ITC - Brand Manager

Job Purpose:

Brand Manager is responsible for achieving the sub brand wise plans in terms of contribution, value and volume while working on the long-term sustainable brands. Brand Manager works closely with multiple stakeholders on NPD, Brand Communications, Promotions, Planning, Distribution & Fulfilment. Lead projects with minimum supervision and deliver high end results.

Principal Accountabilities:

1. Brand and business planning:

• Analyse market, competition, category spends, past performance, etc. for the brand, identify gaps, challenges and opportunities.
• Assist in building the long-term brand vision by breaking down the marketing mix into a calendar of events, business numbers into a channel mix and actions such as NPDs that help sustain the future of the brand.
• Lead discussions with agency partners to build ideas and approach for communication; Provide inputs for modification of current communication in line with long term objectives.
• Assist the Senior Brand Manager and work with Finance and Sales team to prepare detailed numbers on the volume projections, turnover and bottom line for the brand.

2. Project Management and Execution:

• Understand the project/brand deliverables and ensure on time execution of tasks such as new launches, consumer promotions, packaging, new communication, media deployment.
• Coordination with cross-functional stakeholders such as manufacturing, Sales, agency partners, packaging etc to align them on the larger brand objectives and timelines of a project.
• Displaying a strong bias for execution in driving business numbers by working with sales, production and procurement to coordinate on plans for the month, stock alignment, connectivity of packaging material on time and aligning sales on activities around visibility & discoverability (on-ground and on-platforms) that aid offtakes.

3. Brand communication:

• Assist in the development of the brand communication plan keeping in view the long-term brand objectives and to continuously reinforce desired communications; Incorporate consumer insights and immersion findings from market research.
• Working with creative agency partners to roll out communication that aligns with the brand objectives and focuses on multiple media channels in order to carve out an integrated communication approach.
• Driving high quality execution of the communication plans by aligning multiple stakeholders such as agency partners, Sales and internal stakeholders such as central marketing services. Regularly review progress and provide insights centred around data that can be improve the quality of execution further.

4. New Product Development:

• Assist the senior brand manager in detailing out plans for new variants by understanding consumers, industry, potential and formats.
• Prepare a network chart that creates a timeline to hit the market covering all aspects of a go-to-market strategy such as product, pricing, packaging etc.
• Work with Sales on preparing launch decks, communication approach, business expectations and motivating the teams to make the launch a success.
• Working the market with branches to understand inputs from trade, sharp visibility designs and spiels that can effectively drive consideration for the new launch; work on unique sampling techniques for NPDs that can drive trials.

5. Pricing discounts and promotions:

• Closely track and analyse competition activities / movements through market visits, intelligence from Sales and trackers from Research team.
• Raise board notes by coordinating with Finance teams explaining reasons for price actions/promotions and their impact on business.
• Participate in discussions with Sales, packaging, manufacturing and finance teams to assess feasibility and align with brand objectives.

6. Consumer Promotions:

• Execute consumer promotion schemes (covering the objective, mechanism, merchandise etc) and prepare promotion brief and evaluate the feasibility of co-promotion by tying up with external agencies.
• Evaluating schemes/promotions of key competitors across geographies.
• Evaluating budget to be consumed for promotions/schemes and budget for promoting the promotion/scheme.
• Ideating the most suitable schemes for respective geographies and decide time period to run the scheme.

7. Driving Visibility and BTL:

• Ideating strategy for Modern Trade and General Trade.
• Sharing of brief with procurement team and finalizing vendor for all merchandising elements.
• Alignment with Sales team for monthly action plan closure.

8. Brand review & Brand health metrics:

• Closely track the brand health measures, imagery parameters and distribution numbers on a monthly basis.
• Review reports to evaluate markets wise performance, gaps and areas of opportunities; Undertake root cause analysis to identify reasons for deviations from objectives to define a future course of action.

9. Distribution planning with Sales:

• Collaborate constantly with various Sales channels such as general trade, modern trade, e-com, institutional, etc. to meet the set business objectives.
• Lead discussions with Sales & Distribution team for new launch planning, regular product estimate planning, trade schemes, monthly drives, visibility implementation and offers & promotions.
• Further align the stakeholders to ensure smooth distribution and movement form factory to distributors.

10. Consumer Complaint Addressal:

• Interact with customers to identify the root cause of market complaints and Coordinate with various departments / functions for addressal of consumer complaints.

11. Demand Planning and order fulfilment:

• Provide inputs (with respect to art work, packaging, manufacturing readiness, WSP and market connectivity) to Brand Manager for the preparation of demand planning note (DPN).
• Participate in identification of root cause for non-fulfilment of sales orders and inform respective functions / departments for issue resolution; Track order fulfilment rate at WSP.

12. Preparation of Marketing SOPs:

• Related to Budgets.
• ESKO(Artwork): alignment of legal compliance, quality, regulatory, packaging team, procurement team, manufacturing and finance team.
• Indemnity Clause.

13. People Management:

• Manage a team of brand executives and office associates to drive sales reporting, stakeholder management for stock status, laminate connectivity and handling artwork management systems. Also involve the brand executives in coordination with agency partners for artworks, POSM, packaging designs etc. Drive the team keeping in mind the business objectives laid down in the beginning of the year.