Head of Strategy

We have a fabulous 6-month contract opportunity for a Mid-Senior Head of Strategy & Insights at a leading alcohol brands company in Cape Town. The role will see you connecting the insights dots to enable speed & accuracy in decision-making through delivery of deep, integrated, and actionable insights.
This position requires a big thinker with strong analytical ability and both qualitative and quantitative experience. There is strong commercial and consumer element - as such, a strong knowledge of and ability to undertake Business Reviews and reporting is vital to the role. You’ll be responsible for Consumer and Customer Insights Managers and report to the Head of Marketing.

This is a Cape Town based opportunity but does offer opportunity for remote work and flexibility. We’re looking for someone with solid alcohol brands/FMCG experience who is ready to start ASAP and hit the ground running. Is it you? Get in touch today

**Responsibilities**:
Commercial Results
- Continuously develops integrated insights around business performance, issues, opportunities, and risks that drives strategic direction and decision making across all levels of the business
- Assist in all Portfolio & Innovation Strategy analyses, development and course-corrective management that align and integrate into broader business strategies
- Regularly undertakes cost, benefit and risk analysis versus key competitors to manage integrated business value chains and 5-year integrated P&L that delivers competitive advantage
- Influences price proposals to optimise return (short and long term).

Strategic Results
- Understands causes of performance trends (“why” behind the “what”) and recommends course corrective action aligned to Business & Portfolio Strategy
- Leads and drives continuous improvement around the marketing strategic planning process
- Develops and implements strategic insights capability building programme to drive teams “Where to Play” capability.

Operational Results
- Develops, manages, and implements best practice quantitative and qualitative research methodologies that enables smart, integrated insight that drives decision-making
- Develop and manage Brand Health Tracker that drives organisational consumer insights informing strategy and operational implementation
- Develops customer satisfaction survey that drives understanding of key customers per channel, their needs and marketing platforms and applies this to strategies, plans and supporting insights generation
- Provides appropriate volume, value & financial analyses to support teams on all commercial proposals
- Full understanding of competitor activity in market, and the ability to recommend according shifts in strategy to deliver against short
- and long-term ambitions through integrated quarterly competitive reviews
- Manage budget and insights deliveries on time in full (OTIF).

Innovation Results
- Assigns appropriate resources against innovation initiatives based on value generation potential
- Re-engineers or creates new processes and systems to get around obstacles in meeting ambition.

Relationship Results
- Facilitates dialogue internally to gather diverse perspectives and contributions to achieve team objectives
- Fully understands principals’ business in order to effectively contribute towards managing principal relationships that drives increased commitment
- Manage relationships with insights partners in a manner that ensures successful & sustained partnerships
- Presents succinct, well-balanced information written and verbally, with clear outcomes that inspires internally and externally.

Capability Results
- Proactively seeks feedback and responds positively to development needs that are brought to attention
- Sets example with own management of PDR process and leads team to drive and own their individual PDRs
- Effectively identifies team capability gaps, coaches the teams across these areas and drives recommended development plans accordingly
- Addresses team performance issues timeously, with clear & aligned corrective actions in place
- Models the company’s values in a way that instils value leadership in the organisation
- Directly confronts behaviour that is inconsistent with the company’s core values
- Effectively sets, monitors, and documents all projects/initiatives in order to capture learnings that drive a team culture that celebrates failure as a way to enable learning.

**Requirements**:

- Relevant industry related Degree/Diploma
- 5 + years of Consumer & Customer Insights experience
- Experience and solid knowledge of the Alcoholic Brand industry or FMCG - a must
- Able to bring passion, energy, and commitment to the Consumer & Customer Insights team
- Big thinker
- Very strong analytical abilities
- The ability to consistently generate consumer insights that drive category, portfolio and brand strategies and plans in order to create and maintain competitive advantage
- The ability to critically interpret and tran