Category Manager - Mainstream Spirits at Diageo

About the role:

Requires a person who is extremely organized, dependable and self-motivated with the ability to excel in a hands-on, fast paced environment.

• Disciplined & creative leader with the ability to bring to life Diageo’sworld- class line of brands.
• Build positive relationships & expand influence to get things done at pace. This includes balancing numerous projects at one time and can flex their style based on the collaborator/function you are interacting with.
• Ability to work within a complex matrix organization & handle ambiguitywell.
• People leadership capability with ability to deliver through people ensuring clear understanding of capability needs and managing this in service of career growth.
• This role will lead a team of 5 to develop the most efficient and effective Industry leading Shopper Marketing Growth Drivers.

Role Responsibilities:

• Partner closely with Marketing leadership to define and drive high-impact, scalable Shopper Marketing growth drivers across the mainstream spirits portfolio for KBL, including category innovations and extensions that deliver long term growth.
• Own end-to-end leadership of the commercial spirits portfolio (mainstream), to maximize revenue and share growth.
• Lead the commercialization and tailored adaptation of brand and portfolio initiatives into targeted channel and customer programs that deliver against aggressive commercial plans and Marketing Business Plans (MBPs).
• Create and scale large, insight-driven programs designed for execution across diverse customers within the marketplace driving sustainable growth and competitive differentiation.
• Drive the development and delivery of customer- and consumer-centric programs that enhance traffic, basket size, and conversion rates, directly impacting top-line performance.
• Direct the engagement and performance management of Below the line (BTL) agency partners to uphold industry-leading standards, ensuring innovation, creativity, and excellence in Shopper Marketing activations.
•  Cultivate strong, collaborative relationships with a broad spectrum of internal and external stakeholders—including supply chain, finance, legal, operations, distributor partners, and key customers—to enable seamless program delivery and business alignment.
• Leverage deep data analytics and insight capabilities to translate complex information into actionable, commercially viable in-store and on-premises programs, from initial concept through toolkit development to execution and measurement, all aimed at driving category growth.
• Lead the transformation and evolution of the Shopper Marketing team structure and scope, playing a pivotal role in defining new responsibilities, workflows, and ways of working to meet future business needs

Top 3-5 Accountabilities:

• Strong analytical skills and commercial foresight to be able to create and see to execution programs that unlock sustainable growth.
• Good presentation skills. Having a good data driven story to influence and drive decision making for direct reports as well as senior collaborators.
• Ability to build adapt and/or build big, creative programs. To develop & translate customer & shopper insights into customer specific activities and programs
• Meet budgetary objectives and adjust project constraints based on financial analysis
• Consistently measure and intervene to make sure the programs deliver / exceed targets. Timely issues and course correction based on judgement from the performance tracking
• People leadership capability in service of business delivery and most importantly ensuring achievement of long-term career objectives.

Key Relationships: Commercial and marketing Directors, Sales team, Finance team, Marketing team, Procurement team, 3rd Party agencies

Experience / skills required:

• A proven track record in either Marketing and/or Sales (Customer Marketing)
• Strong creative judgment and good commercial understanding (of our customers and their shoppers)
• Strong understanding of channels, shopper insights etc. to develop brilliant shopper programs
• An individual who understands how to get things done within Diageo and can influence across a broad network of the organization –there is some ‘thinking’ involved’ but much of this will be about simply ‘decide’ and ‘act’
• An ability to inspire agencies to deliver great work and ideally some experience of working with key customers
• Strong people skills and ability to drive positive culture
• A business-related qualification
• Previous commercial management experience
• Experience in leading and managing change