Global Procurement Category Specialist - Customer Marketing

Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading global drinks company is seeking a Global Procurement Category Specialist in Customer Marketing. This role involves optimizing marketing investments, collaborating across finance and marketing, and driving procurement excellence. Candidates should have strong procurement experience and excellent analytical skills to contribute to significant cost savings and enhance marketing strategies.

Qualifications

• Significant experience in Procurement, Commercial, Finance, Marketing, or related roles.
• Experience delivering category strategies and managing supplier relationships.
• Strong analytical and financial skills relevant to procurement.

Responsibilities

• Support decision making on marketing investments.
• Develop integrated strategies for brand investment.
• Collaborate with teams to optimise marketing spend.

Skills

Procurement knowledge

Commercial awareness

Analytical skills

Communication skills

Education

Membership of CIPS or relevant procurement qualification

Job description

Global Procurement Category Specialist - Customer Marketing

Contract: Permanent

Location: London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin (Hybrid, typically 2 to 3 days a week in the office to support collaboration, connection and teamwork)

About us

With over 200 brands sold in nearly 180 countries, we're the world's leading premium drinks company. Bring your passion and use your curiosity as you explore, collaborate, and innovate to build brands consumers love. Together with passionate people from all over the world, you'll test new ideas, learn and grow, and unlock a brighter, more exciting future.

Join us to create a career worth celebrating!

About the Function

Our Procurement team are innovators, always seeking new ways to help our business, people and much-loved brands thrive. We're dedicated to maximising the £12 billion+ we spend every year, building brands of premium quality, while creating sustainable value and growth. Together, we're shaping the services, partnerships and innovations that meet our future needs.

Our procurement team delivers outstanding end-to-end value across our supply chain and offers innovative supplier solutions. Together, we're driving our 'Society 2030: Spirit of Progress' plan across suppliers and agency partners to create a more sustainable world. Wherever you choose to carve your career, we'll support and encourage you in our inclusive culture.

About the Role

As a Global Procurement Category Specialist within Customer Marketing, you'll help Diageo spend marketing budgets wisely, save money and use cash efficiently. You'll support the decision making behind where our marketing investments should go, ensure suppliers deliver as expected and collaborate globally with Marketing, Sales, Finance and Procurement teams to grow our brands and align on strategy.

This role sits within Diageo's Global Category team as part of our matrix Procurement structure, which combines both Global and In-Market resources. The Global Category Specialist, Customer Marketing is an agile role within the wider Global Customer Procurement team, covering Point of Sale, Experiential, Value-Added Packaging, and strategic A&P investment in support of our Commercial (Sales) strategy and customer needs. The role also has a dedicated focus on Shopper Marketing (create), working closely with our Global Development Procurement team, and offers the opportunity to contribute to a variety of projects and programmes across the wider Global Marketing Procurement function.

You will act as a trusted business partner, collaborating across Procurement Centres of Excellence, Marketing, Commercial, and Finance teams to develop integrated strategies that maximise high-impact brand investment, optimise cost and cash delivery, and drive long-term NSV growth.

Key Responsibilities will include:

• Contribute to Diageo's $625m cost savings target by delivering productivity improvements and establishing a pipeline of value for future years across Customer A&P.
• Support Diageo's $3b free cash flow target by identifying cash opportunities across Customer A&P and developing a robust delivery pipeline.
• Optimise Diageo's Customer A&P (55/35/10) to maximise growth and performance, reducing inefficient and ineffective spend, leveraging investment insights, data, and strategy across the '35' and shopper '10'.
• Collaborate with Global Customer Marketing Procurement and Marketing Effectiveness teams to deliver a 'One Customer' effectiveness strategy, enhancing data and insights globally and across markets.
• Strengthen strategic partnerships and business value between Global Commercial and Procurement functions by actively driving core workstreams.
• Apply strategic procurement excellence through creation or support of category strategies, using Diageo's best methods, standards, and tools to deliver procurement value.
• Lead or support global sourcing activities, ensuring agency commercial terms, capabilities, and contracts align with Diageo's performance ambitions.
• Develop subject-matter expertise in specific spend categories, leveraging external market/industry knowledge to inform strategy development and sourcing.
• Adhere to and promote the highest standards of compliance, including risk management, contract management, and cost modelling/benchmarking.
• Work dynamically across categories, proactively identifying opportunities for flexible resourcing.
• Actively participate in the global procurement community, including attending and leading meetings, supporting strategy alignment, developing capabilities, and sharing best practices.
• Collaborate with Finance, Data & Analytics to enhance spend analytics, A&P investment insights, and cross-category collaboration in line with investment optimisation strategy, including enhancing core systems such as Nucleus and adoption of DSC strategy.

About You

We are looking for someone with strong marketing procurement or commercial experience who can combine strategic thinking with practical execution, building partnerships and delivering value across the business.

Ideally, you will bring:

• Significant experience in Procurement, Commercial, Finance, Marketing, or related roles.
• Membership of CIPS or another professional procurement organisation preferred.
• Skilled at building and maintaining strong partnerships externally with agencies and suppliers, and internally with business, commercial, and marketing teams.
• Experience delivering projects and working in cross-market teams, including developing and delivering category and procurement strategies and managing supplier relationships.
• Strong analytical, financial, and commercial awareness, with clear understanding of business requirements, financial goals, and value drivers relevant to the categories.
• Ability to generate insights that influence decision-making, with a strong commercial perspective.
• Technically literate, with experience using systems effectively.
• Excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills, with the ability to collaborate and communicate across markets and time zones.
• Comfortable challenging established practices, using insights, benchmarks, and external market knowledge to stimulate alternative thinking and influence decisions.

Working with Us

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, attitudes, 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!

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