purpose of this role is to maintain the health of the Gum, Candy and Beverages business across markets and growing it in line with the company's laid out long term strategic plan and annual contract. This role is responsible for driving all the business building blocks supported by relevant teams in the market in order to build growth plans, aligning plans with sales team, and executing them with excellence in market.

Main responsibilities:

Annual contract and Strategic planning:

- Lead the development of annual contract planning and give inputs to long-term strategic planning process.
- In-depth review of Gum, Candy and Beverages category and clear understanding of what is working and what is not.
- Drive clear understanding of what is the consumer task in order to drive category growth; drive penetration among consumers of the category.
- Build and own activation calendar for the year, including clarity on activation agenda, innovation launch plan, and communications calendar.
- Liaise with demand planning, finance, regional category team and CP&A to put building blocks in place to meet annual contract and strategic plan requirements of NR growth and to meet margin objectives.
- Have a view on the long-term plan for category and provide local insights to make them better.
- Plan and manage budgets - Working media, Non-working, POB, promotions etc…
- Propose the right activation agenda to drive psychological and physiological measures i.e. brand salience and consideration, trials and overall consumption

Managing a team of direct reports:

- Responsible for making it a "great place to work" for the direct reports.
- Foster a high-spirited environment of learning and growth.
- Provide goal clarity at the beginning of the year to the team and carry out timely mid year and yearend review process for the team.
- Provide prompt feedback to the team, keep team motivated, and focused on the goal all time.

Integrated marketing campaign development:

- Liaise with media and creative agencies at local level to execute plans.
- Join up strongly with Equity team to drive connections planning process.
- Lead the brief for locally led communications on Digital or TV.
- Provide local insights to the communication development process to ensure that brand benefits in the right manner given the development of the market.

Execution of the brand plan:

- Media planning with our agency partners and internal media team.
- Copy strategy for TV & Digital with clear KPIs on GRPs, Impressions, reach and frequency. Flighting strategy to maximise year round presence.
- POB activation planning; POSM development and execution.
- Key visual and message development along with the equity team.

Innovation:

- Opportunity assessment and sizing.
- Guidance on the right innovation for the market that drives the core .
- Launch planning.
- PPA, Pricing, Artwork development, Selling unit configuration.
- Engaging and aligning plans with the sales and CP&A.
- Lead customer engagement.
- Concept development and validation for locally led initiatives; support in execution for the regionally led innovation projects.

Portfolio health & strategy:

- Drive consumption by driving the right PPA across multiple occasions.
- Drive specific SKUs to leverage and build scale on festive occasions.
- Drive profitability across all SKUs by taking appropriate action around pricing and driving efficiency agenda to reduce cost of goods.
- Drive the journey to simplicity agenda by taking action on the low contributing tail in the portfolio and driving scale on the big SKUs.

I2M and IBP process:

- Leads the IBP process for GCB NAL. Represents marketing and inputs into the local country DR process.
- Ensures that the demand numbers are in line with the targets and the planned initiatives.
- Leads the sales and marketing alignment meeting.
- Provides visibility on the business risks and opportunities to drive NR.
- Leads the locally lead projects through the I2M (Idea to market) process.

Working with cross functional team:

- Manage the expectations of the country MD and maintain regular check in meetings.
- Coordinate all initiatives locally with CP&A, demand and sales team and with the regional category teams.
- Maintains harmonious relationship with peers and drives efficiency in day-to-day working.

Requirements

Qualifications:

Knowledge, Skills and Experience Required:

- Bachelor Degree in a relevant study
- 10+ years of experience in marketing management position
- FMCG experience
- Proficiency in MS office
- Analytical, communication & people management skills
- Multi-country exposure is a plus
- Effective Consumer Communication
- Holistic Consumer Understanding & Compelling Insight Translation

About the Company

Mondelez International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDLZ) is one of the world's largest snacks companies, with 2015 net revenues of approximately $30 billion.

Our dream is to create delicious moments of joy in everything we do. Nearly 100,000 employees support this dream by manufacturing and marketing delicious food and beverage products for consumers in approximately 165 countries around the world.

We are the world's pre-eminent maker of snacks, with leading market shares in every category in which we compete. Mondelez International holds the No. 1 position globally in Biscuits, Chocolate and Candy as well as the No. 2 position in Gum. (source: Euromonitor)

About 85 percent of our annual revenue is generated in fast-growing snacks categories, and nearly 75 percent of our sales come from outside of North America.