Central Category Development & Insights Manager

Title: Central Category Development & Insights Manager

Division:Consumer Products Division

Location: New York City (Hudson Yards)

Team: Category Development & Insights, Hair Care

Mission: 

For more than a century, L’Oréal has devoted its energy, innovation, and scientific excellence solely to one business: Beauty. Our goal is to offer each and every person around the world the best of beauty in terms of quality, efficacy, safety, sincerity and responsibility to satisfy all beauty needs and desires in their infinite diversity.

At L'Oréal Consumers Products, our mission is to democratize the best of beauty, and for us, beauty has to be sustainable. Our division holds the world’s #1 beauty brand with L’Oréal Paris, the #1 makeup brand with Maybelline New York, the #1 natural brand with Garnier, as well as NYX Professional Makeup.  

Role Expectations:

Uncover, Explore and Develop deep shopper, consumer and market insights to drive medium (3 year) and short-term national category stories to feed to the retailers, marketing and Account sales teams with the objective to grow the Hair Care and Styling categories and leverage category opportunities CPD brands to action on.

Accelerate growth of the category and CPD brands by:

• Leveraging exhaustive omni channel category analysis to identify category growth opportunities for the Haircare and Styling categories.
• Leveraging deep category shopper insights to optimize mix (placement, distribution and assortment) and uncover growth opportunities for CPD. 

Key Job Accountabilities

• Support the creation of Category Visions for Haircare that encompass, Merchandising, Assortment, Education, brand Adjacencies
• Support the development of the overall Consumer Products Division HairCare portfolio strategy. Based on insights and customer knowledge,identifybespoke CPD brands growth opportunities and help influence brands strategies and innovation plan
• Build and maintain true understanding of market trends and omni-channel category insights by leveraging Category Development toolkit such as, but not limited to: Cookbooks, Nielsen IQ, Rakuten, Spectra, Kantar, Suzy, Mintel, Euromonitor, Stylus, Netbase, Rival IQ, Nielsen Discovery, Numerator and CMI bespoke Metier and Shopper research.   
• Assess e-commerce retailer platforms to provide strategic recommendations inclusive of assortment, user navigation, educational opportunities, and omni channel cohesiveness.
• Leverage ecommerce tools/dashboards such as Market 360,Atlasand the Ecom Dashboard. Ecommerce MRMs to provide omni-channel commercial insights to the retailer and multi-functional teams. 
• Monitor and Upkeep Nielsen database quality to maintain accuracy in insight reporting

• Brief, Manage and Share out key Suzy Survey’s to uncover consumer insights and help answer retailer category questions.

Define consistent category guidelines

• Serve as category expert for Marketing and BAL teams.   Align Brand teams to ensure least possible overlap of shopper strategies to maximize market share and innovation success for CPD overall to win. Support and attend planning meetings i.e. – National Sales Meeting, IMM, key strategic meetings with internal stakeholders
• Liaison between Retailer Category team and internal; communicate key initiatives and category trends to Retailer Category team and filter internal requests out to Retailer Category team for streamlined communication
• Identify, share, and align on shopper specific category opportunities. Deliver action steps to Retailer Category Team for retail specific implementation that will drive dollar share growth, incremental space and better Brand placement
• Uncover current emerging shopper trends, where we partner with CMI to create a Shopper/Consumer centric story that provides Marketing with insight, validation, and recommendations
• Synthesize panier benefits with shopper profiles to equip the field with a robust selling story supporting shopper needs or growing trends for new item meetings
• Support White Space team by providing shopper insights and distribution opportunities based on CPD brand and shopper alignment.
• Maintain knowledge of promotional and pricing fundamentals for CPD and competitive brands to provide high level insight of promotional effectiveness to internal and field teams.
• Collaborate with Central Director and Category Leads to provide shopper insights leveraging retailer loyalty systems, where appropriate, for internal management meetings and/or brand personalization marketing initiatives. 

The Network you would work with: 

Category Lead, Central Director and Retailer Category peer group. Marketing teams, BAL, Account Teams, and Head of Sales. CMI and Shopper Insights.

Essential skills

• Minimum 3 years’ experience in a category development, sales role or marketing role
• Proven ability to develop sharp insight and build it into action plans to optimize sales and profit
• Affinity to beauty. Multi category experience in Haircare and HairStyling is a plus
• Ability to manage multiple projects and organize / prioritize them 

• Natural collaborator and decision making influencer
• Category Management Certification is a plus
• Nielsen Discovery, Numerator, Nielsen IQ, Rival IQ, Netbase, Nielsen POS, Spectra, Rakuten, Excel tool expertise
• Understand consumer adoption and insights to drive beauty is a plus. Be a master in AI usage to automate low value work, provide the human element and critical thinking / curation while using AI.
• Authorization to work in the United States on a full-time, permanent, ongoing basis is required. No immigration support/sponsorship is offered for this role.
• Being present in the office three days a week is considered an essential function of all office-based roles for eligible full-time employees.

What’s In It For You:

• Salary Range: $98,400-$140,200(The actual compensation will depend on a variety of job-related factors which may include geographic location, work experience, education, and skill level)
• Competitive Benefit Package(Medical, Dental, Vision, 401K, Pension Plan)
• Hybrid Work Policy (3 Days in Office, 2 Days Work from Home)
• Flexible Time Off (Paid Company Holidays, Paid Vacation, Vacation Buy Program, Volunteer Time, Summer Fridays & More!)
• Access to Company Perks (VIP Access to L’Oréal’s Internal Shop for Discounted Products, Monthly Mobile Allowance)
• Learning & Development Opportunities for Career Progression (Unlimited Access to E-learnings, Lunch & Learn Sessions, Mentorship Programs, & More!)
• Employee Resource Groups (Think Tanks and Innovation Squads)
• Access to Mental Health & Wellness Programs 

Don’t meet every single requirement? At L'Oréal, we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and innovative workplace. If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with the qualifications listed in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways! You may just be the right candidate for this or other roles!

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and take pride in a diverse environment. We would love to find out more about you as a candidate and do not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, marital or veteran status, medical condition or disability, or any other legally protected status.

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