Overview
Consumer Insights E2E Associate Manager - This is a determined contract for 10 Months.Support Consumer Insights agenda delivery for Walkers / UK Foods portfolio, translating human understanding into strategic choices that restore performance and unlock sustainable growth.Influence the business's most critical decisions by anchoring in 'where to play' and unlocking the 'how to win' from occasions/ needs to jobs-to-be-done and end-to-end superiority.Operate as a decision-making partner rather than a research provider, maximizing existing knowledge, accelerating learning through agile and AI-enabled approaches, and converting evidence into clear actions that drive growth.Connect and mobilize Marketing and X-functional teams (eg: Commercialisation, Sales, R&D, RGM and global partners) behind the Consumer Insight agenda to ensure learning is optimally scoped, delivered and impact orientated.
Responsibilities
- Support the E2E Consumer Insight agenda for Walkers / UK Foods portfolioAlign efforts behind the most important growth choices rather than a list of brand requests. Translate business priorities into focused learning plans and decision-making impact
- Help to diagnose what is driving performance and bring the Consumer "why"Integrate Consumer and Shopper evidence to explain what is happening, why and what the business should do next. Use end-to-end thinking to identify highest-value problems to solve across Marketing Levers.
- Support critical insight initiatives for priority business unit workstreamsShape clear hypotheses, critical unknowns and proportionate learning plans for agreed priorities. Move at pace, mobilise existing assets first, and land a decisive recommendation rather than a research read-out.
- Make every brand initiative needs-first and connected to growth strategyPivot business from brand-out to outside-in, embedding Demand Spaces and Category / Portfolio strategy as common fact base. Clarify brand problem-to-solve and unlock right activation across eg: NPD, Vis/pack, Comms, Channel, Occasion-Based-Pack-Price-Architecture
- Close the loop through live learning and performance evaluationDefine success measures and learning plans before launch, then connect in-market performance, equity and consumer / shopper response to determine whether to scale/ stop/ course-correct. Reuse learning vs one offs.
- Modernise how insight work gets doneApply knowledge-first and AI-enabled approach: reuse evidence, build cumulative knowledge assets, use agile and cost-efficient methods, simplifying recurring outputs. Protect capacity for the biggest growth choices.
- Strengthen one integrated UK Insights teamWork fluidly across Consumer, Shopper, Strategic and end-to-end Commercial Insights, drawing on the best expertise regardless of team boundaries. Contribute to business forums, score-carding, team culture and capability.
Qualifications
- Growth Partner: Can connect diagnosis, strategy, activation and multi-data source learning into one clear point of view to influence business decisions, rather than treating insight as a research exercise or series of disconnected inputs.
- Strategic fluency: Understands how brands grow; the role of penetration, portfolio choices and brand roles; how to translate 'where to play' into practical 'how to win' actions, with levers that will move the business most.
- Activation minded: Understands full growth mix and knows how to turn JTBD into right proposition (product/pack), brand-building and comms, working with x-functions on initiatives and availability (channel/shopper) and value (pricing, price-pack-architecture etc).
- Solid researcher: Strong qual and quant foundation with judgement to choose the right approach for the question, balancing pace, cost and rigour. Can independently design learning plans and challenge agency recommendations.
- Stakeholder Leadership: Credible with senior stakeholders, learning to build strong partnerships to act as a strategic thought partner. Challenges constructively for Consumer, builds alignment and keeps teams anchored in evidence.
- Simplifies complex: Able to cut through wealth of data and information to find crux of insight and narrative, communicating this clearly and compellingly. Comfortable adopting and blending capability / segmentation frameworks
- Decision-led, not research-Led: Starts with the business decision, not the research question. Works backwards to what needs to be answered and delivered, with eye to output from the off. Business seeks out as a thought partner
- Human-centric orientation: Naturally empathetic, able to talk from the Consumer's shoes, coming at growth from the perspective of people, occasions and needs rather than brands, functions or channels. Reframes conversation this way.
- Connects the Growth System: Sees connections across category, portfolio, brand, shopper and commercial drivers and can move seamlessly from diagnosis to where-to-play and how-to-win as a 'red thread'.
- Simplifies complexity into action: Can distil lots of information and potentially conflicting sources into a handful of insights and a story that people remember and act upon; comfortable to workshop this through as well as type up.
- Influences through challenge and partnership: Builds trust quickly, challenges constructively and aligns diverse stakeholders around a shared direction. Knows when to lead, when to coach and when to bring others with them.