Category Executive

**Hybrid role - Hemel hempstead office with the opportunity to work from home**

**About Carlsberg Britvic**:
In combining Carlsberg’s and Britvic’s legacy businesses in the UK to form Carlsberg Britvic, we are creating an integrated beverage powerhouse in the market. Stronger together, we have a unique opportunity to get ahead and stay ahead of the competition and build a truly iconic business proposition.

We offer customers an enhanced portfolio as the leading supplier to combine beer and soft drinks, supported by a world class sales force able to unlock growth opportunities across multiple channels and occasions.

**About the Role**:
This is an exciting role working on a major retailer account, which will encompass both our soft drinks and beer categories.

You’ll work alongside the Senior Category Manager to help develop strong customer relationships, leading category thinking and strategy. You’ll develop an understanding of the categories we operate in, how they can grow, how our brands can leverage these opportunities and how to best engage with our customers to bring it to life.

This role is central to our planning and execution of commercial initiatives, therefore strong links will be required across the commercial functions, especially within marketing, category strategy, insights, commercial operations and our sales teams.

This role would suit someone who has current or previous category experience or who has data/insights experience and would like to move into Sales.

**Key Responsibilities**:

- Support the Senior Category Manager in the development of 18 month rolling category plans with allocated customer based on execution of in outlet blueprint.
- Prioritise working on multiple customer initiatives to the maximum benefit of Carlsberg Britvic and our customers.
- Support creation of the category roadmap for allocated customer and identify key actions to execute
- Support the execution of the category plan. Execute strategies to maximise range, primary space, location, availability, and macro space incorporating all category growth levers including off-fixture space, P&P solutions, equipment plans, online solutions and retail format development) in line with our POP ambition (as directed by the Senior Category Manager)
- Input to the creation of distribution, range and space targets by customer that deliver against market maps and regularly measure progress against these.
- Support the Senior Category Manager with the delivery of range review materials (such as planograms) where required.
- Ensure tactics within the plan are executed in store. Evaluate the impact & ensure that learnings feed into future planning & activation across the channel.
- Support the Senior Category Manager in the development of category selling stories and tailor them for your customer, incorporating customer level shopper / consumer insight.
- Support delivery of customer immersions designed to create solutions & strategies for key customers.
- Build customer relationships & delivery solutions to influence external measure of category success with improved results in the Advantage Group Survey.
- Work closely with Channel Insight manager to build BSD shopper understanding & ensure that this is applied in the development of the category plan & execution of in-store activity
- Champion customer specific data, especially loyalty data where this exists, to add value to initiative development
- Support the Senior Category Manager in the development of gate 2/3 business cases with account level information on category and customer marketing opportunities where required and drive for execution from gate 3/4 onwards
- Assist in the delivery of category building initiatives with and through customers e.g. Snacking / Meal Deals.

**Experience Required**:

- Commercial experience, ideally within FMCG and covering relevant channel
- Practical experience of category management process & experience of managing customer relationships an advantage
- Strong communicator with good facilitation skills
- Strong interpersonal skills and ability to develop relationships with key stakeholders
- Basic understanding of category management principles
- Knowledge of external market information would be useful (Nielsen / IRI / Kantar / Loyalty Platforms)
- Use of Space Planning / JDA (or equivalent space management tools)

We believe we are stronger together and that’s why we’re committed to providing equal opportunities to all applicants and employees. We know that by building a truly inclusive environment where everyone feels celebrated, safe and respected - diversity and wellbeing will naturally thrive