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Director Category Leadership
Mars
Chicago, IL, United States
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A mutually rewarding experience.
Work. Realize your ambitions. And realize there’s more to being in business than just making a profit. That’s the Mars philosophy. And the opportunity we offer every one of our Associates. An opportunity to take what you do and make it mean more for you, for those around you and for the planet. What you get here is challenging, interesting work. You get the tools you need to do a great job and you get to have the best possible people on your side to help you do it. And at the same time as getting to find ways to do business better today than we did it yesterday and driving a great career, you also get to build a more enlightened business and drive sustainability.
Because it’s never just about a single person, a single project or a single brand. It’s about how you can grab everything that’s within your reach here and use it to pursue mutual, long-term gain. It’s about having ideas. And ideals. Being prepared to risk failure because the promise of success means we’ll all be a little better off. It’s that mix of integrity and ambition that makes Mars such a special place to work. And why working here is always about more than just a job.
About Mars, Incorporated
Mars is a family-owned business with more than a century of history making diverse products and offering services for people and the pets people love. With almost $35 billion in sales, the company is a global business that produces some of the world’s best-loved brands: M&M’s®, SNICKERS®, TWIX®, MILKY WAY®, DOVE®, PEDIGREE®, ROYAL CANIN®, WHISKAS®, EXTRA®, ORBIT®, 5™, SKITTLES®, UNCLE BEN’S®, MARS DRINKS and COCOAVIA®. Mars also provides veterinary health services that include BANFIELD® Pet Hospitals, Blue Pearl®, VCA® and Pet Partners™. Headquartered in McLean, VA, Mars operates in more than 80 countries. The Mars Five Principles – Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom – inspire its more than 100,000 Associates to create value for all its partners and deliver growth they are proud of every day.
Key Responsibilities
• This role is responsible for all Mars Food brands, including Tasty Bites, and all U.S. retail customers across multiple categories.
• Lead the development and delivery of both short and long term demand category strategies to optimize profitability and sales revenue at a category and portfolio level.
• Grounded in the Global category vision, develop and execute a clear category vision for the U.S. retail market, ensuring that a strong and consistent understanding of category growth drivers, role and attractiveness are well embedded as the foundation for our category and portfolio plans and activation.
• Create compelling insight-led category solutions and activations which influence shopper behavior and convert more shoppers and transactions at the point of sale for the mutual benefit of the organization and our customers.
• Partner with key strategic customers to develop Customer category growth plans, developing strong and influential relationships focused on delivering shopper, channel and category centric solutions to deliver competitive advantage and increased customer engagement.
• Oversees the category advisor-ship at Wal-Mart as well as strategic validator status at other key customers.
• Monitor category trends and performance across the industry, adopting a continuous improvement mindset to identify future growth opportunities and formulate appropriate recommendations, ensuring sustainable category growth. MARS is viewed as “THE” trusted category expert.
• Lead the PERFECT STORE initiative, developing an integrated picture of success and drive store of the future thinking, ensuring Mars portfolio visibility and presence at point of purchase exceeds market share and perfect store ambitions are realized.
• Responsible for recruiting, retaining and developing a high performing, capable and engaged team, establishing a strong talent pipeline and culture that highlights the benefits of personal career development and leads to a pool of best in class functional expertise.
• Motivate, engage and inspire the category leadership team to deliver both the category and in-store leadership agenda and the one-demand agenda.
• Being an active member of the Global Steering Committee for Category Leadership to secure global agenda captures U.S. market requirements and U.S. market implements relevant global programs.
• Influence key internal stakeholders to ensure that the category visions and the needs of shoppers and customers are foundational to our strategic plans and activations.
• Manage department data resource budget, making critical decisions on where to invest limited resources to most effectively drive business results.
• Oversee broker category management network- providing direction on how to grow the category at brokered customers.
Knowledge/ Experience
• Significant category and customer experience with a demonstrated ability to develop strong and impactful category solutions and customer relationships of all sizes.
• Proven experience in successfully leading and growing a category with strong category leadership expertise based on strategic category partnerships/ captaincies with diverse customers/ channels.
• Strong track record of developing and executing insight-led visions and strategies with the ability to inspire and lead a channel team/matrix organization to deliver results consistently.
• Ability to navigate complex situations and challenge the status quo with a ‘can-do’ attitude. Self-reliant, decisive and resilient and able to respond and adapt to a fast moving, swiftly changing environment.
• Demonstrated ability to operationalize and execute a category vision and engage and influence both customers and key internal stakeholders.
• People leadership of cross-functional and remote team(s) with demonstrated ability to build capability, develop talent and engage associates.
• Advanced experience with Panel and Scan Syndicated Data (Nielsen, IRI, SPINS)
• Advanced experience with Space Management Software (JDA and Apollo)
• Advanced experience with Assortment Tools (Nielsen Optimizer, Kantar Rich Mix)
• Experience conducting Primary Shopper research to conclusion.
• Commercially and financially astute and proven business judgement with an understanding of the commercial impact of one’s own decision making.
• Experience in areas such as (but not exclusive to): Sales, Consumer and Customer Marketing and Shopper Insights, Digital Commerce.
Minimum Qualifications:
Bachelors degree, MBA or Advanced degree preferred
15 years of experience in both Sales and Category Management with extensive experience in FMCG/ consumer products with a strong category, sales and demand background and experience with strategic customer development in the U.S. market
Experience leading/developing direct reports; managing P&Ls and demonstrated high analytical acumen
Mars is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the application process because of a disability, it is available upon request. The company is pleased to provide such assistance, and no applicant will be penalized as a result of such a request.
Nearest Major Market:Chicago
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