Group Head of Brand

Job description / Role

Company & Team

Chalhoub is the leading luxury retailer in the Middle East. With more than 600 stores, 300 brands, and 60 years of experience in the region, we are the premiere destination for luxury goods. To fuel the next stage of the organization's growth, we are looking to build world-class brand building and development capabilities. From new brand creation through to growing our existing brands to a global level, we aim to improve every aspect of our brand creation, strategy, design, development, experience, and operations to take our brands global and operate like one. We are looking for top talent to join us on this journey.

Role

The role of Group Head of Brand is to analyze, create, define, design, develop and measure the performance of our new, existing, and future brands while acting as the governing body to ensure full compliance to the guidelines set.

Our Group Head of brand will be responsible for ensuring our brands have the right foundations to grow in the global retail scene ensuring brand excellence and a stellar brand performance.

We require an exceptional leader who is passionate about brand building to supporting our mission and objective to develop brands not stores.

Key responsibilities and Accountabilities

Strategy & Leadership

- Diagnoses and defines fit-for-future brand strategies for our existing brands and new ones
- Responsible for creating the vision and driving the transformation of how we develop brands and brand experiences using design thinking and insights
- Responsible for creating the brand's operating model, group wide team competencies framework, governance model, process flows, KPIs and measures of success
- Responsible for defining and delivering the brands' strategy, mission, vision, purpose, values, positioning, pyramid, reasons to exist and believe, brand experience models, target audience, points of differentiation
- Defines the brand endorsement, sponsorships, partnership, and association strategy
- Supports the brands' and business expansion efficiently through the highest standards of customer experience, stakeholder management and cost-effective management of resources, maximizing value, equity, profitability, and growth of the brands
- Ensures insights inform planning that therefore impact brand and business metrics ensuring health, growth & profitability Delivering high quality and pro-active insights to key business partners / stakeholders, marketing, brand, marketing, commercial and shopper teams
- Drives organizational brand building capabilities through a program of training and development to enable the whole marketing organization to be upskilled
- Promotes a culture of high performance and continuous improvement that values learning and a commitment to quality ensuring the vision and strategic roadmap are on track
- Manages and maintains program specific research inclusive of brand tracking, brand health, brand valuation, competitive intelligence, industry trends, brand uplift studies, testing and learning, focus groups, quantitative and qualitative
- Creates and presents timeline brand governance and performance reports to relevant stakeholders and external partners, while communicating messages in a simple, clear, unambiguous, relatable, and digestible manner to varying audiences
- Works closely with the Vice Presidents, General Manages and Heads of Marketing in the brands to drive strong brand and brand marketing strategies
- Plays a leading role in establishing brand building strategies across all channels and teams. This will be done in collaboration with key stakeholders across the group
- Participates in the design of all new projects to meet branding requirements and determine the best in market
- Presents creative in various settings, partnering with key senior leaders to garner feedback, create alignment and attain resources

Insights and reporting

- Delivers key insights and recommendations that optimize the performance of the brand and marketing programs/campaigns and assists the Head of marketing in the achievement of their brands' goals
- Monitors, measures and analyze the effectiveness of strategies applied by the Heads of Marketing

Creative development

- Responsible for oversight of omnichannel creative across collateral and channels, as well as preserving and enforcing omnichannel brand visual creative
- Responsible for developing digital expression guidelines, signage and architectural guidelines, visual guidelines, content guidelines, smashables, brand codes etc...
- Oversees creative direction and design of all brand creative, inspire/mentor/coach, creating wholistic brand experience and collaborate with strategic agency partners
- Directs and manages the work of strategic agency partners, ensuring the brand visual strategy is preserved and reinforced
- Facilitates the creative process across to build concept boards, photo briefs and design assets across multiple channels to visualize and execute creative concept; Oversee photo shoots, video shoots, and art direction

Brand Communication and campaign:

- Collaborates with the Heads of Marketing to design brand equity campaigns
- Advises and support the Heads of Marketing on any brand related activities like sponsorships, events, activations etc...
- Improves and optimizes the brand's performance ensuring Heads of marketing budgets are adequately spent on key initiatives with clear pre-defined ROI metrics
- Designs and implements customer acquisition, retention, development, and loyalty programs

Collaboration

- Works closely with the Vice Presidents, General Manages and Heads of Marketing in the brands to drive strong brand and brand marketing strategies
- Plays a leading role in establishing brand building strategies across all channels and teams. This will be done in collaboration with key stakeholders across the group
- Develops effective and positive working relationships across the organization as well as externally
- Defines and manages strategic and creative agencies efficiently
- Participates in the design of all new projects to meet branding requirements and determine the best in market from the full suite of services across various concepts integral to all developments, providing a distinct point of difference and an attractive yield
- Works with the content factory to develop compliant yet creative content
- Presents creative in various settings, partnering with key senior leaders to garner feedback, create alignment and attain resources

Requirements

Your Profile

- University degree in marketing, brand, design, visual communication or business graduate from a recognized business school or university
- Ideally holding an master's degree or MBA from a related subject
- Minimum 15 years of relevant experience working for a global brand in FMCG, Luxury, Brand development, ideally for multiple brands and multiple markets or Minimum 15 years of experience in a senior management position in a strategic brand agency (Strategy director, GM, COO, Creative Director, Chief Creative Officer)
- Someone who keeps ahead of the curve, has a strong understanding of brand building, in the fashion industry is a plus
- Someone who has grown brands from the ground up and grown them to become global brands with high brand equity
- Insight driven and analytical
- Exceptional leadership
- Equally creative and strategic
- Innovative and thinks out of the box
- Understanding of working cross functionally
- Excellent communication to bring the ecosystem together

What we can offer you

With us, you will turn your aspirations into reality. We will help shape your journey through enriching experiences, learning and development opportunities and exposure to different assignments within your role or through internal mobility. Our Group offers diverse career paths for those who are extraordinary, every day.

We recognize the value that you bring, and we strive to provide a competitive benefits package which includes health care, child education contribution, remote and flexible working policies as well as exclusive employee discounts.

About the Company

The Chalhoub Group is the leading partner for luxury across the Middle East since 1955. As an expert in retail, distribution and marketing services based in Dubai, the group has become a major player in the fashion, beauty and gift sectors regionally.

By blending its Middle East expertise and intimate knowledge of luxury, Chalhoub Group is building brands in the region, by offering service excellence to all its partners and a unique experience to its customers through its passionate teams.

With a growing workforce of more than 9,000 people, implemented in 14 countries, as well as the operating of over 470 retail outlets, the group's success is attributed to its most valued asset of highly skilled and dedicated teams. Professionalism and passion are what fuel the Chalhoub Group's competitive edge in today's market.

By being committed to implementing sustainable practices into their business, the Chalhoub Group has been awarded in 2013 the CSR Label from the Dubai Chamber of Commerce.