Associate Brand Manager, Grooming

Position Summary:

The Associate Brand Manager will be an integral member of the Grooming Brand Marketing team to help drive the strategy, innovation, and the performance of the Cremo, Jack Black, and Bulldog brands.  This role will help drive tactical consumer-marketing activities and the positioning, packaging, and commercialization of new products that enhance the growth and profitability of the brand.  Primary responsibilities will include supporting the Director of Strategy & Innovation with data analytics and consumer and competitive insights to help define grooming brands strategies, create marketing plans, and develop compelling selling stories to drive innovation, new distribution, and off-shelf opportunities.  Responsibilities will also include creative briefing and evaluation of packaging and merchandising, management of commercial innovation and packaging changes, forecasting, budget management, and monthly brand and category reporting. 

The brands that comprise Edgewell Grooming – Cremo, Jack Black, and Bulldog - are some of the fastest growing brands in the company.  With the #1 Prestige Men’s Grooming Brand (Jack Black), the #1 Masstige Grooming Brand (Cremo), the #1 Shave Prep Brand (Edge), and a global leader in the natural-focused grooming segment (Bulldog), this business unit is uniquely positioned in the category to address a broad range of grooming consumer segments.  Cremo, Jack Black and Bulldog are all recent acquisitions and maintain their “disruptor”, entrepreneurial cultures while benefiting from the resources of a larger company. 

Accountabilities:

• Assist in the development of detailed marketing plans to achieve stated objectives and meet financial and profitability goals;
• Support the annual strategic, sales, and marketing planning processes by developing sales forecasts, assessing the grooming category and competitors, evaluating past program performance, and identifying key insights and implications;
• Support the development and execution of the 4P strategy (product, price, promotion, placement) at the brand and product levels.
• Manage the A&P budget; provide regular updates of spending versus budget and ensure P&L is accurate and reflects any significant deviances from plan;  
• Closely monitor and analyze sales volumes, market share trends and competitive activity; manage SKU level forecasting, volume bridges and ship/share model to drive forecast accuracy;
• Initiate market research projects to deliver powerful consumer and customer insights as the basis for long-term brand growth; develop these insights into achievable plans;
• Identify and apply key consumer and category insights to support business opportunities and anticipate competitive response to brand actions;
• Effectively analyze syndicated data (IRI) to create monthly reports that explains the drivers of brand and category performance and trends;
• Partner closely with Sales Strategy to identify opportunities to increase productivity and expand the business into new and in existing channels of trade by analyzing brand performance and product mix;
• Partner with Sales Strategy to provide accurate and timely performance updates including in-depth analysis of sales variances versus plan along with recommendations on how to close gaps;

Required Education, Skills and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university with a concentration in Business or Marketing related disciplines;
• 3+ years CPG experience having directly supported a brand in a global or commercial organization with strong analytical responsibilities;

Desirable Education, Skills and Experience

• MBA highly preferred;
• Strong commercial awareness and familiarity with latest marketing trends and best practices;
• Knowledge and passion for the Men’s Grooming or Personal Care categories
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams through multi-faceted and complex strategic and/or marketing projects;
• Ability to conduct competitive analysis that identifies competitor strategies, strengths and weaknesses and to identify key actionable insights that can be applied to our brands;
• Self-motivated and goal-oriented; ability to work independently with minimal supervision;
• Strong interpersonal skills; ability to work in a highly collaborative environment and work effectively with team members and various key stakeholders;
• Ability to recognize opportunities for improvements and proactively offer ideas for how to improve;
• Excellent organizational skills; ability to prioritize and manage multiple projects autonomously in a challenging, fast-paced environment while consistently meeting time sensitive deadlines;
• Ability to influence without direct authority;
• Detail-oriented with strong analytical and strategic thinking skills;
• Ability to work in a fast-paced and highly matrixed environment;
• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal, ability to articulate in a clear and concise manner across various levels of the organization;
• Proficient in organizing and analyzing large amounts of data to solve business problems and make recommendations;
• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Proficient in using syndicated data reporting tools (IRI, Nielsen)