Lubricants Marketing Specialist at NFT Consult

Job Purpose:

Overall, the role is responsible to provide market insights & deploy successful marketing campaigns and own their implementation from ideation to execution. This includes supporting the development of marketing plans and programs for lubricants and measurement of implementation impact within the different export markets and channels.

The incumbent will be required to conduct thorough market analysis, deploy appropriate market understanding and measurement metrics to meet the brand and business objectives. Specifically, the role should:

• Provide the relevant insights regarding market trends (customer and competitor) as inputs in the development and review of business/marketing programs and identification of growth opportunities.
• Participate in the development of the exports lubricants strategy, marketing plans and marketing initiatives in line with the agreed export lubricants business strategy.
• Support, coordinate and manage on-ground implementation of agreed marketing initiatives by the distributors in the various export markets.
• Act as the export lubricants S&OP focal point by driving the export lubricants forecasting processes and the lubricants S&OP portfolio/product lifecycle management, price management, marketing research and marketing initiative post implementation reviews.

Dimensions:

• Priority countries include Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe & Mozambique.
• Tanzania: 2.5Million litres (Revenue US$5.5)
• Ethiopia: 1.0Million litres (Revenue US$2Million)
• Zambia: 3.5 Million litres (Revenue US$8.75Million)
• Zimbabwe: 1.0Million (Revenue US$2.6Million)
• Mozambique: 2.0 Million (Revenue US$6Million) 

Principal Accountabilities:

Market Insights and Understanding

• Conduct brand, market and competitor analyses that feed into country lubricants marketing plan development.
• Coordinate, deploy and manage identified/agreed marketing research projects aimed at providing insights that inform product, brand and channel strategies.
• Continuously scan the environment to identify new opportunities and provide feed of suspects into the SPANCOP pipeline.
• Product Lifecycle & Portfolio Management
• Manage the running of the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) process from product introduction to withdrawal.
• Prepare business cases for new product/SKU introduction, underperforming SKU withdrawal and liaise with the Africa PLM Manager on business case approvals, product label/packaging development.
• Continuously analyze portfolio performance and make recommendations to achieve a robust portfolio that reflects the dynamic export market needs.
• Pricing
• Conduct periodic value chain analysis, regular updates to brand maps for key SKU’s and make recommendations to extract maximum value and meet price positioning objectives.
• Monitor pricing performance for key SKU’s, including cost trends, provide analysis to inform pricing positioning and review mechanism for B2B customers.
• Provide new product pricing recommendations in liaison with the Lubricants Marketing Manager and Export Business Manager.

Marketing implementation

• Provide support for key lubricant marketing projects and initiatives from including design, actual implementation and evaluation of return on marketing investments (pre and post implementation.
• Manage concept testing for new products, new product potential/market penetration evaluation, and preparation of marketing investments business cases, ad-hoc analysis as may be required from time to time.
• Manage the procurement of marketing materials for agreed campaigns/marketing initiatives to ensure best value in liaison with CP/initiative owner and in compliance with CP policies.
• Manage utilization of the export lubricants SP&A as per planned marketing activities to ensure spent is within approved budget.
• Improve marketing communication decisions through analysis of the different media options and their effectiveness using appropriate marketing metrics.

Demand Panning      

• Manage the demand forecasting interface with SVL to ensure effectiveness of the lubricants S&OP process as the marketing focal point.
• Liaise with the export market distributors and sales managers to capture any new activities that impact demand and sales forecast and make necessary adjustments to sales forecasts accordingly.

Others    

• Support and participate in the on-ground implementation of marketing initiatives, agency supervision and performance evaluation on need basis.

Key Challenges:

• Strike a good balance between focus on the internal and external environments.
• Ensure alignment with multiple stakeholders, sometimes with competing needs and priorities.
• Achieve necessary influence to drive the lubricants agenda across different lines of business.
• Ensuring timeliness in provision of scheduled and ad hoc analysis from multiple and often independent sources.

Job Knowledge, Skills & Experiences:

• A university degree preferably in business, marketing or related field.
• Ability to work and adopt in a multicultural environment.
• At least 3 years of experience in a marketing or marketing support role or environment with strong analytical skills. 
• Experience in an FMCG setting and digital marketing while not essential is an advantage.
• Good understanding of Retail and B2C markets.
• Strong value chain; Pricing; Channel management & RTM competencies
• Ability to draw insights from data and communicate them to different audiences with ease.
• Good project management, communication and presentation skills.
• Self-motivated and individual with good commercial instinct and customer orientation.
• High proficiency in Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and other common computer programs.