CMI (Consumer & Market Insight) Brand Building Specialist & Growth Partner

Unilever is currently hiring for a CMI Brand Building Specialist & Growth Partner Foods

Reports to: CMI Growth Partner BWPC EWA & Head of CMI EWA

Location: Nairobi

Terms & Conditions Full time, local terms, no relocation

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.

ABOUT THE CONSUMER & MARKET INSIGHTS FUNCTION (CMI)

CMI is Unilever’s insights & growth engine, fueling the business with data, analytics & insights that help us to build & execute our brands with excellence. Beyond simply providing data & insights, our focus is to generate growth ideas that deliver business impact. We do this through analytical integration of multiple data sets – both internal & external. As well as through leading primary research with consumers & shoppers. We primarily partner marketing/brand and CSP, as well as country GMs, and have a seat at key leadership tables.

JOB PURPOSE

If you are curious by nature, energized by connecting the dots, and uncovering growth opportunities within complex data & research, then this job is for you. In CMI, you have the opportunity to be a master storyteller and influencer, and to use data & insights to solve some of the businesses biggest problems. We are in service of consumers & shoppers and have a responsibility to represent them as an objective, fact-based voice in the business.

WHAT WILL YOUR MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES BE

CMI specialists support the CMI growth partners to lead specialist analytics, and Brand Building Specialists specifically partner in building end-to-end superiority & elevating brand experiences. The key expectation of this role is to help brand teams understand the levers to pull to build brand love, to elevate experiences, and to measure how well we do these things. In this role you are expected to work with multiple data sets that enable brand understanding & activation - such as UBS, BGS, social & search insights, trends, primary innovation, etc. Focus areas will include innovation/renovation research, media testing & deployment optimisation, building customer growth stories for innovations, leading PLEs etc.

Specialist roles flow to value & deliver domain expertise across BGs in the MCO/Region – they support the CMI Growth Partners, and as such their goals & workplans are designed against CMI Growth Partner priorities. While the role might have a BG-designation (e.g. in big markets), the expectations is to flow to value and so the person may need to support other BGs in the market/region at times.

The Brand Building Specialist core responsibilities include:

• Leading analytics on UBS and Brand Power to support medium to long term brand performance (where relevant, working closely with the CD & perform specialists on the Ps that they own).

• Flawlessly integrating all possible sources to support ideation of innovation funnels that drives business growth

• Supporting CMI Growth Partners in the design of cost effective research programmes to maximise efficiency and effectiveness, and scaling up agile research methods and tools

• Leading research on priority innovations & renovations from ideation/co-creation to final testing of the full mix (including communication)

• Identifying & integrating consumer insights & latest micro trends to come up with disruptive innovation & brand-building / brand-experience ideas that are game changers.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED TO SUCCEED

Experiences & Qualifications

• Minimum 3 years bachelor’s degree in business/economics/marketing

• 3+ years of experience in analytics minimum – CMI, CD, analytics, or finance.

• Confidence and comfort in working with data / numbers and being analytically sound

• Strong organisation awareness & business acumen skills

• Adept at data interpretation and art of story telling

• Creative problem solving 

• Ability to overtly challenge and influence stakeholders/managing upwards

• Ability to independently set own priorities.

Skills

• Marketing 6P acumen

• Business acumen (finance & org awareness)

• Content development, optimisation & measurement

• Market research & insight generation

• Creativity & experimentation

• Innovation excellence

• Social/search insight generation (working with SBA tools & analytics)

Experience

Working on brands at different life stages including in market brand activation

Experience of building strategic understanding and Insights for brands and converting insights into actions. Includes working on identifying brand idea, working on brand campaigns, working on innovations and renovations.

Delivering via collaboration 

Experience of creating partnerships across brand teams and functions including R&D, Media, Finance etc and CMI teams. Experience of delivering through others including CMI expertise teams and external partners

Crafting & Innovation

Experience of leading on innovation, invention of new engagement. Experience of applying creativity and strategic thinking to delight the consumer

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.

• Ability to work collaboratively with different teams & external partners without having direct reporting lines, inside and outside of the country

• Work autonomously & make decisions independently

• Work flexibly – responds well to change, and able to learn and unlearn

Critical Behaviors

• Care deeply

• Focus on what counts

• Stay three steps ahead

• Deliver with excellence

Unilever embraces diversity and encourages applicants 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.