Senior Manager, Consumer Marketing Insights - Unilever Food Solutions

Job Title: Senior CMI Manager UFS North America

Location: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA

We are looking for a CMI Manager to join the UFS North America business based in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA.

Unilever Food Solutions (UFS) is a significant player in the global foodservice market, with world-class power brands, such as the Unilever Food Solutions brand, Knorr Professional and Hellmann’s. UFS mission is to be a world class force for good in foodservice, by leading in AI-powered customer experience, being the best solution provider in the industry, and a winning talent engine. Our purpose is to “free you to love what you do”.  UFS leads the way in culinary trends and inspirational recipes, offers professional support and training to chefs around the world, and creates products that stand out in taste, convenience, and health and continuously meet the very high standard of professional chefs. This all can only be achieved through impactful innovations, superior products and technology, and a strong focus on developing future-fit talent.

This role sits within the Global UFS Insights team and partners the North America business in its growth agenda. The mission of our team to drive growth through inspirational and provocative consumer & customer insights.  CMI Manager will play an instrumental role to ensure that the voice of the operators is brought into and impact our business decisions. The main purpose of the role is to lead the insights and customer centricity program for UFS Marketing & CD at the NAM level, ensuring insights into action that drive business results.

He/She will be expected to fully leverage the power of existing and new information into effective business action both for the local strategic understanding program as well as provide input into their assigned cluster organization. As the UFS Insights team we conduct all type of market research studies with food service operators to understand their needs and translate those needs into actionable plans for our business. While our key focus is food service operators, we also conduct studies with consumers/diners to understand their expectations from operators. Therefore, an understanding of both operators and consumers is within the scope of this role.

We aim to accelerate digital transformation and growth in future fit categories by empowering future-fit marketeers to nurture digital relationships with their operators. To this end we use various resources and most importantly online digital research tools together with our own UFS databases.  In this role you will be responsible for using these various research tools and techniques (mainly online digital) and identification of insights and translation of those insights into business strategy and landing them to the business effectively. You will be directly reporting to global UFS CMI Director, be a key business partner to the North American LT, including sales and marketing directors and flexibly work with and support the global research program representing North America.

As a CMI Manager, you will,

• Act as a catalyst to drive analytic driven business decisions.  Serve as the trusted data and research methodology consultant to different functions across the organization.

• Partner the Marketing Leadership Team and the UFS Leadership Team in NAM, to develop and lead learning plans across North America that address key business objectives 

• Play a key role in driving cross categories insights, market making and portfolio opportunities via using multiple sources of data.

• Blend consumer & market data and other performance metrics (e.g. financial) to look at business performance holistically.

• Drive Category/portfolio Development & Customer Centric Innovation. Lead category portfolio strategic analysis: provide insight and identify business opportunities from market understanding & analysis

• End to End management of research processes, including

• Analyze and diagnose the business to identify critical questions and knowledge gaps to develop a full CMI learning plan, recommending  the optimal research methods and plans to close the knowledge gaps
• Lead research projects and partner effectively with research agencies
• Lead research debrief and discussions with key stakeholders, and effectively influence business decision makings
• Able to transform findings into powerful and actionable recommendations (CMI POV)
• Integrate and consolidate multiple sets of quantitative and qualitative learning to create more impactful insight solutions
• Design and facilitate insight and strategy co-creation workshops with internal business partners and external consumers/operators to secure the IMPACT OF the insights. CMI work does not end with presenting the results, but when securing action from the teams.

• Embrace new tools and methodologies, piloting new methods & approaches towards more agile research that is fit for purpose

• Ability to identify key areas that CMI can play an even stronger role in business discussion & decision, and turn to systematic approach via leveraging CMI capacity, data and tools.

• Ability to design, co-design, develop new methodology with support from internal / external partners.

• Manage local agency partnerships and annual contracts

About you:

• At least 6 years work of managerial experience in market research, CMI or marketing
• Experience in FMCG business; Experience in Food & Beverage related categories are preferred
• Experience in Digital marketing and eCommerce related projects are preferred
• You are an excellent communicator - able to tell a compelling evidence-based story
• You are curious, a self-starter and eager to learn. If you run into an issue, you won’t stop searching until you understand the cause and find the solution. You have a “can do” mentality and think in solutions rather than problems.
• You are entrepreneurial and enjoy the learning process it brings.
• You are result oriented & data excites you. You have strong analytical skills and data is leading in your actions and recommendations.
• You have hands on experience on qualitative, quantitative, and digital research tools.
• You are precise and have a strong eye for detail.
• You are approachable, patient and experienced in stakeholder management
• You have good communication skills
• You are a truly flexible and agile person, quickly adopt and engage new businesses

------------------------------------

Unilever is an organization committed to diversity and inclusion to drive our business results and create a better future every day for our diverse employees, global consumers, partners, and communities. We believe a diverse workforce allows us to match our growth ambitions and drive inclusion across the business. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by local, state, or federal law and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability. 

For more information about your Federal rights, please see Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination isIllegal and Pay Transparency Non discrimination Provision.

Employment is subject to verification of pre-screening tests, which may include drug screening, background check, credit check and DMV check.

If you are an individual with a disability in need of assistance at any time during our recruitment process, please contact us at NA.Accommodations@unilever.com. Please note: This email is reserved for individuals with disabilities in need of assistance and is not a means of inquiry about positions or application statuses. The Protected Veterans or Individuals with Disabilities AAP narratives are available for inspection by any employee or applicant for employment Monday through Friday during normal business hours at establishment.