Position: Senior Vice President & Head of Shopper Marketing
Role Purpose
As Head of Shopper Marketing, you will build and lead a high-impact Shopper Marketing function to drive measurable business growth — generating incremental sales, shopper conversion and loyalty across all channels. You’ll own the strategy, planning and execution of shopper-centric programmes that align brand ambitions with retailer goals and commercial realities, while ensuring full P&L accountability.
You will collaboratively lead across clients / brands, retail partners, internal stakeholders (brand, sales, analytics), and agencies — transforming shopper insights and data into powerful activation that delivers scale, growth, and competitive advantage.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Shopper Marketing Leadership
- Develop and own the shopper marketing strategy, tied to brand objectives, sales targets, and retail landscape.
- Translate shopper and consumer insights, market and retail data into actionable shopper strategies — including segmentation, targeting, positioning, and shopper-journey design.
- Define clear commercial-KPIs (e.g. footfall, basket size, conversion rate, repeat purchase, category share) and build shopper marketing plans to meet/exceed them.
Cross-Functional Business Partnership & Retail Integration
- Partner with Sales, Key Account Management, Brand, and Retail teams to align shopper strategies with retailer business goals, joint business plans (JBPs), and seasonal/annual brand growth plans.
- Secure retailer buy-in for programs: placement, displays, in-store / on-site activations, visibility & merchandising, and co-marketing investments.
- Own and manage budget, resources and P&L for shopper-marketing investments; prioritize and allocate investments by channel, customer, geography and brand portfolio.
Program Planning & Execution Excellence
- Lead design and execution of shopper-marketing programmes: in-store displays, promotions, trade activations, shopper communications, e-commerce / retail-media activations, omnichannel shopper-journeys.
- Ensure all programmes are insight-driven, measurable, and commercially disciplined — continuously track ROI, incremental sales, trial, repeat purchase, and re-investment decisions.
- Integrate shopper-marketing planning into annual brand operating plans (AOP) and ensure alignment across marketing, brand and commercial calendars.
Team & Agency Leadership
- Build, lead and mentor a high-performing shopper marketing team — internal and agency/partner resources. Define roles, processes, accountability, and governance for execution.
- Champion the use of shopper data, syndicated data (e.g. point-of-sale, retail audits, loyalty-card data, market research) and analytics to drive decisions.
- Foster collaboration across functions (brand, trade marketing, e-commerce, digital) to deliver integrated shopper experiences and maximize ROI.
Thought Leadership & Market Growth
- Act as a shopper-marketing thought leader — bring new concepts, approaches, and retail innovations (e.g. omnichannel shopper journeys, retail media, digital shelf, in-store experiential activations) to capture market opportunity.
- Drive business growth — new categories, channel expansion (modern trade, e-commerce, traditional trade), market penetration, and expansion of shopper marketing maturity across clients/brands.
Key Deliverables / Success Metrics
- Incremental sales and share gain vs baseline / previous year
- Improvement in shopper conversion metrics (footfall→purchase conversion, basket size, repeat purchase, share of wallet)
- Retailer / Customer JV success — number of joint business plans, share of funded activations, secured placements & in-store visibility
- ROI on shopper-marketing investments; efficiency of spend vs sales uplift
- Quality of shopper-insights to activation cycle — speed to market, relevance of campaigns, adoption by retail partners
- Building and scaling a best-in-class shopper-marketing team and governance process
Qualifications & Experience
- 12–15+ years’ experience overall, including at least 5–7 years leading shopper-marketing or trade/retail marketing (ideally in AlchoBev / FMCG / CPG / Retail or agency servicing such clients)
- Strong track record in delivering shopper-marketing / trade marketing / shopper-insights-led growth at national or multi-market scale
- Deep understanding of retail channels (modern trade, general trade, e-commerce/omnichannel), shopper behaviour, and retail customer dynamics
- Strong analytical and data-driven mindset — comfortable with syndicated data, sales & retail audit data, shopper research, ROI measurement, P&L ownership
- Strategic thinker with commercial acumen, but also hands-on execution orientation; ability to translate insights into actionable retail programmes
- Demonstrated leadership and team-building skills, experience in cross-functional stakeholder management (Brand, Sales, Trade, Retail, Agency)
- Excellent communication, negotiation and presentation skills — capable of selling shopper strategies and collaborations to senior leadership and retail partners
What We Offer / Why Join
- An opportunity to lead and build a shopper-marketing function from (or to) “best-in-class” — high ownership and P&L accountability
- High visibility and influence: lead strategy across brands, clients, channels, and markets; partner with senior leadership and key retail partners
- A challenging, entrepreneurial environment that values innovation, business impact and strategic thinking
- Scope to shape shopper-behaviour-based growth for major brands — become a key driver of organisation’s commercial success
- Competitive compensation and performance-linked incentives tied to business growth and results
