Brand Manager Lipton Ice Tea

Overview

• There is an internal slated candidate being considered for this position. However, all qualified candidates are encouraged to apply.
  
  

Lipton Ice Tea is the global No.1 RTD tea brand with over $3Bn in global turnover.

AMESA is a priority growth cluster, with a current business of ~$80Mn and an ambition to double the business by 2028, driven by consumer shifts away from sugary carbonated drinks towards healthier alternatives and a clear JTBD to recruit new consumer & develop the RTD tea category, by establishing Lipton Ice tea as a “Better for you beverage” vs other sugary drinks.

Even within the Pepsico system, Lipton Ice tea is aligned as a priority to expend the portfolio.

What makes the opportunity exciting?

Ice Tea is a nascent category (<2% of LRB) in AMESA, offering significant headroom for recruitment-led growth anchored on rapid acceleration of health and better-for-you consumer trends

Growing consumer shift from carbonated beverages to healthier alternatives

Globally this region has strong Lipton brand equity from Hot Tea (+60% market share) provides a unique advantage, as the brand enjoys strong affinity and brand love.

Lipton has an established GTM, with Pepsi bottling system, being small, it needs a disruptive and entrepreneurial approach to growth

The Brand Manager based in Dubai, plays a critical role in governing and deploying the brand growth agenda across region’s multi-market, multi-bottler ecosystem (17+ bottlers)and leading brand activations to drive performance.

Specifically, this includes:

• Accountable for regional brand Seed strategy deployment and execution leadership across AMESA
• Support the Marketing Managers on developing integrated brand communication for the region
• Own regional A&M budget tracking and governance across AMESA
• Project leadership and ownership of regional brand activation initiatives & innovation deployment
• Develop & deploy E-com & AFH (Away from home) channel activation and communication programs
• Packaging Development & implementation of 2D changes across markets
• Business Performance Tracking & Continuous Optimization
  
  

Responsibilities

The role works in close partnership with the AMESA Marketing Director and with regional marketing managers, regional Insights and country franchise managers to drive implementation of the marketing plans.

Specific activities include:

• Regional Brand Seed Strategy Deployment
• Deploy the Lipton Ice Tea Seed Strategy across AMESA, ensuring brand consistency with local relevance in line with the JTBT
• Translate strategy into clear, executable briefs and toolkits and act as the regional brand guardian.
• Lead the white-space agenda by advancing the seed strategy with clearly defined Job-to-Be-Done (JTBD) to recruit new consumers, accelerate RTD tea category development and scale the business by leveraging best practices from priority cluster geographies.
• Support the Marketing Managers on developing integrated brand plans & communication for the region
• Partner with Marketing Managers on integrated brand communication, from planning to in-market rollout.
• Co-own the Annual Operating Plan (AOP) & JBP (Joint Business Planning) with Marketing Managers end-to-end, from planning, cross-functional alignment, deployment and in-year sharpening by systematically integrating learnings from prior years.
• Enable leading-edge digital and creator deployment and drive speed to market through cross functional coordination.
• Drive post-launch evaluations across key initiatives, synthesizing performance, insights and gaps into holistic, actionable learnings for the broader business.
• Own A&M Governance & Budget tracking Quarterly
• Own regional A&M tracking and governance across AMESA.
• Partner with marketing managers to prioritise spends and track phasing, flagging risks and deviations early.
• Project leadership and ownership of regional brand activation initiatives & innovation deployment
• Lead regional innovation and activation deployment, from adaptation to launch execution.
• Develop activation toolkits and best-practice playbooks for consistent market rollout.
• Develop and deploy brand activation plans aligned to AOP calendars, leading sampling and on-ground consumer engagement and scaling impact through structured learning transfer across the cluster and continuous process optimization.
• Develop & deploy E-com & AFH (Away from home) channel activation and communication programs
• Lead development and deployment of E-commerce and AFH strategies across AMESA
• Work closely with franchise team to build channel-specific propositions and activation models
• Build channel-specific activation models and unlock new consumption occasions.
• Digital, Social & Creator Ecosystem deployment
• Own regional social media deployment and creator strategy for Lipton Ice Tea.
• Ensure high-quality, locally relevant, performance-driven content through market and agency partnerships.
• Bring forth the best practices with key learnings across markets and create a tracking dashboard liaising with the agencies.
• Packaging Development & implementation of 2D changes across markets
• Lead end-to-end management of 2D packaging changes across AMESA.
• Act as regional interface across Global, R&D, Supply Chain, Legal, and markets to ensure on-time delivery.
• Drive alignments & implement plans with Bottling partners (19+ Bottlers)
• Leading discussions with Bottling team, to ensure alignment and deployment of POSM toolkits across markets
• Drive alignment through strong influence, clarity of direction and structured engagement
• Performance Tracking & Continuous Optimization
• Market Penetration: Monitor market penetration, brand performance and campaign impact in middle east markets, ensuring continuous growth.
• Business performance snapshot: Own business performance snapshots through monthly deep dives on the top 3-4 markets in the cluster, analysing the 6Ps, identifying efficiency gaps and defining clear, action oriented interventions to improve market performance.
• Best Practices: Build and share best practices to scale white space market success across other priority regions.
  
  

Qualifications

Person Profile

Business & Functional Skills

• Strategic Marketing Expertise: Proven track record in executing strategic marketing plans that drive growth in new and underdeveloped markets.
• Business Acumen: A strategic thinker with a deep understanding of the 3 C’s (Consumer, Customer, Competition), trends, practices, information, and insights impacting the business, enabling sound decisions to be made.
• Execution Excellence: Balance of strategic vision and hands-on execution support, ensuring marketing initiatives drive business impact.
• Demonstrated capability in budget management, innovation deployment, packaging execution and digital marketing.
• Data-Driven: Consumer and data savvy – everything we do is led by insights and data. You must be obsessed with it!
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Skillful at navigating a complex, matrix organization to drive clarity, alignment, and accountability across global, regional, and local teams.
• Strong influencing and people management skills - ability to engage/motivate colleagues and stakeholders and lead projects independently
  
  

Key Competencies

• Exceptional project leadership management with experience leading agile teams in a fast-paced environment and managing multiple, competing priorities simultaneously.
• Active listener - considering the perspective of others, activating the right plan based on holistic understanding of the business challenge and business needs.
• Curious connector - ability to connect the dots across people, projects and partners, creating new opportunities for innovative collaboration that enables successful activation of digital brand strategies.
• Commercially minded - able to identify opportunities and deliver business results through digital
• Team-worker - proactive networking across a complex organizational hierarchy
• Resilient and influential - thriving on challenge, bringing colleagues along on the journey
• Strong communicator - Superior verbal and written communications skills with extreme attention to detail
• Tenacity and sense of urgency - the ability to make things happen quickly with large, less nimble partners and/or teams. Ability to perform in ambiguity and uncertainty
  
  

Main interactions:

• Reporting into the Marketing Director
• Supporting Marketing Managers
• Pepsi Inter /Pepsi Bottlers & Marketing teams
• Regional Leadership Team (brand agenda and innovation)
• Lead Creative Agency and other agencies for digital, adaptation, activation etc.
• Regional R&D, Franchise, Supply chain & cross functional stakeholders

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