Marketing Insights Manager, Commercial

Introduction

At GAF, we cover more than buildings. We cover each other. No matter what role, tenure, or track, under this roof you are empowered to be there for your teammates, your customers, and especially your community. Under this roof, we don’t back down from hard work– we support one another in pursuit of something bigger. We define the future while leading the present. And under this roof, we own our opportunities. Becoming the market leader only happens when everyone feels they have the opportunity, and the support, to thrive. We are GAF. And under this roof, we protect what matters most.

Team Overview

The Insights Team is a world class research function dedicated to advocating for GAF’s customers, identifying customer needs and pain points while supporting insights driven customer led innovation across GAF’s products and experiences. We are strategic business partners who strive to uncover, deliver and evangelize actionable insights to drive product/program strategy, design and experience.

Summary

The Marketing Insights Manager - Commercial plays an integral role in establishing GAF as the leader in Commercial roofing by building a clear connection to customer needs and empowering the organization to make customer led strategic business decisions. Reporting to the Sr. Director Marketing Insights, this position has end to end accountability for the successful delivery of the Commercial Market Insights roadmap within GAF’s Marketing Organization. This highly visible role within the organization leads and drives the Commercial insights and research agenda, managing cross functional projects and stakeholders across Product Marketing, Sales, Building & Roofing Science and R&D to deliver meaningful insights and recommendations to guide successful customer driven strategies, tactics, product development and experiences. The ideal candidate will act with integrity and back-bone, make thoughtful recommendations sifting through wants to deliver upon needs, engage in healthy debate and challenge the status quo across all levels of management, including executive leadership to ensure the customer is at the center of decision making.

The Marketing Insights Manager provides expertise and strategic partnership in the development and execution of Voice of the Customer and Market Research initiatives which drive GAF’s and Siplast’s Commercial Marketing and Innovation strategies. This role will directly impact product, brand and program development by uncovering and evangelizing actionable and meaningful insights through a combination of research methodologies.

The primary responsibility of this position is to lead, plan, manage, execute and successfully deliver multiple insights projects of varying size and complexity.

This player-coach will own day to day execution responsibilities while managing a team of analysts to successfully build and accomplish an aggressive Commercial insights/research roadmap. A successful candidate brings deep business and industry experience, product knowledge and business acumen to the role and is a passionate champion for the voice of customers (e.g. contractors, architects, specifiers and building owners), with strengths in analytics and synthesizing insights into compelling narratives to ensure GAF allocates resources towards the market/customer needs that best support business goals.

Essential Duties

Specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Serve as the in-house Commercial insights expert. Delivers insights knowledge, strategic recommendations and agile approaches to solve business questions and challenges as they arise from Commercial stakeholders across the organization.

Research Strategy & Execution

• Owns the Commercial Insights research roadmap. Partners with stakeholders to define research/insights needs, anticipating needs as changes in the business/market arise. Manages the initial development, ongoing alignment and socialization of the evolving plan with key stakeholders across the business. Manages internal business owners and stakeholders to articulate and define insights needed to solidify the Research Roadmap and to secure resources (both internal and external) in support of business needs.
• Commercial strategic business partner and point person for new product development (NPD) and enterprise priority initiatives. Provides insights thought leadership on NPD cross functional teams and owns the insights strategy in support of successful product development, optimization and business outcomes keeping the customer at the center.

• Leads, facilitates and curates internal and external cross functional in-person insights engagements including workshops, focus groups, co-creation and brainstorming sessions. In partnership with Building & Roofing Science (BRS), R&D, Product Marketing and Sales owns the end to end management, execution and delivery (from agenda, methodology, facilitation to insights dissemination) of impactful insights led engagements that provide insight into challenging business questions, gaps in the market/customer experience and product development opportunities while bringing customer needs to light to drive action.
• Insights project management and resource planning. Plans, manages, and delivers Marketing Insights projects. Manages and executes end-to-end research projects, including requirement gathering, defining research approach/methodology, participant recruitment, and questionnaire/discussion guide development to meet the insights needs of the business.
• Oversees agency partners/outside vendors. Conduct Commercial market research projects through third parties if additional resources are required OR an outside perspective is needed. Manage requirements, resources, budget and internal stakeholders throughout the process.

Research Enablement & Technology Ownership

• Owner of several Insights tools/systems. Owns the management, administration and strategic execution of key Insights systems including Workfront and Aurelius.
• Owns the relationships with several secondary insights resources. Manage the licenses, users, data dissemination, onboarding/education and the annual pricing negotiation process in partnership with procurement.
• Creates and institutionalizes insights project management methodologies, approaches and standard operating procedures. Collaborates across the insights team to ensure standardization across the function, ease of onboarding new talent and a consistent high level of experience with constant improvement in mind.
• Manages a team of 2 contractors/analysts to support aggressive research agenda.

Under This Roof, We Require

• 7+ years of related experience in marketing analytics, marketing research, user experience research or management consulting.
• A Bachelor’s Degree/MBA or advanced degree preferred

• Experience with quantitative research (survey design, response effects, sampling, crosstabs, and statistical concepts, etc.) and qualitative/user-centered design methods (individual and group interviews, diary studies, direct observation, think-aloud usability testing, etc.) (advanced).
• Experience with a broad range of Marketing Research tools/technology including Qualtrics, Usertesting.com and other online insights tools (advanced).
• Experience with Excel (advanced), PowerPoint (advanced), and Word (advanced)
• Experience working in the Building Materials space. Experience in adjacent complex industries/product categories will be considered.
• Expert facilitation/moderation skills are required.
• Strong stakeholder management and relationship building skills.

Under This Roof, We Also Value

• Marketing Research, Customer Experience and User Experience Research certifications preferred.
• A Bachelor’s Degree/MBA focused in Statistics, Research, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Anthropology, Human Factors, HCI/CS, Marketing, General Management, Architecture, Sustainability or Engineering is a plus.
• Excellent communicator (both written and verbal) with strong business acumen and strong work ethic.
• Demonstrated project management skills and ability to effectively manage a large workload with ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Experience conducting analysis and sharing actionable insights (advanced).
• Experience working with and managing research service providers.

How We Protect What Matters Most

• We offer a wide range of health insurance options that include medical, dental, and vision for you and your family.
• Our Family-Building benefits support the many different journeys to fertility and parenthood.
• Our robust 401K plan includes an employer match contribution with your pre-tax and/or Roth contributions.
• Other exciting programs and perks are available to help employees achieve work-life balance, including (but not limited to) a wellness program, free financial coaching, a referral program, and product rebates when purchased for an employee’s primary residence.
• Professional growth and development are very important to us! We offer internal training programs and courses, as well as a generous tuition reimbursement program.
• We put diversity and inclusion into action with our Employee Resource Groups, which unite employees based on common perspectives, identities, demographic factors, or out of a desire to be an ally.