Global Assistant Brand Manager - Ponds

Job Title: Global Assistant Brand Manager - Ponds (Brand Development)

Work Location: Mumbai HO

Function/BU: Beauty & Wellbeing, Marketing

BUSINESS CONTEXT:

Pond’s is Unilever’s largest face care brand globally, present in over 50 countries, and one of Unilever’s Power Brands. Founded in 1846, the brand has always stood for pioneering innovation - from the iconic Pond’s Cold Cream to Pond’s Super Light Gel, which disrupted the moisturising category. While category conversations around skin care ingredients have exploded in the recent past, Pond’s was the first brand to use Niacinamide in its formulas since 1978, ahead of the market by years. In 2024, Pond’s underwent a major brand relaunch, elevating Desire, Science & Purpose like never before.

Primary Skills/ Competencies:

Consumer Intimacy

• Put the consumer at the heart of all strategy and execution.
• Identify real consumer problems and solve them using insightful innovations & impactful communications to drive brand growth.

Project Management

• Work with R&D, Supply Chain, and finance teams to design and bring to life the innovation pipeline and ensure the timely delivery of projects.
• Co-create mixes with partners across all functions, both internal (R&D, SC, Finance, Procurement, etc.) and external (Creative, Pack Design, Consumer Research)
• Own & deliver business metrics of turnover, gross margin, and share

Mix Design & Execution

• Co-Create the communication strategy for the brand and bring it to life across all campaigns based on true consumer insights.
• Work with creative agencies to bring alive brand JTBDs through the process of issuing briefs, providing feedback, consumer testing, and final production.
• Create Brand Experience Toolkits to enable 360 deployments of campaigns across multiple media channels.
• Collaborate with R&D to create winning products on core and innovations to help drive greater loyalty.
• Create pack designs with design agencies based on consumer insight and trade/channel realities.

Detailed Job description:

• End to end owner of the Pond’s Sun Miracle portfolio, one of Pond’s fastest-growing platforms – This would include end-to-end innovation pipeline launches, partnering business teams to deliver in-year turnover, communication development, social-first campaign design & deployment,
• Liaise closely with cross-functional network teams internally, and multiple creative agencies externally on a day-to-day basis, as well as interface with leadership teams to drive decision-making.

Required Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in marketing or business Administration OR Equivalent
• Minimum 3+ years of experience in marketing 
• Demonstrated passion for the world of beauty
• Action-oriented, with a healthy disregard for the status quo
• Strong consumer intimacy
• Strong Project Management skills. Experience in working with cross-functional teams, both internal and external
• Preferred - experience in Social-First Crafting

Key Stakeholders:

• Marketing, BD, BU, CMI, R&D, Global brand team, Local deployment teams, cross-functional Network teams.