Senior Brand Manager, Axe Demand Generation and Performance Lead

ABOUT UNILEVER
With 3.4 billion people in over 190 countries using our products every day, Unilever is a business that makes a real impact on the world. Work on brands that are loved and improve the lives of our consumers and the communities around us. We are driven by our purpose: to make sustainable living commonplace, and it is our belief that doing business the right way drives superior performance. At the heart of what we do is our people – we believe that when our people work with purpose, we will create a better business and a better world.

JOB PURPOSE
The Senior Brand Manager serves as the lead of the Axe Engagement team, leading Engagement go-to-market strategy. This individual will oversee the creation of all paid content, manage go-to-market engagement activities, and ensure a streamlined digital workflow that supports the brand’s growth objectives in store and online. The role requires a strong sense of ownership and the capacity to work independently, driving the Axe campaigns from conception to execution.

The Senior Brand Manager is also expected to foster cross-functional collaboration with internal teams such as CMI, Innovation, Supply Chain, CS&P and Finance to ensure business objectives are met holistically. This includes supporting the development of innovation pipelines, aligning brand communications with long-term growth ambitions, and ensuring all performance and engagement strategies are integrated with the wider business plan. By leveraging close partnerships across departments, the Senior Brand Manager ensures that campaigns are not only creative and engaging but also commercially effective and aligned with Axe’s strategic priorities.

With Axe’s focus on reaching young guys, the Senior Brand Manager must immerse themselves in the culture of this demographic. It is essential to identify authentic and impactful opportunities for Axe to connect with young guys, ensuring the brand remains relevant and meaningful within their lives. The role will report directly to the Head of Axe for the US, reinforcing the importance and visibility of this position within the organization.

Key Responsibilities
Content Strategy & Activation
The Senior Brand Manager will lead the briefing processes for Brand Say content, which includes video, social, display, and commerce assets. By translating consumer insights, overarching brand strategy, and category trends, the Senior Brand Manager will develop content strategy matrices to serve the Axe audiences. These matrices serve as comprehensive guides for always-on initiatives, campaigns, modular executions, and commerce-driven content.
Integrated Agency Team (IAT) Leadership

Leadership of the Integrated Agency Team is central to this role. The team includes experts from Media, PR, Social, Creative, and Influencer. The Senior Brand Manager manages the agency teams through regular weekly check-ins, ensuring that there is continuous progress toward campaign launches and ongoing iterations to drive growth for the brand.

Performance Ownership
Holistically, the role is responsible for owning and understanding the brand’s P&L, including budget management, gross margin optimization and forecasting. The Senior Brand Manager is responsible for monitoring and optimizing key brand metrics, such as market share, share forecast, monthly shipments, brand health, and shopper metrics. The manager, along with their team, leads monthly performance reviews, analyzing Circana/Numerator data to gain performance insights and make informed recommendations that enhance brand competitiveness.

Customer and Shopper Marketing Collaboration
The Senior Brand Manager will work closely with both the Customer teams and the Shopper Marketing teams to bring Axe campaigns to life. This collaboration ensures alignment across all touchpoints, maximizing the impact of campaign activities in retail environments. Additionally, this manager will lead in store executions and ensure Shopper Marketing becomes an amplification of the national campaign with a retailer-focus to ensure a flawless retail execution.
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What you’ll need to succeed

• 8+ years of relevant branding/marketing experience with MBA preferred
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Passion for bringing campaigns to live and driving growth
• Strong analytical skills including forecasting, budgeting and brand performance metrics
• Bias for Action: Ability to independently drive key workstreams
• Owner’s mindset: Embracing the thought process of an owner, while leaning into our core Unilever behaviors (particularly thinking 3 steps ahead) will be key to drive success in seat.

Pay: The pay range for this position is $119,400 to $179,000. Unilever takes into consideration a wide range of factors that are utilized in making compensation decisions including, but not limited to, skill sets, experience and training, licensure and certifications, qualifications and education, and other business and organizational needs.  

Bonus: This position is bonus eligible.  

Long-Term Incentive (LTI): This position is LTI eligible.  

Benefits: Unilever employees are eligible to participate in our benefits plan. Should the employee choose to participate, they can choose from a range of benefits to include, but is not limited to, health insurance (including prescription drug, dental, and vision coverage), retirement savings benefits, life insurance and disability benefits, parental leave, sick leave, paid vacation and holidays, as well as access to numerous voluntary benefits. Any coverages for health insurance and retirement benefits will be in accordance with the terms and conditions of the applicable plans and associated governing plan documents.