Marketing Specialist - Innovation Lead

Unilever is currently hiring for a  Marketing Specialist - Innovation Lead

Reports to: Laundry Southern Africa Innovation Marketing Lead  

Scope: South Africa

Location: 61 Katherine Street / La Lucia Ridge

Terms & Conditions: Full time

With 3.4 billion people in over 190 countries using our products every day, Unilever is a business that makes a real impact on the world. Work on brands that are loved and improve the lives of our consumers and the communities around us. We are driven by our purpose: to make sustainable living commonplace, and it is our belief that doing business the right way drives superior performance. At the heart of what we do is our people – we believe that when our people work with purpose, we will create a better business and a better world. 

At Unilever, your career will be a unique journey, grounded in our inclusive, collaborative, and flexible working environment. We don’t believe in the ‘one size fits all’ approach and instead we will equip you with the tools you need to shape your own future.

HOME CARE SOUTHERN AFRICA

Our vision is to be the most admired Homecare business in Africa, delivering consistent category value through consumer insights, industry-leading innovations and building a frontline machine,

Homecare Southern Africa consists of 2 core categories: laundry and home & hygiene. Under the laundry portfolio we are custodians of heritage brands Sunlight and Omo, beloved for generations and leaders in their respective segments. The role will work across both brands with the purpose of advancing and rejuvenating them for a consistently evolving audience.

JOB PURPOSE

Unilever is the place where you can bring your purpose to life with the work that you do – creating a better business and a better world.  As Laundry Innovation Lead, you will play a key strategic role in the laundry team linked to the strategic pillar of driving the launch of industry-leading innovations and ensuring that there is an adequate pipeline of viable innovations, combining three elements that ultimately define a successful business – team stewardship, creativity and discipline.

WHAT WILL YOUR MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES BE

• Supporting local brand team to ensure that key milestones and governance are met in accordance with innoflex and invester board.

• Lead key projects approved by BT

• Leverage strong analytical skills and financial acumen to support PLs and teams with the development and presentation of project BCs with proper level of TO, GM, UOM & PBO detail at the right time.

• PLE Champion: Drive early in-market check of newly launched NPDs,100 day reviews, diagnose consumer response and propose corrective actions.

• Where relevant, working with new business model /licencing team and champion prototyping or pilot opportunities to test solutions on real shelves fast

• Ownership of ongoing funnel value management to provide business with a live, accurate overview with critical incremental forecasts and timings for projects

Key Relationships:

• Build and maintain ongoing relationship with regional BT & ALT, Marketing, Finance, CMI, R&D, Supply Chain, customer and planning teams to secure optimal outputs & deliverables

• Coordination of periodic updates to BT & ALT for cross functional lead alignment

• Enable the coordination of the various sources of CMI data available to ensure holistic insights and sharp needs are developed into locally relevant innovations

WHAT YOU WILL NEED TO SUCCEED

Experiences & Qualifications

• 3+ years’ experience in Brand Marketing or Creative/Digital/PR Agency with relevant qualification/s.  Proven history of Marketing Excellence.

• You need to be able to switch quickly from a big global brand mindset to a more local and innovative way of thinking. We complement the global PLI agenda with a strong localized program – looking to bring the local relevant edge to the brands and completely tailored to our consumers. This means you’re not afraid of getting your hands dirty: test & learn, pivot, and fast decision taking.

• An ability to work confidently with multiple cross functional teams, with strong communication, presentation and stakeholders influencing abilities. You liaise easily with different people and levels, valuing collaboration and looking for synergies where possible. You feel comfortable communicating with sales, development, supply chain, co-packing, but also PLI and senior management.

• You’re eager to fully exploit the agile way of working within the squad, the broader team and with other stakeholders (e.g. agencies) looking for efficiencies and focusing on value-based impact. You’re a squad and team player and value TRUST in the team. You display a Founder’s Mindset.

• You are passionate about growth and want to drive performance, you are eager to win from competition and you are ready to come with solutions in case of performance issues. You have leadership skills with a strong strategic vision and can mobilize into action

• Highly analytical, a head for figures with consumer & market curiosity. Ability to demonstrate a deep sense of organisation with great instincts and an ability to make things happen at pace.

• Resilience, can-do attitude, team orientation, ability to navigate through ambiguous and complex situations and pro-activity in reaching and implementing solutions.

Skills

• Project leadership and business acumen

• Strong numeracy skills

• Ability to deliver operationally, while thinking ahead of the long-term growth strategy

• Cross-functional relationship management: Agencies, Customer Development, Shopper Marketing, Supply Chain, Consumer Market Insights, Research and Development, Finance Business Partners

• Strong levels of growth and ownership mindset – a self-starter with a winning and competitive mindset

• Bias for action and drive – willingness to get things done with speed & efficiency, and comfortable working independently to deliver agreed goals

• Consumer and customer focus – curiosity, ability to uncover relevant insights and translate these into actionable plans

• Rigour and order – ability to identify important issues and work through complex problems in an accurate and in-depth way.

Leadership

• You are energized by delivering fantastic results. You are an example to others – both your results and your resilience. You are constantly on the lookout for better ways to do things, engaging and collaborating with others along the way.

• As an individual you are the one responsible for your own wellbeing and delivering high standards of work. You must also focus on the Consumer and what they need. You are humble and have your head up, looking around to interpret evidence and data smartly, spot issues and opportunities to make things better.

Critical Behaviours

• Care deeply: caring deeply about how consumers experience our brands every day, everywhere; about our people’s growth and development, and our impact on the planet. You care about your performance, to a point where it hurts when you don’t win.  Always brings their best self. Has emotional intelligence to take feedback, manage mood and motivations and build empathy for others. Sets high standards for themselves. Has humility, understanding that leadership is service to others, inside and outside of Unilever.

• Focus on what counts: we set clear and stretching goals and recognise maximum performance impact.  Generates intensity and focus to motivate people to deliver results at speed.

• Stay three steps ahead: we think boldly and creatively to make breakthroughs in performance. We are always curious and confident – anticipating and staying ahead of consumer needs and external trends to beat the competition. Approaches delivery with an iterative and incremental, test - do - learn approach. Has an owner’s mindset, using data and insight to make decisions.

• Deliver with excellence: we deliver everything we do with excellence and pace. We take personal ownership and hold each other to account – always finding a way to do what we said we will do.  Takes personal responsibility and accountability for execution and results.

Unilever embraces diversity and encourages applications from all walks of life! This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants and continuing development of all employees regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity. 

Unilever is an organisation committed to equity, inclusion and diversity to drive our business results and create a better future, every day, for our diverse employees, global consumers, partners, and communities. We believe a diverse workforce allows us to match our growth ambitions and drive inclusion across the business. At Unilever we are interested in every individual bringing their ‘Whole Self’ to work and this includes you! Thus if you require any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of your application so that we can support you through your recruitment journey.