Welcome from the Director
Simon Stewart, Marketing Director
“Bringing Fresh ideas to life – this is what we do in marketing. I passionately believe that we have to develop our brands, ideas and above all our people. We have come a long way, I believe we will continue on this journey and we will evolve into a world-leading marketing function.
We are a relatively small team, with around 90 people in GB within six teams; insight and category marketing, Pepsi brands, Britvic brands, innovation, marketing activation and corporate affairs. In Ireland we have around 22 people across brands, insight and category.
Marketing is responsible for driving the value growth of our brands that ultimately drives shareholder value.
To be unique in the marketplace calls for brand passion, commercial acumen, strategic thinking and the ability to build powerful relationships with our customers, internal stakeholders and agency partners.
Marketing offers great opportunities, from customer facing roles in category where your expertise in the soft drinks market will build partnerships with our key customers to brand management where you will be developing our brand strategies and managing the execution of our “go to market” plans.
The Marketing Teams
The purpose of each of the marketing teams is described below…
Insight and planning – The insight and planning team brings together consumer, category, customer and shopper understanding to identify actionable insights that shape business decision making. Working in partnership with the marketing and sales teams, the insight function ensures that brand, innovation and channel plans are targeting the most valuable market opportunities and are translated into impactful activity that motivates our consumers, shoppers & customers.
Category marketing - This team is at the heart of the marketing operation, driving our understanding of the changing needs of our shoppers, customers and consumers. Working closely with the insight department it develops our category strategies which influence everything from our brand plans to our sales strategy. Category marketing play a key role in step-changing our category leadership both internally and externally. Through strategic thinking and building customer relationships, you will develop and bring to life innovative category plans and lead future relationships with key customers. This ultimately will shape how our shoppers, customers and consumers interact with soft drinks now and in the future.
Pricing and promotions – Pricing and promotions are a key lever of our brand strategies. The role of this small but strategically important team is to read the market in terms of price performance and identify implications. This team supports the Brand and Customer Management teams to develop and implement pricing strategies that deliver value growth. We also provide the expertise when setting base prices for new and existing products and provide the insight and analysis when planning promotions.
Consumer innovation – This team is all about ensuring Britvic is not only able to perform in the market now, but also succeed in the future. Innovation comprises of three sub teams: consumer, technical & product communications. The consumer innovation team works closely with the insight & brand teams in order to find new and profitable consumer opportunities which both enhance and complement our existing portfolio. The team then lead cross functional project teams in the commercial development and delivery of new products and/or packs, from concept through to launch. The technical innovation team investigates emergent technologies in packaging, ingredients and processing in order to shape and inform strategies. The team employs the best technical minds in the industry developing winning product and pack solutions to drive commercial growth. The product communications team brings together the nutrition, sensory and regulatory expertise within the business. The team works cross functionally throughout the Britvic Soft Drinks group to support make, market and sell to enable flawless execution.
Brands - This area of marketing aims to drive brand strategy, ensuring that all our brands from Pepsi to Robinsons, maximise their brand equity to consumers and value to our shareholders. This team is divided into two key areas: Britvic brands and Pepsico brands, each headed up by a Brand director. The purpose of the brand teams is to manage the brands from a general management sense, not a purist marketing sense. We provide strategic development and executional management against our core and seed brands. These roles have a high level of accountability and visibility across the business, as the brands strategies (developed from the category strategies) drive the commercial operating plan.
Marketing Activation – Marketing activation is about bringing our brands to life through the right experiences and activities that connect with the right people at the right time and in the right place to generate value for both our brands and customers. The activation team’s role is therefore to translate Britvic marketing and brand strategies into executable plans and materials that drive our brand equity and rate of sale. Working closely with our marketing colleagues, channel marketing and customer management the activation team manages the process with our external marketing agencies to create compelling solutions that inspire our consumers and shoppers to buy our brands more often. As we build real expertise in marketing activation the team will ensure that our in market activities are fully evaluated so that we continue to drive the best possible return on our marketing investment.
Corporate Affairs - The corporate affairs team is focused on building relationships with key stakeholders and delivering compelling messages to enhance or protect the reputation of both the company and our brands. Externally, we are the key interface with the media and we act as a liaison with government and regulatory bodies, at both a GB and EU level, around proposed legislation and policy development. We work in partnership with other departments across the group to drive the corporate responsibility and sustainability agenda, deliver high quality events and communication tools, including our corporate website, financial and corporate reports, including the annual Soft Drinks Report. We work closely with the HR team to drive employee engagement, keeping employees up to date with news and developments across the business through vehicles such as B.Link+ - our intranet, Britvic Life – our internal magazine and Business Performance Updates.