Director - Portfolio Strategy & Chief Of Staff

We are looking for a senior strategy and planning leader who can act as the central integrator across the marketing organisation. This role will sit at the intersection of portfolio strategy, business planning, innovation prioritisation, and CMO office effectiveness.

The individual will be responsible for bringing structure, clarity, and alignment across multiple brands, categories, functions, and business priorities. While individual brand teams will continue to own depth within their respective areas, this role will ensure that the overall marketing agenda is unified, commercially sharp, strategically focused, and execution-ready.

This is not a conventional brand marketing or campaign-led role. It requires someone who can think at a portfolio level, simplify complexity, drive governance, influence senior stakeholders, and ensure that the marketing organisation operates with greater discipline, pace, and coherence.

Key Responsibilities:

Portfolio Strategy & Integrated Planning:

• Lead the development of an integrated portfolio strategy across multiple brands, categories, and business priorities.
• Drive annual and long-term marketing planning by connecting inputs across brand, commercial, digital, media, finance, consumer insights, and innovation teams.
• Ensure that individual brand plans ladder up to a clear, cohesive, and commercially aligned portfolio agenda.
• Bring strategic rigour to resource allocation, prioritisation, and portfolio-level decision-making.
• Identify overlaps, gaps, and opportunities across the marketing ecosystem and help leadership take sharper business decisions.
• Build structured planning frameworks that improve alignment, accountability, and execution discipline across teams.

Innovation Focus & Prioritisation:

• Identify high-potential growth spaces, emerging consumer opportunities, and strategic white spaces.
• Bring discipline to the innovation pipeline by focusing on fewer, sharper, and more commercially meaningful bets.
• Work closely with cross-functional teams to evaluate innovation opportunities through the lens of business impact, consumer relevance, feasibility, and strategic fit.
• Support the prioritisation of resources, investments, and leadership attention toward the most important innovation opportunities.
• Ensure innovation initiatives are not just ideas-led, but are commercially grounded and execution-ready.

Chief of Staff to the CMO:

• Act as a strategic partner to the CMO, helping drive alignment, operating rhythm, and decision-making across the marketing organisation.
• Own key governance forums, leadership reviews, planning cadences, and strategic workstreams.
• Prepare high-quality strategic narratives, leadership updates, business reviews, and board-ready presentations.
• Anticipate risks, identify execution bottlenecks, and proactively drive resolution across functions.
• Ensure the CMOs office operates with clarity, speed, structure, and strong follow-through.
• Serve as the connective tissue across teams, enabling smoother collaboration and sharper execution.