Senior Manager Digital Futures Ice Cream

With brands such as Magnum, Cornetto and Wall’s (known as Ola in the Benelux), Ice Cream is one of the fastest growing categories for Unilever. New tech and marketing innovations will enable Unilever to expand the market for out of home impulse purchases, which is the sweet spot for this category. As a result, digital has been prioritized as a key strategic thrust to unlock the future growth in ice cream. As part of this strategy, they are now looking to hire a Senior Manager Digital Futures to take ownership of the global digital vision and strategy for the entire ice cream category.

Digital Futures at Unilever

Digital innovations are continuing to change the way people communicate and connect with the world at an ever-increasing pace. For example, in recent years, disruptive businesses such as Amazon, Deliveroo, Foodora and UberEats have caused a huge shift in the way people plan their meals and how food retailers and restaurants are run. And this is only the beginning. In order to maintain or grow their market share, it’s essential for FMCG companies to join the digital bandwagon. The Unilever Board and Senior Management are well aware of this, and have made Digital Futures a key pillar of their strategy. That’s why Unilever is proactively hiring top-notch digital professionals.

About the vacancy: Senior Manager Digital Futures Ice Cream

This is an exciting opportunity to shape the global vision and digital strategy for all of Unilever’s ice cream category and ice cream brands. The Senior Manager will have a holistic approach. By taking all brands, channels and platforms, and focusing on the ecosystem they form together, the Senior Manager will be able to capture more ice cream moments and thus grow the category. The Senior Manager will have three direct reports and drive change globally by working with central and local teams.

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Ice cream – NOW!

Do you remember what used to happen when you were a kid, and you’d hear that familiar jingle of the ice cream truck down the road? All of a sudden, the only thing you could think of was ice cream. You would run to your mother as fast as you could to ask – to beg! – if you could please, please, please have a Magnum, a Solero, a Rocket or whichever was your favorite at the time. So much has changed in the way we shop since then. But one thing hasn’t. Ice cream was, is and always will be an impulse purchase.[/box]

The Senior Manager will report directly to Janice Vickers, Global Director Digital Futures & Cornetto. Vickers: “New tech and marketing innovations will enable Unilever to expand the market for out-of-home impulse purchases, which is the sweet spot for this category. Digital has been prioritized as a key strategic thrust to unlock the future growth in ice cream.” The Senior Manager will be leading this opportunity by creating a strong vision, strategy and roadmap for the digital ecosystem for this category.

Ecosystem Strategy

As an impulse category, ice cream features a unique path to purchase. There is no point in giving someone a craving for ice cream if they can’t easily get one straight away. As a result, digital communications and touch points should not only build equity, but also have an increased focus on directing consumers to either a nearby shop with a freezer, or to the likes of UberEats, Just Eat and Deliveroo.

This is both a forward-facing and action-orientated role, focusing on long-term goals as well as enabling operational teams to achieve those goals as soon as possible. The Senior Manager will identify consumer, shopper and customer touch points (online and offline); create and map consumer journeys and develop the ecosystem infrastructure accordingly. This includes the development and implementation of a holistic search strategy, connected selling systems, next-generation geo-targeting and weather-triggered marketing treatments.

Fact-based and data-driven

To optimize results, Unilever has a highly data-driven way of working. The current ecosystem is fully mapped; it’s defined in which way each element drives equity and performance is continuously measured and analyzed. Due to the nature of this dynamic ecosystem, it will constantly evolve. The Senior Manager will be continuously updating the dashboard as more tests and trials generate new insights. This includes identifying how data should be captured, analyzed and leveraged with the Unilever Cloud across the category and brands. The Senior Manager will work closely on the implementation of this strategy with analysts, specialist agencies and the (local) brand teams.

As the linking pin working across the brand teams, the Senior Manager is also in a unique position to embed digital strategies and champion best practices in terms of content and social media. Needless to say, influencer skills are key.

Team management

The Senior Manager has three direct reports, each with a different area of expertise:

1. Data, Dotcom & Search
2. E-commerce
3. Content & Social Media

The Senior Manager will inspire the Digital Futures team to keep up to date with the latest tech developments as well as the latest ice cream trends. What’s more, the Senior Manager will challenge them to find ways these innovations can contribute to the development of the ice cream ecosystem in a meaningful way.

Candidate profile

• Minimum 7 years’ digital experience
• Big-picture thinker
• Entrepreneurial problem-solver
• Comfortable working in an ambiguous and changing environment
• Networker: identify key stakeholders, learn from them and share their learnings

Unilever works together with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy. Contact Suzanne Goedhart-Limmen at suzanne@topofminds.com to find out more about this opportunity.