Job Title
Category Strategy Director – Personal Care (Deodorants & Skin Cleansing)
Location
Blackfriars, London
Job Purpose
Personal Care is a large, complex, global business with market‑leading power brands across Deodorants and Skin Cleansing. Winning requires sharp category market‑making, stronger innovation choices, and an operating rhythm that enables speed and execution quality across a highly matrixed network (Global Brand teams, BUs, and top markets).
Category Strategy Director – Key Focuses
* Strategic Category Leadership – Define the long‑term vision, set growth priorities and identify the big bets that shape future categories.
* Portfolio Strategy & Stewardship – Drive strategic portfolio choices that maximise penetration, premiumisation and superiority across markets.
* Insights‑ and Foresights‑Led Growth – Translate consumer, shopper and market foresights into actionable growth opportunities and category‑shaping plans.
* Influence & Stakeholder Leadership – Orchestrate and influence a complex global ecosystem across BGs, Markets, R&D, CMI, Finance and Customer Teams to land strategy and unlock growth.
* Business Performance Management – Monitor global category performance, identify risks and opportunities, and recommend corrective interventions to deliver sustainable, profitable growth.
Responsibilities
* Shape and drive category strategy for Deodorants and Skin Cleansing, translating outside‑in consumer, market and customer understanding into clear strategic choices and market‑making plans.
* Lead category disruption and growth opportunities, identifying emerging trends and whitespace (in partnership with CMI) and converting them into actionable initiatives and big bets.
* Partner with Global Brand teams and top markets to align category market‑making with brand strategies and ensure strategies are activated through market plans and execution.
* Strengthen innovation funnel sufficiency and governance for the categories—ensuring robust pipeline health, quality of ideas and disciplined progression through the funnel.
* Management of 2 Direct Reports (Category Strategy Managers) and a total team of 6.
* Drive excellence in unmissable superiority by improving clarity of superiority drivers, accuracy of tracking and follow‑through on gaps with relevant teams.
* Run strong category performance cadence: conduct market/category analysis, monitor performance and key indicators, and initiate corrective actions with brand and market teams.
* Enable integrated planning and operating rhythm across stakeholders by contributing to core global planning processes (incl. integrated business planning), ensuring decisions, inputs and outputs land with quality and on time.
* Build a collaborative, inclusive way of working across a complex global network—connecting teams, raising strategic quality and accelerating delivery through influence.
* Coach and develop talent across the category community through mentoring, capability building and role-modelling high standards of strategic and execution excellence.
All About You – Qualifications
* Proven experience in category management, category strategy, brand strategy or brand marketing, with a track record of driving growth and innovation.
* Strong strategic thinking and analytical capability, with a consistently data‑driven approach to decision‑making.
* Demonstrated ability to lead through influence in a complex, matrixed, global stakeholder environment.
* Strong consumer and market understanding, with passion for solving consumer needs through desirable, superior products and innovation.
* Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, able to create clarity, alignment and momentum across levels and geographies.
* A mindset that is open, adaptable and resilient, able to embrace ambiguity and translate it into structured plans and execution.
* Experience working in or with global roles / diverse markets (preferred), with the ability to navigate different market contexts and business realities.
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