Senior Category Development Manager

Senior Category Development Manager

Job Description

You’re not the person who will settle for just any role. Neither are we. Because we’re out to create Better Care for a Better World, and that takes a certain kind of person and teams who care about making a difference. Here, you’ll bring your professional expertise, talent, and drive to building and managing our portfolio of iconic, ground-breaking brands. In this role, you’ll help us deliver better care for billions of people around the world. It starts with YOU. 

The Senior Category Development Manager (Sr. CDM), will develop and implement category-growth programs and stories, lead cross-functional partnerships to embed Category perspective across the business, and maximize value from category resources and tools. Leveraging syndicated data, shopper and consumer insights, category and industry trends, the Sr. CDM will develop comprehensive category strategies enabling greater sell-thru, category share gains, and category insights leadership.  This information will be utilized among the Business Unit and Customer Category and Sales Teams to ensure cohesive messaging and execution. This role is on the Adult and Feminine Care business unit which consists of the brands Depend, Poise, and U by Kotex.

This position is based at Kimberly Clark’s Chicago Commercial Center, located in Fulton Market, Chicago.

In this role, you will:

Extensive Category Knowledge

• Understand category trends, macro trends, purchase drivers, trip missions, shopper need states, etc. and liaise with Customer Development on executional strategies across all channels including ecommerce.

• Participate and present in internal and external meetings as the credible Category expert.

Reporting and Data Analytics

• Translate complex metrics and analytics into valuable strategic insights and category stories for consumer dynamics driving category growth.

• Direct and perform proactive analysis across a wide variety of category business issues and data sources (e.g. shopper research, POS, panel, loyalty card, omni, assortment tools, etc.) and make fact-based, actionable recommendations.

• Lead control store testing work with outside vendors and customer teams.

• Develop shelving principles by channel to drive quality of shelf placement, optimal assortment, merchandising flows, adjacencies, and cross merchandising opportunities.

• Act as an expert and champion use of category tools and resources (assortment tools, growth driver tools, planogramming software, etc.).

Shopper Understanding

• Collaborate with the Shopper Insights team to close research gaps in understanding shopper behavior and build growth roadmaps.

Project Management

• Manage flow of information and requests from Sr. Management, Customer Development, Business Units, etc.

• Ability to work collaboratively within the team to achieve consistency in approach across Business Units.

About Us

Huggies®. Kleenex®. Cottonelle®. Scott®. Kotex®. Poise®. Depend®. Kimberly-Clark Professional®. You already know our legendary brands—and so does the rest of the world. In fact, millions of people use Kimberly-Clark products every day. We know these amazing Kimberly-Clark products wouldn’t exist without talented professionals, like you.

At Kimberly-Clark, you’ll be part of the best team committed to driving innovation, growth and impact. We’re founded on more than 150 years of market leadership, and we’re always looking for new and better ways to perform – so there’s your open door of opportunity. It’s all here for you at Kimberly-Clark.

Led by Purpose. Driven by You.

About You

You perform at the highest level possible, and you appreciate a performance culture fueled by authentic caring.  You want to be part of a company actively dedicated to sustainability, inclusion, wellbeing, and career development.

You love what you do, especially when the work you do makes a difference. At Kimberly-Clark, we’re constantly exploring new ideas on how, when, and where we can best achieve results. When you join our team, you’ll experience Flex That Works: flexible (hybrid) work arrangements that empower you to have purposeful time in the office and partner with your leader to make flexibility work for both you and the business.

In one of our professional roles, you’ll focus on winning with consumers and the market, while putting safety, mutual respect, and human dignity at the center. To succeed in this role, you will need the following qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree (emphasis in business/marketing or related field) preferred, master’s