Marketing Manager

About Akzo Nobel

Since 1792, we’ve been supplying the innovative paints and coatings that help to color people’s lives and protect what matters most. Our world class portfolio of brands – including Dulux, International, Sikkens and Interpon – is trusted by customers around the globe. We’re active in more than 150 countries and use our expertise to sustain and enhance the fabric of everyday life.

Because we believe every surface is an opportunity. It’s what you’d expect from a pioneering and long-established paints company that’s dedicated to providing sustainable solutions and preserving the best of what we have today – while creating an even better tomorrow. Let’s paint the future together.

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A key leadership position within the Marketing team, this individual will have overall responsibility for managing and leading the South African brand portfolio, to define the allocation of spend for the South African business and develop cut-through communication to support the consumer, professional & speciality brands within the Akzo Nobel framework. The individual will also drive the innovation pipeline and delivery thereof for the South African Business and lead the business in ‘go to market’ execution for the South African brands, innovations and activations to drive share gain and elevate in-store presence across key segments.

This leader will collaborate with functional areas (Sales, commercial ops, R&D, Technical services and Supply chain) and be required to work closely with marketing specialists within the team to deliver the commercial results for the decorative portfolio.

• Share gain
• Brand health
• Deliver the plan (Vol, GIV, EBIT and specific brand health and share targets)
• Excellence in ‘Go to market’ execution
• Develop digital capabilities and media understanding into the team to enable full path to purchase discussions and activations
• Full ownership and responsibility for the creation and execution of the ‘go to market’ plans and assets
• Define the 3yr Innovation Roadmap for South Africa
• Prioritise and drive the key initiatives to ensure brilliant execution across the business
• Define, create and execute all brand and promotional/activation programmes
• Work in partnership with the Sales, R&D and Commercial teams to execute the plan
• Take a leadership role across Marketing as a direct report of the SSA leadership team
• Leads brand team for South Africa
• Help build marketing Capability and raise the standard of execution across the business
• Lead, motivate and coach the Marketing team to create a highly effective team culture

• Own the Brand Marketing agenda – from strategy through to execution.
• Champion the Brand Portfolio – lead brand health for each brand – define strategies, segments, innovation potential, optimization potential and how we can work together to our business and drive commercial performance
• Develop the vision and help peers to understand the importance of supporting brand initiatives.
• Develop and embed a set of compelling brand strategies and drivers that drive growth and retailer acceptance to maximise listing and ongoing support for our brands, products, and ranges.
• Develop the brand plans with due consideration for channel dynamics and empower the comm ops, sales teams and TSD teams to execute the plans for each channel.
• Support the adoption of innovation and activation plans through retailer / professional interface / interaction.
• Leverage research insights and commercial results to craft activation plans to enhance or remedy results where necessary.
• Bring the physical and digital worlds together seamlessly along the ‘path to purchase.’
• Build strong relationships with the Sales team leads, R&D, TSD and SC leads locally and EMEA communication and innovation teams.
• Spend time with our customers.
• Manage team to develop and source appropriate on and offline content for use within our customers, particular focus needed on web imagery and video for brand representation on and offline.
• Oversee execution of brand/channel events in line with brand/sales objectives.
• Responsible for ongoing representation of our brands in-store -…