Business Support Lead at The South African Breweries (SAB)

End Date: March 3, 2026

Key roles and responsibilities:

• Serve as a crucial link between the strategic vision for the brand and its practical execution,
• Senior partner agency stakeholder management
• Internal brand leadership and resource orchestration
• Mentoring and capability building of portfolio project managers
• Retainer, budget, and commercial governance
• Embedding data-led decision making across brand activity
• Provide senior strategic leadership across a portfolio of ABI brands spanning multiple categories, ensuring brand activity aligns with broader business objectives and long-term brand vision.
• Act as the bridge between brand strategy and execution, translating commercial goals and insights into clear, actionable marketing plans.
• Champion data-led thinking, ensuring insights, performance metrics, and learnings are embedded into all stages of brand planning and delivery.
• Serve as the primary senior point of contact for brand teams and external partner agencies, building trusted, collaborative relationships.
• Lead high-level discussions with partner agencies to ensure alignment on strategy, scope, performance expectations, and ways of working.
• Manage complex stakeholder environments, balancing brand ambition with operational realities and commercial priorities.
• Lead internal brand relationships within the marketing studio, ensuring clarity of priorities, deliverables, and timelines.
• Oversee resource planning across the portfolio, working closely with studio leadership to ensure the right capabilities are applied at the right time.
• Proactively identify risks, capacity challenges, or delivery issues and drive solutions that protect brand outcomes.
• Own the performance and delivery of the assigned brand portfolio, ensuring work is delivered on time, on brief, and to a high standard.
• Ensure marketing activity is commercially effective, operationally sound, and aligned with agreed KPIs.
• Drive continuous improvement by reviewing performance, sharing learnings, and optimising ways of working across brands.
• Provide leadership, coaching, and mentorship to Project Managers, building capability in brand management, stakeholder engagement, and delivery excellence.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and learning within the studio.
• Support the development of future leaders within the Business Support function.
• Own retainer management and commercial governance for the brand portfolio, ensuring transparency, accuracy, and value delivery.
• Oversee budget planning, forecasting, and tracking in collaboration with studio leadership.
• Ensure correct use of rates, scopes, and resource models to support accurate reporting and sustainable studio operations.
• Embed a data-led mindset across brand activity, ensuring insights inform strategy, creative development, and optimisation.
• Use reporting, performance data, and post-campaign analysis to guide recommendations and future planning.
• Ensure governance frameworks are followed, supporting consistency, accountability, and operational excellence across the studio.
• Weekly brand health check-ins with key brand stakeholders to review priorities, performance, risks, and upcoming activity.
• Weekly portfolio review across all assigned brands, ensuring delivery status, resourcing, and timelines are on track.
• Regular partner agency syncs to align on strategy, scope, performance, and ways of working.
• Monthly performance and insight reviews, using data and reporting to assess effectiveness and inform optimisation.
• Ongoing resource planning in collaboration with Traffic and studio leadership to ensure correct capability, capacity, and rates are applied.
• Active coaching and mentoring of project managers through regular 1:1s and delivery reviews.
• Financial cadence management, including regular review of retainers, burn, forecasts, and budget health.
• Clear documentation and governance, ensuring briefs, scopes, and decisions are captured and shared.

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or related field.
• Postgraduate qualification in Marketing, Business Strategy, or Project Management is a plus.
• Formal project management certification (e.g., PRINCE2, Agile, or equivalent) is advantageous but not mandatory.
• 7+ years’ experience in marketing, account leadership, or strategic project management roles.
• Proven track record managing multiple consumer brands or portfolios, ideally within FMCG, beverage, or agency environments.
• Extensive experience in stakeholder management, including senior brand directors, agency partners, and cross-functional internal teams.
• Experience in commercial governance, including retainer, budget, forecasting, and resource rate management.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and mentor mid-level account/project managers, building team capability.