About Mars:
Mars is a family-owned business with more than $35 billion in global sales. We produce some of the world’s best-loved brands: M&M’s®, SNICKERS®, TWIX®, MILKY WAY®, DOVE®, PEDIGREE®, ROYAL CANIN®, WHISKAS®, EXTRA®, ORBIT®, 5™, SKITTLES®, BEN’S ORIGINAL® and COCOAVIA®. Alongside our consumer brands, we proudly take care of half of the world’s pets through our nutrition, health and services businesses such as Banfield Pet Hospitals™, BluePearl®, Linnaeus, AniCura, VCA™ and Pet Partners™.
Headquartered in McLean, VA, Mars operates in more than 80 countries. The Mars Five Principles – Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom – inspire our 130,000 Associates into taking action every day towards creating the world we want tomorrow.
Purpose of Role:
The Associate Brand Manager (ABM) will be responsible for supporting the Ice Cream cell team to build brands and deliver the cell value creation plan. This role encapsulates the reporting, analytics, and supports the launch of innovation products/ programs designed to reach more consumers, convert more transactions, and add more value to the US Ice Cream business.
Additionally, the ABM will have opportunities to assist in the development of brand strategy and annual marketing plans to achieve specific brand/cell objectives, including delivery of sales, MAC, and Household Penetration targets.
Key Responsibilities:
- Represent Marketing within cross functional teams on development and execution of key marketing initiatives.
- Analyze & review brand/cell performance, competitive dynamics, and category trends to offer recommendations to increase effectiveness of plans and execution.
- Monitor brand expenditures and manage the advertising and consumer promotions budget.
- Conduct post evaluation of launch activities, extracting insights to develop lessons learned and recommendations for future brand activity.
- Influence brand strategy and growth opportunity recommendations leveraging customer, consumer, and brand data.
- Support the execution of the annual marketing programs. manage promotions, and other marketing mix elements (e.g., packaging changes) through activity management process as required.
- Engage with activity management & cross functional teams on key initiatives.
- Support agency execution on a day-to-day basis (e.g. shopper marketing, licensing execution, digital etc.)
- Working with the customer marketing team on consumer/brand specific content required for selling and executional success.
- Best-in-class selling materials (Ready to Sell, Forecasting Input on Innovation etc)
Context & Scope:
The Associate Brand Manager reports into the Ice Cream marketing director and is accountable for flawlessly supporting the execution of programs/initiatives through data/analytics reporting/recommendations to fulfill long-term overall brand objectives - on time and on budget. This role supports brand/cell leaders to develop, execute, monitor, and course correct plans. This associate collaborates with peers across the cell cross-functional teams as well as leaders across the Mars Ice cream/MW business to influence, develop and deploy plans. This role is part of a boarder marketing team consisting of Customer, Consumer, and Shopper marketing.