Marketing Manager at Upfield

Job Purpose

We are looking for a dynamic, senior and outstanding all-round marketing professional to join our new insurgent business that focuses both on retail and food service marketing. The role will report directly into the Marketing Director for West Africa. The Marketing Manager will focus on the end-to-end mix development and deployment of our brands and innovations in Ghana. The individual will be based in Accra with travels to key countries in West Africa when necessary.

The ideal candidate is entrepreneurial and resourceful, with a proactive & goal orientated mind-set looking to break out from the status-quo. He/she is fully responsible for the marketing function in his/her country, which is Development as well as Deployment. This includes, but is not limited to, Consumer Insight, Concept, Product, and Communication Mix Development, Research (which we try to keep to a minimum), Media Buying and development of a strong team.

Main Responsibilities

Develop and drive the Upfield Foods all marketing activities in Ghana. The following are the key activities but the end of the day you are responsible for your brands top line, bottom line, equity and market share growth.

• Develop long-term category vision, strategy and execution plan.
• Build purposeful brands, which are going to be loved by people in your markets.
• Develop and implement brand marketing plans considering local market and consumer insights as well as 12Q plan and full year activity plan.
• Develop and implement brand marketing plans for relevant food service operators in your market the meets their needs and delivers value to the business.
• Optimizing product assortment to fit market demands and introducing relevant innovations to expand the portfolio.
• Managing pricing strategy in order to drive profitable growth as well as driving saving programme to improve gross margin.
• Driving aligned ATL and BTL communication in co-operation with local Customer Marketing and Sales teams. Ensuring all planned activities are executed to an optimal level and that key JTBDs are achieved and set KPIs are met in terms of trial, awareness and ROMI
• Responsibility for media/PR communication, campaign briefing and planning. 
• Ensure accurate monitoring and controlling of Advertising & Promotion budget.

About you!

These Skills Are Essential!!!

• High Bias for Action! Mount Everest high!
• Entrepreneurial mind-set! You want to have your own company a couple of years from now! But heck, let’s do this first!
• Proven ability to work with a multi-cultural, multi-country team across different time zones (a 9 to 5 mentality would not work here).
• Proven track-record of managing a total marketing budget. You spend what you need to deliver and not a cent more! You are part of the team that owns the total P&L. Every cent saved, is a cent earned.
• You have a strong preference for working-media over non-working media.
• Strong business acumen and organizational awareness. This means, you know what is going on around you at all times.
• Relevant experience with managing agency relationships (creative, research, media buying) because we will not hire a dedicated team to do that for you. Sorry.
• Strong understanding of media buying or willing to quickly learn all ins-and-outs (we have no intent of hiring a separate media manager either, nor a CMI manager for that matter, we mean it when we say “end-to-end”). Obviously, you do not need to do the media buying yourself, but you need to be able to determine fact from fiction when your media buying agency is trying to sell you more than what you really need.
• Track record of developing and deploying EFFECTIVE communication assets across all media channels. We want to touch the hearts and minds of our consumers, and we want them to buy our products. That is where you come in. You will be our consumer advocate and marketing rock star!
• You love competitive pressure; you think outside of the box (what box?), you would have been an Olympic Gold Medalist if you were not always working that hard on creating consumer love. Every working hour of every working day. It is what gets you up in the morning!