Category and Marketing Manager at RCL Foods

• The purpose of the role is to provide support to the Category and Marketing Executive in creating and leading Marketing and Customer initiatives by country in the relevant category. Develop, define and execute the category strategies, and build our brands in collaboration with the operations teams. Provide market, consumer, and customer insights to build a strong innovation funnel for expansion into Africa and new markets. This role reports into the Category & Marketing Executive in the New Business Development Team.

Minimum Requirements    

• A degree or post graduate degree in Marketing and or in related Business Management.
• A minimum of 8 years' experience in a channel, category or brand marketing function.
• Ability to travel outside of South Africa Borders: 30% travel.
• Lead, coach, develop a team of talented individuals across brand, category, data and research.
• Customer and distributor understanding and ability to work collaboratively with operational teams.
• Experience in analysing various sources of data across channels eg. IRI & Price Probe.
• Ability to manage stakeholders across brand, customer & suppliers.
• Project management skills to deliver on new product development.
• Ability to work with quantitative and qualitative research.
• Organizational skills, experience in meeting tight deadlines .
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills.
• Attention to detail & a results-driven attitude.
• Strong financial Acumen.

Important areas to specialise in:

• Category Development - Primary part of the role is to use data (sales & other) and turn it into actionable insight which forms the foundation of impactful marketing mixes focusing on price, promotion, assortment, and innovation.
• Shopper and Consumer Marketing – Build marketing shopper/consumer campaigns that can efficiently be delivered by the sales teams (internal & distribution) that recruit consumers to our brands and categories in existing categories and countries.
• Country Channel Planning – You will be responsible for the development of the Customer & Channel Marketing Strategies in line with the category and brand opportunities. Collaboration between the customer, distributor and internal stakeholders is critical to success.

Duties & Responsibilities    

Market Data, Insight generation & Tracking

• Measure and review total category (and adjacent) performance and profitability.
• Analyse and track in-market measures at the customer and channel level, such as distribution, share, price, and merchandising performance.
• Utilize above data to manage shelf health, price promotional mix, merchandising strategies and implement effective cat man
• Lead a data and research team member to build trackers and reporting dashboards.
• Brief in and analyse research (quant and qual) to build insight-based opportunities across categories.

Strategy Formulation

• Build the category, country and brand strategies to deliver sustainable, profitable growth across key customers across the continent.
• Engage with the country and distributor teams to build the above strategies, then operationalize and implement those strategies through effective marketing tools that maximize the mix.
• Evaluate and monitor competitors and their activities and formulate proactive responses.
• Perform rigorous investment analysis and advise on allocating budget accordingly.

Operationalise the Strategy

• Partner with agencies in the respective categories to build 360-degree brand and shopper marketing campaigns in markets.
• Develop customer specific shopper marketing activities, including promotions, POS, site training/briefing information, merchandising solutions and products that generate real sales growth.
• Ensure smooth operational implementation and tracking of brand and shopper marketing activities.
• Review of brand and shopper marketing campaigns to ensure in-market effectiveness linked to campaign KPIs.

Distribution and Customer Engagement

• Prepare, analyze and present category strategies and reviews to customers and distributors
• Interact with customers and distributors on brand opportunities, collaborations or instore opportunities including but not limited to assortment analysis, category performance and ranging.
• Work with distributor partners through cycle meetings and top to top business reviews to build on new opportunities or new product launches.

New Product Development

• Project manage country specific innovation
• Work closely with cross-functional teams on customized NPD projects
• Ensure all allocated launches have strong motivating marketing mix and launch material.
• Ensure executional excellence and implementation through our distribution partners.

Financial Management

• Ability to work with financial and commercial stakeholders to build effective tacking and monitoring tools for team delivery
• Manage allocated parts of the Customer & Channel Marketing expenditure budget.
• Manage and track ROIC on spend.

KPI’s

• Achievement of annual business targets across volume, turn over and profitability.
• Brand market share and brand equity.

Deadline:23rd August,2025