Assoc Mgr Commercial Mkt WTR

Position Title: Customer Marketing Associate Manager – Americas 

Reports to Title: Senior Business Development Manager

Dept / Function: Commercial

Market/s: Americas

Location: Guadalajara  AND/OR  Cd Mx.  (hybrid)

Summary: 

The Associate Customer Marketing Manager will be a key member of the commercial team to:

• Establish overall marketing strategies in region/ channel specific activation plans
• Identifies opportunities to grow Hershey’s brands with tailored activities by channel/clients

• Ensure effective and consistent cascade of Marketing strategies to Retailers & Distributor’s team
• Supports commercial opportunities (New Markets, New Channels, New Occasions) as well as refining current business through ‘test and learn’ e.g. digital / new seasons
• Define, Track and Build corrective measures of Commercial KPIs in collaboration with sales and marketing
• Develop commercial insights (Channel, Customer and Shopper) to foster the brand strategies
• Respond to business requests; support the resolution of critical customer specific needs
• Support external partnerships for new business opportunities
• Enhance customer relationships through resolving issues and sharing insights and knowledge that can further enable business growth
• Evaluate, measure and monitor responses to programs; establish criteria for success
• Participate in key customer appointments to identify areas of growth

The role requires developing and implementing an effective and coordinated customer marketing plan in support of organizational and marketing and sales business unit strategies alongside the Sales Manager (i.e. Global Accounts as applicable) and other globally or regionally driven efforts (e.g. category management). This is also a customer facing role supporting the corporation with recognized customers and/or relevant organizations, partners and suppliers within the market/s as it relates to the function.

The associate customer marketing role is expected to support and leverage partnerships with the Retailers & Distributors in WTR for the markets under the business unit.  A specific expectation for this associate customer marketing role is to support and manage an identified customer in the market.    This entails, with the support of the Sales Manager, the delivery of a customer engagement plan and the creation and enforcement of standard sales metrics for the account / customer in the identified key markets and / or pilot markets.

Major Duties/Responsibilities: 

MARKET STRATEGIES – 40%

• Collaborate with sales team to identify opportunities and develop strategies that meet customer and business growth expectations
• Seek internal resourcing, alignment and approvals as necessary
• Manage agencies, partnerships, resourcing to ensure success
• Support relationships with Retailers and Distributors’ customer marketing counterparts
• Supports understanding to grow the business through effective customer marketing and sales organization, channel and key customer strategies at trade / customer level for specific markets | customers and or geographic areas under the business unit.
• Communicates and consistently monitors progress of the execution of the customer marketing strategy with internal and external stakeholders.
• Helps develop and execute joint business plans with customer and distributor partners and identify key customers within markets.
• In all called out areas below, the role will comply with or develop the right measurable at all levels to ensure delivery and visibility of progress (or the lack of it) in achieving customer marketing or business goals.
• Working in close coordination with key customers to provide category and shopper insights enabling Hershey’s to build stronger trade partnerships.  This will be through programs that drive category sales via increased number of shoppers, transaction size per purchase and purchase frequency.

• Develop and share channel and customer insights with Marketing and Sales

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT – 20%

•            Monitor and understand trends, work closely with shopper insights group, category team and marketing to develop insights and ideas that can be leveraged to ground and support new business recommendations.

•            Supports the “where to win” and “how to win” trade, customer and shopper programs that deliver the outcomes required with clear marketing, sales and financial deliverables.

CUSTOMER MARKETING PROGRAM – EXECUTION   - 20%

•            Leads the development, execution and evaluation of agreed customer marketing programs designed to make Hershey’s win in-store, give Hershey brands the highest weighted distribution among competitive set and drive strong consumer off take for Hershey’s products.

•            Develops with the commercial team to deliver the respective customer marketing plans and the customer marketing calendar (annual promotions calendar) to support the business unit’s innovation plans.

•            Provide sales’ inputs and final sign-off on all promotional materials to be used for key initiatives and coordinate closely with Key Accounts and Distributors in the supervision of all promotional activities.

•            Owns Trade Marketing spend

 He or she also owns the execution of the appropriate levels of control and audit processes within the sales organization and with the customers and distributor partners in trade spend or customer spend budget workbook. It is his or her responsibility to coordinate both reporting and funding requirements with key internal and external partners with the region or sub-region.

•            Other deliverables include but are not limited to:

a) Supporting the development of the business unit’s customer marketing and category management processes and solutions together with key internal and external customers to grow Hershey’s product categories.

b) Supporting the development, implementation and evaluation of category plans to meet business objectives.

•            Delivers adequate and relevant sales training (for customer marketing topics) directly and as required

•            It is expected that the role manages customer marketing support systems internally in the areas of trade/ consumer promotions, merchandising and sales analysis.

MARKET INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS – 20%

•            Provide leadership in driving for efficiency improvement of all customer investments

•            Conduct/coordinate analytical support to improve ROI, program results

•            Identify market trends and issues and convert into actions that drive growth of business

•            Co- owns and co- leads the execution of a healthy P&L for the given client which includes but is not limited to: total business, brands, channel and customer P&L and most importantly the management of trade spend.

•            He or she articulates the right and relevant financial deliverables with respect to channels and customers for the clients which reflect the investment in the marketing strategies.

•            He or she has a full understanding of distributor and/or customer financials and drives and influences the directions taken by distributors and key customers toward the financial expectations of the Hershey Company.

• Specifically: This role:

a) Manages and evaluates trade promotion levels to achieve maximum returns.

b) Is responsible for the management and monitoring of Customer Marketing Budgets

c) Puts in place, monitors and improves processes to link all Marketing activities with the activities of the Sales Managers/Business Managers. 

d) Ensures alignment across Sales and Marketing functions on the needs of Sales Teams and or Retailers and Distributors including coordination on trade budget / spend management.

Duties/responsibilities: 

• Experience in Americas’ markets as mandatory, preferably within Travel Retail
• Experience as regional Associate Customer Marketing Manager or Assistant Business Development Manager
• Sales & negotiation experience
• Project management
• Significant knowledge and exposure to sales and marketing (3-5 years)
• Extremely Proficient in MS Office based applications with an emphasis on database management and customer connectivity.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills; strong interpersonal and presentation skills
• A high level of understanding of finance and operations (logistics) of the business
• Demonstrated high levels of creativity and idea generation

Education:     

Bachelor’s degree holder or higher.  Preference for candidates with business related degrees, an MBA is a plus.  He or she must know and understand current trade trends, market conditions and sales enablers through continued education and training.

Experience:    

Minimum of 5 years solid work experience in CPG industry, in Customer Marketing/Sales (key account management, distributor management, trade or customer marketing)

•            Demonstrated ability in key functional tasks and a clear progression or expansion in terms of areas of responsibility or increase in business size and complexity.

•            Multimarket past management is a must.

•            Smart, Creative and Proactive Thinker is a must

•            Able to handle multiple tasks under pressure

•            Strong understanding of how businesses work

•            Understanding of Marketing strategy and shopper behavior

•            Customer facing and relevant channel experience helpful

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