Associate Director, Category Marketing - Unilever Food Solutions, North America

Associate Director, Category Marketing - Unilever Food Solutions, North America

Location: Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Unilever Food Solutions is a business built by Chefs, so we know what you face every day in the kitchen. Everything we do is focused on making your life a little easier. Our purpose is to Free Chefs to love what they do. 

Unilever Food Solutions is the foodservice (B2B) part of Unilever F&R, and as such we are at the heart of carving out some of the new WOW between Retail, OOH and FS teams – Aurora. We are present in 26 multi-country organizations (MCOs) and have an ambitious plan to grow double digit in the coming years.

The NAM Foods Team sits at the heart of the portfolio and innovation transformation to go hand in hand with the business target and the market needs. So, if you thrive on challenge and want to be part of a progressive, ambitious and fast-paced team which embraces the digital first world to get closer to your customer, leverages lean and agile ways of working to move and learn fast, then this is a role for you!

Background & Purpose of the Job

We are searching for an experienced Associate Director, Category Manager to take Global strategy and leverage local insight to strengthen the existing portfolio and build the future portfolio for Out-of-Home across Dressings Categories.

This role’s focus is on the dressings category and it’s main Unilever brands, as well as UFS brands. This category is a key strategic choice for the business as well as the widest and most complex portfolio that extends from mayo and salad dressings all the way into meal ingredients – covering categories that are profitable and face high competition in the markets. Category performance and adherence to UFS strategy is key to deliver total UFS’s growth ambition. 

This role offers the opportunity to be part of a growth plan for the category and for UFS’s main growth platforms and to shape the future funnel and propositions. This is the biggest brand and category for UFS.  As such, it demands an entrepreneurial, can-do attitude paired with strong project management skills. A good degree of familiarity with brand communication, digital tools and innovation process is also required.

Who You Are and What You'll Do

• Responsible for Innovation and Renovation Project Management, delivery, strategy, Portfolio Transformation and Brand Communication. Expectation is to challenge the business in terms of speed of innovation and ways to launch in the market within the digital transformation journey
• Owns portfolio positioning, sustainable growth strategy and strategy into action to win market share, including net revenue management
• Develops strong purpose-driven propositions & selling stories – Needs/Solutions
• Drives the full Operator Lifecycle: Work closely with Operator Experience Marketing to understand the Customer Experience (CX).
• Lead business transformation via owning progressive innovation platforms, being able to drive network/virtual teams globally to think and act differently. Strong can-do mentality and mindset a must!

• Understand deeply Dressings category insights and foresights-- from trends to tensions, opportunities and competition. Strategy into Action: Develops strategy to drive growth & customer experience
• Define growth strategy for Dressings to capitalize trends and tailwinds, or fix the tensions

What You Need to Succeed

• 10+ years International Marketing experience required including innovation management and delivery
• Brand / Category management experience required
• Innovation & Renovation project management experience required
• Digital Experience
• Experience with full P&L ownership
• Business acumen: Deep Understanding of sales/marketing funnels, operator lifecycle & marketing automation journeys.
• Customer Centric
• Creative & Persuasive Content Performance Measurement & Analysis experience

 What We Can Offer You

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