Innovation Manager

Innovation is a must win battle for Pernod Ricard. Innovation is at the heart of value creation for the Group and is critical in the transform and accelerate journey. Innovation accounts for 1/3 of the expected growth from the Group. The Group has established a clear direction of making the strategic brands bigger, with an expectation of more Billion brands in the near future. A new Global Innovation Direction has been created in order to have a holistic view of the brand and market challenges and develop innovations to address these opportunities. A Global innovation will ensure a maximize allocation of resources and avoid duplication. The expertise of the Global Innovation direction will allow more impact and faster development. The new Global Innovation Direction should enable a more Simplified, Empowered and Disciplined way to do Innovation. The Global Innovation Direction has identified 7 innovation-intense strategic brands: Absolut, Malibu, Kahlua, Ballantine's, Chivas Regal, The Glenlivet and Jameson. They are aligned with the new Gold and Crystal Brand Units. These brands are led by Head of Innovation with a global international scope of work.

The Innovation Manager role will be based in London, working on one of the Scotch Whisky brands. The Innovation Manager needs to be an experienced innovator, who thrives with complex projects, has strong project management and influencing skills, who knows how to truly collaborate for superior results and who is truly passionate about innovation. The person should also have strong leadership skills as they will be collaborating with a multi-functional team to create and deliver innovations. The person is accountable for end-to-end creation and delivery of Global innovation.

Vision
Drive powerful and scalable NPD innovations on our strategic international brands, fueled with strong consumer-centricity and proximity to markets.

Job aim
Deliver the Vision by:

• Creating a consumer-centric pipeline of innovations in partnership with the Head of Innovation.
• Leading the development of specific innovations and project management through stage gate from Stage 1 through to Post Launch analysis.
• Collaborating and interacting with Brand Companies, Market companies, GBD Innovation Team and Insights COEs to deliver a pipeline that meets the needs of the key defined markets.
• Contributing to the global Pernod Ricard Innovation community to build and share learnings.

Key Roles and Responsibilities

• Create and deliver innovations on PR’s strategic international brands to accelerate growth.
• Define business and consumer opportunities with robust business and consumer analysis.
• Ensure projects are aligned with the markets’ needs.
• Manage projects through Stage Gate from Stage 1 to Post-Launch Analysis – including localizing concepts, creating product briefs and working with R&D to develop, test and iterate prototypes, creating packaging designs and overall project leadership of the multi-functional team to deliver projects to successful market launch.
• Balance rigour, data and TLO (test, learn, optimize) with the need for agility and speed to market.
• Assess innovations after launch, share learnings, adjust propositions if needed.
• Partner with MarketCos to support the creation of the strongest possible route to market.
• Drive consumer centricity into the pipeline and ensure business needs are met: Leverage agile approaches and research methodologies to create strong and differentiated innovations that delight consumers.
• Ensure learnings are shared with markets, BrandCo’s and other Global Hubs.
• Build strong business case leveraging external and internal data (financials).
• Be the expert of BrandCo ecosystem (production capabilities, legal, competition, technical capabilities…)
• Foster strong collaboration and interaction with Brand Companies and key strategic Markets: Build strong collaborative relationships with multi-functional team and lead projects to deliver innovations.
• Help to define and optimise the ways of working with BrandCos and Markets to efficiently deliver the Innovation pipeline including collaborating closely with R&D & Supply Chain.
• Support best practice share outs.
• Wider contribution at Regional level: Be an active contributor towards the overall Marketing Transformation of Pernod Ricard.

If you recognize yourself in the description below, don’t wait and apply!

Qualifications

• Educated to Degree level.
• You have min 3 years of relevant experience in a marketing role creating physical product innovations (not just service/business model innovation).
• You have strong project management skills.
• You have experience managing international/multi-market projects to successful delivery an advantage.
• You are fluent in English. Other languages an advantage.

Diversity, Inclusion and Culture
We’re committed to diversity and inclusion. People are at the heart of everything we do at Pernod Ricard and are the foundation of our collective spirit as ‘Créateurs de Convivialité’. We promote diversity and inclusion throughout our business and supply chain. In our teams, we proactively foster a diverse work force and an inclusive culture – an environment where we can truly be ourselves. We will assess your application for this role based on your skills, experiences and achievements, not your gender, age, ethnic or educational background or any other such factors. Please feel free to leave these off your CV and application form if you so wish. Similarly, if you would like to discuss opportunities for flexible working or require accommodations or support to complete our application process, please let us know.

Responsible drinking
As ‘Créateurs de convivialité’, we want to turn social interactions into genuine and friendly experiences of sharing and wellbeing. In our culture, we want to create diverse teams in which our differences contribute to our success. Therefore, all are welcome at Pernod Ricard, regardless of your religious beliefs or personal choices on the consumption of alcohol. In our business, we work together with industry members, civil society, governments, local authorities and UN bodies to promote responsible drinking.