Brand Executive

About us

We're a truly international company, forth largest in our industry and operating across 120 markets. An inclusive, innovative global FMCG business supported by over 27,500 employees. As we embrace a new era of growth, we are transforming. Our ways of working and culture are driven by a challenger mindset, constantly questioning the status quo. Our agility and entrepreneurial spirit, alongside award winning development programmes, enable innovation and success while creating exciting and rewarding career choices.

As we move forward, our customers will be at the heart of what we do, evolving to needs and expectations and committing to a more meaningful contribution to harm reduction by building a successful NGP business. Integral to our long-term success is our sustainability strategy, behaving responsibly and supporting our ambitions, all underpinned by high governance.

Encouraging inclusion at local levels and supporting a developing and robust diversity agenda globally, we’re fully committed to creating and maintaining an environment that celebrates and respects difference.

The Role

The Brand Executive role is a position within the UK&I Cluster, reporting to the Senior Brand & Portfolio Manager, working within a team of Brand Executives and Brand Managers. 

The Brand Executive role works within project teams to support Brand Managers. They work closely with the Insights team, Category teams and creative agencies to translate brand strategies into actionable guidelines, assets and toolkits. Brand Executives confidently and independently access and analyse consumer insights to identify commercial opportunities and innovation requirements, sharing these in a meaningful way with key decision makers. They also support Brand Managers in developing business cases and work closely with agency colleagues to provide direction, address questions and resolve issues on specific projects in order to deliver creative advantage over competitors.

The Brand Executives will work closely with the Planning Executives to ensure brand strategies and recommendations are integrated into the brand activity plan. Likewise they will work closed with Project Co-ordinators as part of a project team to ensure all brand guidelines, assets and toolkits are delivered on-time and aligned to the project plan. The Brand Executives will work closely with colleagues within the Category and Innovation teams to explore and define brand innovation opportunities, building the business case for approval before passing the project management and realisation of the initiative over to the Planning Executives.

Principal Accountabilities

• Support the development of the brand strategy to include brand positioning, commercial brand ambition as well as brand quality strategy.

• Provide support to develop and define long-term 3y initiatives pipeline, with activation toolkit for each initiative (multi-market brands and single market brands).

• Provide support to develop 1 year drumbeat of initiatives (portfolio and equity) across relevant markets, along with a toolkit (in collaboration with Trade Marketing)

• Provide support to define target consumer typology for each brand (combustibles)

• Assess brand health & performance, barriers and opportunity based on consumer typology target for each brand.

• Review product portfolio (incl. NPD and de-listings)

• Localise assets

• Monitor and benchmark competitor activities, category trends and consumer habits, recommending plans and actions to capture opportunities

• To ensure effective collaboration across the cluster and central functions where necessary, to drive excellence, expertise and best practice.

• Develops working relationships within the cluster and helps represent the team at meetings and cross functional projects. Leading on small brand projects.

• Assists in Brand planning workshops and strategy planning where appropriate.

• Uses challenging, innovative and analytical thinking to recommend new activities & propositions that add value to the cluster.

• Supports approved projects, delivering against targets and communicating risks and progress with guidance.

• Follows governance, processes and regulatory structures.

Critical Decisions

Own

• Define target consumer typology for each brand (combust.)
• Define brand commercial ambition (multi-market brands and single market brands).
• Define brand equity strategy (multi-market brands and single market brands).
• Define brand positioning and price guardrails (multi-market brands and single market brands).
• Define long-term 3y initiatives pipeline (multi-market brands and single market brands).
• Define 1 year drumbeat of initiatives (multi-market brands and single market brands).
• Define innovation requirements (multi-market brands and single market brands).

Input

• Define cross-category Portfolio Playbook and Price Guardrails
• Define innovation requirements (multi-regional brands)
• In-market execution plan
• Demand forecast by SKU
• Define actions to course-correct against in-market execution plan

Trust

• Define brand-agnostic combustible innovation requirements
• Define cross-category Portfolio Playbook and Price Guardrails
• Priority sales performance improvement levers

Key Relationships

Internal (excluding direct team and manager)

• All functions within UK&I Cluster
• Central Marketing & Portfolio Mgmt teams
• Global Insight

External

• External agencies

Education, Qualifications, Skills and Experience

Essential

• Educated to degree level in relevant field

• Brand/product experience

• Ability to think laterally and creatively, to deliver ideas, initiatives and contribute to discussion.

• Understanding of brand management

• Analytical skills and some strategic thinking to question and recommend brand strategies

• Good communication and presentation skills

• Highly collaborative

Desirable

• Experience of marketing within a restricted industry (e.g. tobacco, gambling)

• Experience of using customer and market insight to drive commercial gain

What we offer

Imperial Brands offer a competitive package of salary, bonus scheme, pension and 25 days holiday (with an additional 4 days on top to cover the Christmas period and bank holidays) and hybrid work.

Next steps

Interested applicants should apply with their CV highlighting their suitability for the role.