Category Strategy Director London, Vereinigtes Königreich

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.