Are you a passionate and strategic category and shopper expert with a keen eye for developing excellence in category execution plans?
Do you want to be part of a growing team that will be leading the direction around how to unlock category and commercial growth?
Do you thrive with high levels of autonomy and have a hunger for delivering commercial results from thorough category and shopper understanding.
How will you make an impact?
You will report into the Category Development Controller and will be responsible for developing retail execution plans taking the category strategies as a start point. You will be the expert in your aligned categories and projects, and will have a deep and thorough understanding on Arla’s performance in those areas highlighting clear growth opportunities that can be commercialised. Innovation is also an area that you will support through robust category rationales and post launch analysis.
Working with the sales and marketing teams, you will be a strong networker and influencer with a focus on results and execution through your commercialised category and shopper insights. You will have the leadership behaviours and experience to coach and develop colleagues to support the delivery of team and business objectives
What will the role look like?
• Define the Arla Category Strategy across each channel – where to win and how to play
• Be the Dairy expert – provide insights, growth opportunities, and performance insights at a channel level highlighting strategic growth opportunities and implementing plans to address
• Taking the cat strats, develop retail execution plans identifying specifically how to grow the categories across each of the 4 P’s - and create a standard toolkit to be tailored by each customer category manager
• Identify range gaps – either distribution opportunities or pack size gaps that we need by channel
• Identify range risks to Arla where sku’s are underperforming by channel/category
• Lead key business projects, eg, channel research, shopper segmentation, fixture of the future, category input to business planning cycle, total dairy shopper principles
• Track long term category and business performance vs long term growth plans
• Provides holistic external insights, trends and performance KPI’s (Shopper & Channel)
• Create clear growth driving range/portfolio/fixture/space plans/promo plans by channel grounded in shopper insight
• Create bullet proof category rationale’s for selective innovation
• Provide robust post launch analysis for innovations
• Act as a business partner to brand teams/sales teams and the wider category teams
What do you need to succeed?
• Curious by nature and applies this to shopper/category understanding
• A Storyteller – Can create the context of ‘Why’ and ‘How’ succinctly from multiple complex data sources
• Commercially Astute – Full appreciation of retailer commercial challenges and business commercial challenges and able to navigate through them
• A problem solver – Able to find solutions to complex category problems from lots of data without becoming ‘data blind’
• Team First ‘I’ Second – A true team player and focussed on success for the team and function
• A Performance Mindset and results driven
• Comfortable with ambiguity and not always having 100% of the answers but enough to drive fantastic execution
• Relationship Builder – can build a rapport quickly and maintain it and comfortable independently managing stakeholders at all levels
• Inspires confidence – trusted to get on with the job and thrives with challenges
• Fully conversant in all data sets and awesome at finding the insights – A true expert in category and shopper
• Adaptable – Able to embrace change quickly and adapt to changing needs of shoppers, customers and Arla
• Shopper and Category Obsessed – Genuine passion for understanding the shopper and using this understanding to drive a competitive advantage
Essential Skills
• Fully conversant with Kantar/Nielsen/IRI/retailer data systems
• Established in category/commercial roles
• Able to demonstrate strategic thinking through to excellent execution
What do we offer?
• Competitive salary (salary discussed at application stage)
• 26 days holiday & Bank Holidays
• Bupa Healthcare
• Hybrid & Flexible working
• Pension contribution matched up to 6%
• 4 x annual salary life assurance
• Free to use onsite Gym
• Access to discounted products in our Staff Shop
• People agenda commitment to training and development (internal & external)
• Most importantly - Cheese hamper at Christmas
Please note we are not partnered with any recruitment agencies for this role. We kindly ask that recruitment agencies do not submit CVs on behalf of candidates for this role, as these CVs will not be considered under the agency ownership and if Arla does progress with any such candidate, this will not amount to acceptance of the agency's terms. We encourage interested individuals to apply directly through our official channels