Manager - Brand Marketing

Job description / Role

Responsibilities

Brand management

- Integrate communication strategy for enhancing brand equity and brand preference.
- Efficient media management and planning for optimum utilization of resources.
- Manage and coordinate all marketing and advertising activities.
- Understand product positioning and brand management backed with strong understanding of brand communication using integrated communication tools.
- Formulate business plans for overall development and accomplishment of top and bottom-line profitability.
- Develop brand positioning strategy in line with the brand objectives.
- Ensure that the entire brand building strategies and exercises are implemented in all the stores and in all the territories.
- Liaise with media groups and marketing agencies to develop appropriate theme communication methodology in line with brand objectives.
- Work with brand principals and internal stakeholders to help achieve the objective of building the brand.
- Build strategies and action plans to acquire a database and be the custodian for implementation.

Promotions and events

- Recommend brand and store promotions in consultation with brand custodians.
- Ensure that all communication material required for the promotions is developed, designed, and sent to the territories within the specified time frame and with the required approvals, allowing adequate time in case changes need to be adopted.
- Recommend events specific to brand, product category, or season.
- Forecast, along with brand custodians, the increase in footfall and sales during the promotions; hence come up with a return on investment (ROI).

In-store and outdoor media planning

- Ensure that the entire outdoor media facilities are at prime locations to attract customers (billboards and hoardings).
- Ensure time frames and seasonality peaks are met.
- Get preferential rates based on group's economy of scale and tactical negotiations.
- Ensure that the outdoor media communication is replaced regularly with images and captions.
- Coordinate with the territories and the brand principals as necessary on the media advertising.
- Ensure consistency in the brand image.
- Provide innovative solutions and proposals for new point of sale (POS) materials for stores and brand.

Budgeting and planning

- Prepare the annual marketing budget for the brand in consultation with the management team and allocate resources to territories and brands with the breakup in terms of season, campaign, media, etc.
- Prepare annual marketing calendar and product specification catalogs.
- Review the budgets and make recommendations to the management as deemed necessary.
- Report on the utilization of the budgets periodically.
- Ensure budget is effectively and efficiently utilized.

Media groups management

- Plan and coordinate with corporate marketing on media buying.
- Track advertising maintained with the media groups and agencies.
- Review the effectiveness of advertisement promotions and take corrective actions.
- Set agency deliverables with respect to the brand's communication strategy.
- Responsible for all approvals on the brand and marketing in coordination with brand and management.
- Ensure utilization of internal manpower to achieve quality output.

Market research

- Conduct periodic market research to study the customer profile, preferences, and buying patterns in coordination with corporate marketing.
- Conduct market research to study the effectiveness of the media campaign with respect to the money spent.
- Set goals and parameters for the marketing research, ensuring a meaningful output that can be utilized to develop plans and strategies.

Other responsibilities

- Negotiate with vendors, media groups, and printers.
- Create opportunities for cross promotion (i.e., banks, airlines, other retail brands) and co-branding.
- Plan with editors for public relations and media coverage in consultation with brand head and group corporate communication and PR.
- Manage the loyalty program and privilege clubs of the brands and recommend strategies to ensure increase in the perception level of the program.
- Recommend strategies to club apparel team to increase membership in the loyalty program and provide support in sending mailers and brochures to privilege club members.
- Represent the brands at media and marketing events to understand the essence and the fashion part of each brand to enable representing those brands as an ambassador in marketing-related needs.
- Conduct territory and market visits to assess implementation of marketing and branding guidelines and source competitive intelligence.
- Keep abreast of best practices in marketing, global retail brands, competitive and strategic marketing initiatives, and trends.
- Be close to stores and territories to know the customers and the market trend.
- Be abreast of the competition in the same sectors to enable market share knowledge.
- Coordinate with mall management to capitalize on their activities and utilize opportunities.
- Be abreast with seasonal launches, product heroes, and brand thematic displays.

Qualification

The ideal marketing manager in a retail company should have 7+ years of progressive experience in brand management, with a minimum of 5 years specifically in the retail sector. Proven success in developing and implementing strategic brand initiatives, enhancing customer engagement, and achieving measurable business results is essential.

About the Company

The Apparel Group is a global fashion and lifestyle brand conglomerate residing on the crossroads of a modern economy - Dubai, UAE. The mercurial growth in the last 17 years has been by acquiring a host of world class fashion labels from around the world - Nine West, Tommy Hilfiger, Kenneth Cole, Aldo & Tim Hortons just to name a few.

Today the group caters to thousands of eager shoppers through its over 1530 stores, 75 International brands and employing 12,000 multi cultural staff in over 4 continents. Apparel believes in turning dreams in to reality and we give everyone - our customers, our stakeholders, our employees - an equal opportunity to do so.

Apparel group has carved its strong presence not only in the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia but opened thriving gateways to market in India, South Africa, Poland, Singapore, Jordan, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. Additionally, clear strategies are in place to enter emerging markets such as Hungary, Pakistan, Egypt and Philippines.