Innovation Manager, Central Europe – Elida Beauty (9 Month Fixed Term Contract)

Work Location - Paris, France

Who we are … we are Elida Beauty

Elida Beauty is a very exciting new beauty business within Unilever. We are re-founding iconic brands by remixing them for today’s generation, making them even bigger beauty hits than they were the first time around. Our remixes democratize beauty, because we want everyone on the ‘beauty dance floor’ with top-quality products at great value.

Driven by our colleague’s creativity, agility and close connection with consumers, customers, and suppliers, we are able to unleash the true potential of our already loved brands with a fresh start. We ‘Re-Found’ them using a start-up mentality that always ‘finds a way’. Our ‘no silos’, one team approach drives both personal and business growth so that together we deliver outcomes that are music to the ears of consumers, customers, colleagues and the planet alike.

What is this role?

We are looking for an enthusiastic and ambitious assistant innovation manager to help lead the new product development for the brands based out of Continental Europe within the Elida Beauty business. This role requires working with multiple partners, including the brand teams, along with functions across the wider team.

Exciting and fast-paced, this will be a busy and dynamic environment where you will be expected to work collectively with teams across the business to unlock the power of our brands for both consumers and the customer. This is an exciting role that covers product development for launches in France, Russia and Italy with reach in extended markets. A passion for consumer understanding will be key, as we seek to lead categories with highly functional product performance linked to insight driven claims that result in conversion to sales. Reporting into the Senior Brand Managers of Timotei, Monsavon and Williams, you will work together to lead innovation planning and execution, as well as margin accretion and compliancy initiatives across the brands in the Elida Beauty portfolio. This will require the ability to take a big picture approach and to work closely with senior stakeholders to drive growth. You will need to work particularly closely internally with commercial, R&D, finance, and supply chain teams as well as external partners to deliver exciting innovation roadmap plans and new product launches into market.

Your Key Responsibilities

• Innovation project management: Supporting the brand teams, you will guide innovation / renovation / Net Revenue Realisation projects from insight through to execution in market. Partnering with a cross functional team across supply chain, R&D and finance, you will be working to design new products (formula/pack/fragrance), gather stakeholder inputs to sign off key project milestones at appropriate times, and manage delivery to an aligned network for stock in warehouse. Your will Champion the “like a start-up" innovation approach and mindset to help deliver faster and more relevant innovation to market
• Reacting & improving our Innovation Working with the brand activation teams you will conduct thorough post launch evaluations to ensure all learnings are recycled back into the business.
• Building strong business cases: A critical part of this role will be to provide a sound strategic and financial rationale for each project in terms of what it will bring to the Elida business. This will require you to work closely with the Consumer Insights and Analytics manager to pull relevant market data and design a cost-effective research plan to demonstrate consumer need and size of opportunity. You will also need to work with the cross functional team to ensure that new products meet cost of goods and margin targets, with a fully modelled financial business case.
• Artwork co-ordination: You will be managing an artwork co-ordinator, and docking into the Elida central creative hub, to deliver artworks across the hair portfolio for both innovation and compliancy projects. This will involve the adaptation of a new artwork process and network of stakeholders that is fit for the Elida business.
• Compliancy, quality and savings: The Innovation manager will also be responsible for any marketing inputs required on projects driving legal compliancy (due to changes in regulations) and or savings initiatives designed to drive margin accretion.
• Budget: Manage innovation budget (incl AW).
• Leading Agile Methods: Helping teams to lead agile methods (sprint work, MVP development, launch-and-learn to innovation projects and building new processes for iterative product development).

Requirements:

We are looking for someone with 2+ years experience in marketing with proven capability or past experience in…

• A base (but not expert) understanding of the importance of consumer insight and how this translates into marketing planning and execution. You will have plenty of opportunities to develop these skills further in the type of work you will be asked to do.

• Proven experience of prioritizing and organizing work across projects in a busy, dynamic working environment
• Analytical capability – when have you interpreted data and put it to practical use?
• Excellent organization skills in managing projects from start to finish, and on time
• An understanding of product portfolios and how they meet consumer needs
• Confidence in preparing and presenting plans to senior stakeholders
• Ability to work with people across different functions and with different working styles.
• Good understanding of how business cases and the P&L is structured

Who you are…

• Glass half full. You will be a positive solution finder, who is driven, curious, and bold. But also honest and empathetic, this is a team orientated environment where everyone has a voice and you must be willing to listen to different points of view.
• Passionate about products and trends. You want to get under the skin of what will really drive an amazing product experience and create the next big thing!
• A great negotiator and influencer. This is a complex role, with many stakeholders and inputs. You will need to have patience and be able to flex your style and approach.
• A pragmatic problem solver. Driven to work in a high functioning team which pivots to meet the latest challenge – agility will be critical.
• Excited to push boundaries. You will be able to find creative solutions within tight budgets.

Inclusive and motivated. A self-starter looking for the opportunity to show what they can do. You will need to be comfortable managing projects autonomously.

Join us…

To ensure that your personal creativity helps to unlock our potential, we will upskill and reskill you. We will develop leading-edge digital marketing skills and best-in-class teamworking capabilities.

Most importantly, we will give you the autonomy to use them like a ‘founder’. We will help you to think like a CEO so that we all focus on delivering our Purpose and so you drive growth as you develop. Imagine how good we will feel when we see that our creativity reignites growth in the business because consumers embrace our new ideas.

Better for our consumers, better for the world and better for each of us

The way we manufacture, package and distribute our products will be better for everyone and for the planet. We will bring a new meaning to diversity and inclusion by providing access to beauty products that suit every kind of skin and hair.

Excited about the Role?

Please apply online. Your application will be reviewed against our requirements and we will be in touch to provide you with an update on the status of your application.

Unilever is an organisation committed to equity, inclusion and diversity to drive our business results and create a better future, every day, for our diverse employees, global consumers, partners, and communities. We believe a diverse workforce allows us to match our growth ambitions and drive inclusion across the business. At Unilever we are interested in every individual bring ing their ‘Whole Self’ to work and this includes you! Thus if you require any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of your application so that we can support you through your recruitment journey.