B&W Prospective Innovation Skincare Marketing Manager

ROLE TITLE: B&W Prospective Innovation Skincare Marketing Manager

LOCATION: London 100VE

Reporting to the Global Skin Brand Partner & Marketing Design Lead, this role will be part of a team at the centre of crafting superior mixes, with outstanding beauty desirability. You will show the business the ‘art of the possible’ translating emerging macro science & technology trends and semiotic codes into tangible opportunities for our hair/skin brands. You will be a connector, building cross-functional teams to leverage the best internal and external talent to drive more impactful, sustainable innovation and excellence in design. You will elevate our design capabilities for formula (technology+ sensorials+sustainability), packaging (usage/inclusivity+aesthetics+sustainability) and consumer experience.

Responsibilities:
Co-Creation Sprints
• Align with the Skin Lead on the priority projects that you will lead with their support and coaching.
• Work closely with the Trends & Beauty Academy Lead and R&D teams to translate macro trends into tangible opportunities for product & pack innovation for the skin brands.
• Act as an ongoing strategic partner to skin brand teams and prospective innovation managers, by challenging/shaping project briefs and then leading co-creation sprints (e.g. innovation, brand, design) as well as ongoing crafting sessions to refine the output.
• Lead the development of the creative stimulus for co-creation sprints by collaborating with internal teams (e.g. R&D, CMI, Marketing) and external parties (e.g. consumers, external experts, designers) to stimulate creative thinking and bring the best sprint to life.

Packaging Design
• Partner with Brand Leads to execute their design strategy into tangible project briefs, leading a design ecosystem (internal teams and external designers & agencies) to land these new designs in market.
• You will directly manage 2-3 freelance designers as part of the design eco-system: briefing and evaluating work and managing overall project workload.
• You will have shared responsibility for sourcing and onboarding any new external partners to Unilever’s procurement systems and will have ownership of managing the project budget and payment of these suppliers for your category.

Budget & Systems Management
• As part of your design and co-creation projects, you will help to build an external contact database. In partnership with your skin counterpart you will ensure all profiles are kept up to date with high levels of data accuracy.
• Onboarding any new external suppliers to Unilever’s procurement systems.
• Raise all purchase orders for skin co-creation and design projects budget and work with finance to complete any cross-charges necessary.


All About You:
• Curiosity and passion for beauty and aesthetics with deep understanding of the skin/hair category and competitors.
• Strong communicator, relationship builder and influencer, capable of working effectively with counterparts of all work levels and across multiple cultures/countries and able to say no.
• Solid understanding of the overall B&W business with a proactive mindset who can identify ways to improve existing approaches or suggest new workstreams.
• Highly organised and able to plan and prioritise own work.
• Facilitation & co-creation skills, able to structure engaging and productive sprints & workshops, guiding participants through activities to achieve desired outcomes.
• Strong personal mastery and agility - comfortable working in an environment where there is frequent change.
• Proactive and supportive team player.
• Obsession with understanding consumers – their needs, their emotional states, their desires, their aspirations – and helping them achieve all these through end-to-end design.
• Ability to readily translate an aesthetic vision, breaking it down into clear beauty codes, who speaks the language of beauty and can articulate that forward in brands, mixes, concepts.
• Express creative concepts with sharp coherence between words, visuals, and staging (must be fluent with the language of colour, lighting, composition, finishes and textures).
• Extremely high degree of attention to detail.


Key Experience:
• Bachelor’s Degree with a significant level of experience of working in brand marketing including product innovation.
• Experience leading packaging design projects, briefing designers and evaluating creative work.
• Experience of leading innovation and brand strategy development, particularly in beauty.
• Proven track record of leading a cross-functional team with an ability to be able to manage multiple projects in parallel.

About the role:
• London based role, with a minimum of two days a week in the office.
• Travelling- mobility is important as this role requires to travel in the UK and abroad for print trials, mock up productions...
SELECTION CRITERIA BRAND PARTNER AND DESIGN LEAD SKIN/HAIR 2A:

Top 3 Essential Skills (from job description):
• An outstanding communicator, relationship builder and influencer, capable of working effectively with counterparts of all work levels and across multiple cultures/countries and able to say no.
• Ability to readily translate an aesthetic vision, breaking it down into clear beauty codes, who speaks the language of beauty and can articulate that forward in brands, mixes, concepts.
• Facilitation & co-creation skills, able to structure engaging and productive sprints & workshops, guiding participants through activities to achieve desired outcomes.

Domain Expertise (Relevant and recent experience within the business group):
• 2+ years’ experience working in beauty and wellbeing skin or hair brands.
• Brand Crafting: Creative briefs & briefing, Creative Judgement. Purposeful brand crafting and positioning.
• Innovation Crafter: People insight, Create people-centric, compelling propositions & claims, Superior & sustainable product design
• Marketing Strategy: Growth opportunity identification & segmentation

SELECTION CRITERIA (behaviours, skills and values) – The same are to be applied for all levels moving from excellent/proven (director), to highly effective (Manager) to Skilled (WL1):

Top 3 Behaviours:
• Collaborative Team Player - thrives in a team setting, avoiding territorial behaviour, and always working towards collective success.
• Ability to self-motivate and drive change in a highly innovative environment facing at time, uncertainty and volatility - Maintains composure and effectiveness when faced with uncertainty and volatility, demonstrating strong problem-solving abilities.
• Growth mindset and founder’s mentality - Demonstrates a growth-oriented, bias for action and hands-on approach, embracing challenges as opportunities for innovation and improvement. Consistently delivers incremental results, even in complex or ambiguous environments, with a clear focus on achieving tangible outcomes.

Top 3 Skills
• Consumer obsession & absolute commitment (and clear evidence) to building strong external partnership
• Innovative Curator - brings fresh, innovative thinking to the table, consistently pushing boundaries and exploring new possibilities, including in ways of working.
• Excellent communication (and listening) and excellent (proven) stakeholder management

Values
• Commitment to B&W and PISD Stated values (Respect, Trust, Integrity, Commitment to team, Creativity.
• Alignment with your own professional values

What we offer

Whilst the role is advertised on a full-time basis, we would be happy to discuss possible flexible working options and what this may look like for you. We strive to achieve a family-friendly and inclusive workplace and to, above all, create possibilities for all. 

Diversity at Unilever is about inclusion, embracing differences, creating possibilities and growing together for better business performance. We embrace diversity in our workforce. This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants and continuing development of all employees regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity. We are also more than happy to provide reasonable adjustments during our application and interview process to enable you to be present your best self. To find out more, including about our Employee Resource Groups, please click here Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (unilever.com).

Location

In June 2020 we announced our plan to consolidate a number of Unilever’s offices across the South East of England into a new Unilever campus in Kingston-upon-Thames in or around early 2025. However, on the 08 August 2024 we announced to our existing staff our proposal to retain our central Head Office in London, 100 Victoria Embankment (“100VE”) until our lease expires in 2027. As a result of this new proposal, we will be consulting with our existing staff, and new joiners who join during this period of consultation at 100VE, on the proposal made in August 2024. During consultation we will clarify the future location of each team and function. This means your role will either be based in 100VE until 2027 or in Kingston-Upon-Thames from early 2025. As we are yet to commence consultation on the proposal you agree, until such a time when consultation has concluded, your normal place of work as set out in the enclosed Statement of Terms & Conditions will be 100VE. You agree that on the conclusion of the consultation your place of work will be 100VE or 100VE until early 2025 and then Kingston-upon-Thames ("the locations") and you will be notified of which of the locations will be your place of work after that consultation ends.