Global Beverage Marketing Director

The Global Beverage Marketing Director will lead marketing and support overall global strategy development for global Beverage segments (Internal & External Coatings for Beverage Cans & Ends). He/she will be responsible for execution of geographical expansion, global portfolio management, new product commercialization planning and execution, pricing strategy and value proposal analysis and engagement with key brand owners to drive demand for existing and new technologies.

The Global Beverage Marketing Director must have a proven track record of developing and growing global and regional B2B businesses. Understanding of customer needs and broader value chain analysis is essential for successfully identifying new product needs and developing/commercializing via Stage Gate Process and Influence Strategy at Can-Makers and Brand-Owners.

This position reports to the Vice-President of Global Marketing and is a key member of the Global Packaging Marketing leadership team. The role will have one (1) Global Marketing Managers (currently based in North America) reporting into them. Expected travel is 40% and includes international travel

Market Knowledge

• Understands SHW Packaging Coatings position in the Beverage Segments with a high degree of knowledge of the product portfolio, technologies, and the strategies of key customers, brand owners and competitors.
• Provides unbiased, in-depth market insight for profit improvement programs via product portfolio management in alignment with Regional Market Managers and Sales Directors.
• Uses customer, brand, and competitor knowledge to identify and build marketing plans to improve market share, profitability and new business models to grow the Packaging Coatings sales.

Core Product Line Management

• Manages Global Beverage product core and new product lines effectively for on-going revenue and profitability improvements.
• Responsible for developing and managing relationships with major Beverage Brand-Owners across all regions to ensure new and existing products are tested, qualified and accepted with the goal of generating demand for SHW Packaging Coatings products via value selling tools (value proposals, Safety-by-Design Protocol, Influence Strategy, BluePrinter, etc.)
• Responsible for Global Beverage Portfolio to optimize speed to market, cross-functional resource allocation including but not limited to, R&D, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Finance, and Regulatory. Leads Global Portfolio Reviews to assess project status, prioritization and all aspects of new product programs.
• Lead New Formula Introduction (NFI) for New Products to ensure all functions are aligned and scale-up process is reliable to ensure proper speed to market ("Right at the First Time" approach)
• Works actively across all the regions to ensure Global Portfolio Optimization and cross-fertilization strategy (transfer the product knowledge/technology from one region to another) to assess global product strategy versus regional approach
• Responsible for product segment strategy and marketing plans along with Marketing Communications to ensure new product promotional materials such as Value Proposals, brochures, etc. are made available to Sales and supporting at trade shows.
• Leads Product Management to deliver profit improvement via SKU rationalization for the segment(s), reduce manufacturing complexity, elimination of low return product lines with the goal of improving overall Working Capital
• Responsible for developing, communicating and implementing effective profit improvement strategies with other functions to meet financial objectives.
• Responsible for pricing strategies for new products and for optimizing costs via work with R&D and Manufacturing to achieve cost reductions and other gross margin improvement at the product level in alignment with the Sales Teams
• Responsible for identifying and managing new technology, application and business models' opportunities to drive diversification beyond metal packaging, including extending beyond the value chain of the current business
• Responsible for execution of 5-stage development projects.

Organizational Support

• Works and partners with regional Sales and R&D to support and prioritize growth agenda initiatives and portfolio management.
• Supports Sales and Customer Technical Service Teams during new product launches and training.
• Able to navigate through cultural differences, understand how customers and brand-owners operate in different regions.
• Able to engage and influence SHW teams across all regions to develop long-term relationships with SHW teams to drive geographical expansion of the Beverage product portfolio.
• Establish a culture of marketing excellence regarding marketing strategies, concepts, and programs within all Beverage sub-segments.

Technology

• Understands the technology trends in the Beverage market and the strategic needs of customers.
• Translates brand-owner and can-maker VoC (Voice of Customer) into strategic actions to drive portfolio adjustments for faster speed to market and growth.
• Understands market and technology dynamics and potential inflection points that can potentially drive technology shifts and portfolio prioritization or de-prioritization
• Understand competitive product portfolio across all the regions and provides defensive/offensive product strategies

Minimum Requirements:

• Must have a bachelor's degree in Marketing.
• Must have a minimum 10 years of commercial/marketing experience and demonstrated success in industrial B2B strategic marketing and commercial management.
• Must have experience leading global strategic marketing initiatives across multiple regions.

Preferred Requirements:

• Have a bachelor's degree in Marketing, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Business, Technology or other sciences.
• Have a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or Advanced degree.
• Have experience within beverage packaging, metal packaging, coatings, packaging materials, or adjacent consumer packaged goods industries.
• Have demonstrated experience building executive-level relations with global or multinational consumer brand owners.
• Have experience managing business performance through pricing, margin improvement, portfolio optimization, and P&L related decision making.
• Have demonstrated success leading complex new product commercialization programs from concept through market launch.
• Have an understanding of sustainability trends, circular economy initiatives, food-contact regulations, and emerging packaging technologies.
• Have demonstrated success leading initiatives across multiple regions and cultures through influence rather than direct authority.
• Have a proven ability to influence senior leaders, customers, and cross-functional stakeholders through compelling business cases, strategic storytelling, and data-driven recommendations.