Senior Marketing Manager
Al-futtaim
Total years of experience :14 years, 9 Months
• To start up a consolidated marketing unit in the company, recruitments and selection of various agencies: advertising, social media, PR, activations and research.
• Developed Brand Identity, Brand Differentiator, Brand Positioning and Brand Architechture for the mother brand and components.
• Developed an efficient marketing strategy and campaign for the launch of the project and the mall: Outdoor, Print, Radio.
• Set the strategy for the activation program and mall entertainment, being the edge of the city that has an outdoor amphitheater, water fountain.
• Led, trained and assessed marketing team to work on events, exhibitions, advertising conventional and unconventional, to coordinate with various departments and suppliers.
• To manage the marketing department in the most efficient way: increase portfolio profitability, market share, positioning and consumer preference.
• To manage, motivate, structure and develop the department of 10 subbordinates.
• To manage the marketing budget in the most effective way, setting clear brand objectives and making sure they are properly met.
• To ensure smooth communication between department employees and other parties either internal or external such as supplers and agencies.
• To relaunch Baraka in a new look and gain market share.
• To maintain Nestle Pure Life market share and positive consumer image.
• To lead international line extention projects.
• To liaise with various international marketing related parties in the zone and head office.
• Lead the launch of the brands into the GCC markets (as a first step for all Middle East and North Africa countries), creating required positioning, developing marketing strategies, marketing plans for new stores opening, enhancing sales of lower performing stores and managed executions.
• Liaised with the US global office to acquire the global know-how and developed the localization plans for the brands.
• Introduced In Store Activities along with Our of Store Activity that aim to enhance customer experience and reward loyal customers and to increase brand awareness respectively.
• Developed internal systems to increase communication among various team members such as operations (sales), PR, media, customer relationship management and events teams.
• Developed solutions for system defects that needed to be established and/or enhanced to allow proper executions of plans such as building strong and wide customer database, standardizing the Arabic glossary for each brand, proposal formats for each activity, reporting systems for the various activities to track results, developed reward system to motivate the staff to promote in store marketing activities along with others.
• Controlled the marketing budget for both brands.
• Trained and developed marketing manager assistant.
• Lead the relaunch of Vimto into a more modern look in a full fledge advertising campaign: ATL, BTL and trade that resulted in a double digit sales growth in 05/06.
• Lead the relauch of Vimto carbonated through defining a specific consumer segment, researching its needs, building new brand portfolio, developing more appealing packaging, strengthening distribution and creating tailor made brand building activities.
• Fixed financial picture on total brand level by reducing COGS and increasing RSP.
• Led the launch of a new product category within the region following the steps of the global initiatives. The launch had a complete marketing plan that resulted in 10% and 3.6% market share respectively in KSA and UAE in the first readings (after two months of launch).
• Planned and managed brands’ activities in the Middle East region: Saudi, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Iran
• Reduced the gap between global strategy and local needs in advertising and product positioning
• Launched new product line extensions and new product development that increased the product portfolio from 32 SKUs to 40 SKUs and contributed in increasing category NR and GM
• Led projects on changing sourcing countries of various SKUs to improve profit margins by realizing cost savings and other cost cutting projects
• Planned and conducted trade activities to further educate the consumers on product usage and benefits and to improve visibility and distribution
• Led the introduction of Harpic into new markets such as Egypt, Morocco and Iran
• Monitored and led the project on improving the shipment to markets in order to ensure consistency and availability of stocks
• Conducted U&A research projects to further understand consumer insights and test their acceptance to various NPDs
• Trained sales teams on product knowledge and benefits
• Developed full-fledge marketing communication strategy and campaign for Vodafone launch in Egypt, including formulating the brand character and positioning, which resulted in Top of mind Awareness of 31%, aided awareness of 100% and brand preference up to 51% bringing all up from 0% within 9 months.
• Developed and designed mechanics for a mega scale promotion aiming at increasing the customer base, which resulted in increase of 103% of market share in the designated segment and an increase in revenue by 50% within 3 months from launch date.
• Developed integrated marketing communications campaigns using various conventional and unconventional channels such as TV commercials, Print ads, Radio ads, Programs Sponsorships, Outdoors, Below The Line material, and Events to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of campaigns aiming at building strong brand equity.
• Increased the customers’ liking of the advertisements of a leading brand by 8% points within a period of 6 months.
• Launched new products in response to identified consumer needs, developed sales targets, planned for product growth, distribution efficiency, set sound pricing and advertising strategies, which resulted in increase in brand market share of 8% points after it had reached maturity.
• Contributed to identifying critical areas for improvement and strengths and thus influenced strategic decision-making through tracking brand preference performance in the market using global research trackers.
• Established an in house Research department, which improved company communication effectiveness with the market (dealers and customers) by introducing new segmentation parameters, periodical customers questionnaire as part of the Business Process Improvement project.
