Overview
As Strategic & Portfolio Insights Manager, you will sit at the heart of decision‑making for the UK Snacks business. You will shape how and where we play by translating deep human understanding, data, and foresight into clear strategic direction.
This is an end‑to‑end, highly strategic role, responsible for identifying growth opportunities, influencing long‑term portfolio strategy, and ensuring our plans are built on world‑class, human‑centric insights. You will partner closely with senior leaders and cross‑functional teams to guide both the what and how of growth.
Your work will help define our 3–5 year vision, inform strategic planning, and ensure execution across brands and channels aligns with consumer truth.
This is a chance to shape the future of the UK Snacks portfolio, influence senior leadership decisions, and ensure some of the UK’s most loved brands continue to win with consumers. You’ll have the opportunity to operate at scale, work with best‑in‑class insight tools and partners, and leave a lasting mark on the business.
Responsibilities
Shape strategy through human‑centric insight
- Co‑develop future‑proofed category and portfolio strategies that inform strategic and annual planning.
- Ensure consumer insight is embedded at the heart of decision‑making, championing Jobs‑to‑Be‑Done thinking at category and portfolio level.
- Turn complex data, SWOTs, and frameworks into clear, compelling strategic narratives that influence senior stakeholders.
- Act as a trusted thought partner and subject‑matter expert to the leadership and executive teams.
Identify and size growth opportunities
- Leverage demand spaces and advanced analytics to identify market gaps and portfolio opportunities across channels.
- Lead ‘where to play’ opportunity identification to accelerate category growth, incrementality, penetration, share and profitability.
- Analyse the consumer shape of demand, identifying shifts in behaviour, occasions and needs.
- Forecast future opportunities by applying qualitative and quantitative trends to portfolio growth models.
Deliver foresight and demand understanding
- Lead demand and foresight tracking to inform strategic plans and assess the impact of macro and external disruptions.
- Stay ahead of consumer, category and competitive trends, regulatory changes and future forces of change.
- Facilitate strategic deep dives for internal teams and customers, bringing insight to life in category visions and growth stories.
Drive transformation through insight
- Proactively identify gaps in consumer understanding aligned to key business priorities (e.g. sustainability, health/ GLP1s, flavour strategy).
- Use a wide insight toolkit – syndicated data, scan, quantitative, qualitative, behavioural science – to uncover human truths.
- Design and lead collaborative workshops and engagements that bring stakeholders on the journey and inspire change.
- Create compelling, visual strategic frameworks that provide clarity, alignment and momentum.
Build capability and partnerships
- Train and guide internal teams and agency partners to deliver powerful category, consumer and brand insights.
- Partner with global and regional teams to adapt, evolve and influence insight tools and methodologies.
- Build and manage strong agency relationships to stretch thinking and elevate the insights agenda.
Qualifications
Experience & capability
- Comfortable working across multiple data sources (scan, quantitative, qualitative), understanding both strengths and limitations.
- Strong quantitative fluency, including the ability to size and forecast business opportunities using tools such as Kantar, NielsenIQ and demand/occasion data.
- Ability to synthesise complex information into focused, actionable insights and growth recommendations.
- Strong strategic thinking – able to frame ambiguous problems, develop clarity, and drive impact end‑to‑end.
Ways of working
- Exceptional storytelling and presentation skills, with the ability to adapt messages for different audiences (executive vs. working teams).
- Commercially savvy, with a consultancy mindset and strong empathy for business partners.
- Skilled at influencing in a matrixed environment and building coalitions without formal authority.
Mindset & leadership
- Curious, courageous self‑starter who brings new thinking and challenges the status quo.
- Confident change agent who inspires others to adopt new ideas.
- Strong collaborator and networker, working effectively across functions, geographies and external partners.
- Ability to manage complexity and prioritise with focus.
- Capable of inspiring, coaching and developing others to maximise engagement.
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