Category Development Lead

About the Function:

Our Marketing team are creators, helping to build and nurture some of the world's most loved brands. We craft amazing connections with people around the world to celebrate our brands' legacies and reimagine them for the world today, and into the future.

Everything we do is underpinned by a deep understanding of our consumers, behaviours, trends, and technologies. Using our genius and creativity, we unlock our brands' uniqueness, understand their purpose, and put them at the heart of celebrations everywhere. Together, we're celebrating diversity and challenging stereotypes through our advertising and marketing. Wherever your talents lie, from Design to Consumer Planning, you'll be celebrated and supported in our inclusive culture.

About the role:

Category Development is a pioneering function at the forefront of both the Consumer and Customer Marketing with the goal to turn shoppers into buyers of our brands through shopper propositions that are aligned to the Category, Customer and Brand goals.

It's about getting the right activities in the right places to win the Path to Purchase and to win at the Moment of Choice with shoppers. Drive sharp actionable insights, forward thinking and apply it in the development of the Shopper Marketing strategy ensuring it is rooted in the consumer and shopper journey, market, category and point of purchase insight for both the consumer and trade shopper.

It is about delivering the triple win for the Category, Our Customers and Our Shoppers

Role Responsibilities:

1. Shopper Insights & Category Growth Drivers

• Lead the development of profitable category growth strategies by vividly bringing the shopper to life and generating insights that inspire transformational ideas.

• Build outstanding shopper understanding to equip Commercial Planning with actionable, data-driven opportunities.

• Champion the shopper as a gatekeeper to all commercial thinking, ensuring shopper needs influence brand, customer, and trade decisions.

• Synthesize multiple data sources to uncover key opportunities that drive conversion by channel, retailer, and shopper segment.

• Design, pilot, and scale category-led programs-leveraging big insights and rigorous testing-to drive sustainable category growth across customers and channels.

2. Channel Segmentation (EDGE)

• Own and evolve best-in-class execution guidelines by channel (with PICOS defined by category and retailer requirements).

• Partner with retailers to deliver excellence at the point of purchase, including the design, optimisation, and execution of planograms and shelf standards.

• Ensure channel strategies are grounded in shopper missions, trip types, store formats, and retail dynamics.

3. Customer Joint-Up Business Planning

• Facilitate and lead joint business planning with key customers, translating insights into category growth initiatives and brand-building opportunities.

• Identify and prioritise the most relevant category and shopper insights that drive brand and channel growth within customer business plans.

• Ensure insights are translated into commercially viable plans through Commercial, Commercial Planning &Activation, and Customer Marketing teams.

Experience / skills required:

Qualifications

• Suitable degree
• Valid drivers license

Experience

• Broad experience of Commercial (Minimum 5 - 8) working in sales, customer marketing, retailing or planning functions
• Capable of working within a virtual team, cross functionally and with a high sense of initiative and ownership, being self-sufficient and independent
• Project Management experience
• Experience of building collaborative and influential relationships with customers and industry peers in customer marketing and related fields
• Comprehensive Commercial and Financial decision making experience

Skills

• High cognitive ability
• Experience of people, planning and performance management
• Builds powerful relationships, operates with positive intent fostering trust, candour and respect, resolving conflict and creating collaborative relationships by leading change and can drive clarity out of ambiguity
• Facilitate operational simplicity, enabling decisions to be made, aligned to and driven swiftly
• Strong analytical skills, systems proficiency and data handling expertise
• Market research and data analysis
• Advanced level of systems literacy, i.e. JDA/DotActiv, SAP, Qlikview, IRI/Nielsen or equivalent

Flexible Working Statement:

Flexibility is key to our success. Talk to us about what flexibility means to you so that you're supported to manage your wellbeing and balance your priorities from day one.

Diversity statement:

Our purpose is to celebrate life, every day, everywhere. And creating an inclusive culture, where everyone feels valued and that they can belong, is a crucial part of this.

We embrace diversity in the broadest possible sense. This means that you'll be welcomed and celebrated for who you are just by being you. You'll be part of and help build and champion an inclusive culture that celebrates people of different gender, ethnicity, ability, age, sexual orientation, social class, educational backgrounds, experiences, mindsets, and more.

Our ambition is to create the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer products companies in the world. Join us and help transform our business as we take our brands to the next level and build new ones as part of shaping the next generation of celebrations for consumers around the world.

Feel inspired? Then this may be the opportunity for you.

If you require a reasonable adjustment, please ensure that you capture this information when you submit your application.

Client-provided location(s): Johannesburg, South Africa

Job ID: Diageo-JR1121009

Employment Type: FULL_TIME

Posted: 2025-12-23T23:50:08