Head of Trade & Shopper Marketing – Africa Development Markets at Twining

• The role presents a real opportunity to be at the heart of the development and implementation of a long-term brand and business strategy in the region by step-changing our brand execution in the market, ensuring product availability and visibility across all channels. The role reports to the General Manager of Africa Development and will establish tight collaboration with and support for marketing and commercial and specific teams within distributors' organizations.

Key Responsibilities

Trade activation and visibility planning

• To develop deep insights and understanding of consumer and category needs in our existing leadership markets Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and the Gambia and, in collaboration with Commercial, turn these into clear and compelling brand strategies that deliver strong, defensible market positions for the core Ovaltine portfolio in targeted markets.
• In-store execution: Work alongside TwO commercial teams to understand and refine perfect stores; set KPIs and track presence and visibility in stores; run market visits to ensure execution excellence and identify available growth opportunities.
• Ensures the annual activation plans in these countries selects the right initiatives and trade marketing tactics. Directly responsible for providing excellent delivery of agreed activities and interventions aim to drive rate of sales across channels.
• To support the West Africa commercial manager to develop a launch plan in the new markets. The TMM will need to own the key strategic trade and consumer visibility initiatives that will be required to deliver this.
• Implements agreed commercial strategy and support distributors and channels partners to deliver model store excellence.
• Lead agency to create and deliver trade marketing programmes.
• Tightly collaborate with the distributor's merchandising and sales teams to drive in-store trade fundamentals, product placement and sales through internal/third party merchandisers.
• Ensure the business has a clear line of sight of all in-market Sales and Marketing initiatives setting clear KPI's and evaluation tools (ensuring ROI is clearly monitored & understood).
• Work and align with the agency, customer services and logistics team to ensure on time delivery of the promotion material and POSM.

Salesforce materials

• Develop Brochures, trade comms materials with agencies and Mktg team.
• Manage POS materials (gifts, visibility items, etc)
• Ensure the sales team execute in-store merchandizing as per the set planograms. 
• Develop and drive execution of model stores across key markets

Strategy Setting

• Support commercial teams with where to play / how to win strategy setting and market opportunity analysis for the Ovaltine and Twinings brands in the region.
• In-store and online monitoring and assessment of A&P activities of Ovaltine and competitor brands in the region.
• Development of data-driven diagnostics, ensuring the quality and accuracy of business insights, identifying issues & opportunities and brand/ category recommendations (for short and long term), while determining potential implications of different courses of action, to influence the strategic direction of the business

Brand & project management

• Manage the 36-month activation calendar, which should include timings of instore/sampling activations, market visits, focus groups, POSM deployment and trade promotions per market.
• Lead and manage the Marketing Budget Calendar for the region.
• Support the marketing leadership team in the UK to develop the suitable ADM Ovaltine product range for the region.
• Support the marketing leadership team with their regional/local communication strategy.
• Full responsibility for the overseas Africa distributor conference

Period Reporting / Promotional evaluation

• Make sure commercial/ trade plans have clear KPIs agreed and that they are properly tracked/ measured (including ROI), assessing the success of the activities/ category and identifying areas for improvement.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• A driven, passionate manager with a minimum of 10 Years of experience in FMCG environment within Commercial, Trade Marketing and/or Category management functions.
• Has experience and passion for data, customer insight, trade, consumers' shopper practises and will know how to leverage on them when generating category/ brand stories.
• Ability to manage high-impact cross-functional strategic commercial projects.
• Outstanding stakeholder engagement and communication skills, with the ability to develop relationships with key functional leads (Commercial, Marketing, Finance, Logistics, Operations, Procurement) and external strategic commercial partners.
• Outstanding presentation and communication skills, both verbal and written.
• Track record of market development results demonstrating customer portfolio growth.
• Ability to identify opportunities and the analytic skills to interpret and translate this into a comprehensive market approach.
• Must understand channels and additional partnering methods to define the most effective route to market for new products.
• Strong commercial capability across sales and marketing, with a demonstrated history of leading and delivering strong commercial results.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to interpret and execute commercial strategies.
• Experience in leading agencies (briefing, creative development & execution) to deliver trade marketing programmes (POSM, in-store display, events, sampling).
• Stay informed about market trends, competitor activities, and customer preferences to make informed decisions and drive the success of TWO as a category.
• Sharing and challenging TwO Africa commercial and marketing teams (in a positive-constructive way), collaborating, and contributing actively to the development of the commercial/ marketing strategy & plans, and trade stories.
• Ability to speak French would be advantageous

Benefits

• Yearly bonus based on personal contribution and financial performance
• Annual Fuel Allowance
• Long Term Retention Plan
• Yearly Salary Review
• Housing Allowance
• 25 days annual leave
• Birthday day off
• Health & Medical Insurance
• Subsidized lunch 
• Monthly Team Recognition Awards