CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE LEAD

Dreaming big is in our DNA. Its who we are as a company. Its our culture. Its our heritage. And more than ever, its our future. A future where were always looking forward. Always serving up new ways to meet lifes moments. A future where we keep dreaming bigger. We look for people with passion, talent, and curiosity, and provide them with the teammates, resources and opportunities to unleash their full potential. The power we create together when we combine your strengths with ours is unstoppable. Are you ready to join a team that dreams as big as you do?

Key Purpose

The Consumer Intelligence Lead supports ABInBev's portfolio of brands by managing a team of Consumer and Trends Analysts. The role focuses on transforming consumer data, trends, and research into actionable insights to guide brand decisions and influence strategy. Collaborating with Brand Teams, Creatives, Strategists, Social Media Managers, Data and BI Analysts, the goal is to drive data-led creativity. This position suits a self-motivated individual with strong attention to detail, a passion for innovation, team management experience, and a deep understanding of cultural nuances to inform targeted, relevant content.

Lead a team of Consumer and Trends Analysts in a fast-paced environment to deliver culturally relevant insights that shape creative digital content, while fostering cross-functional collaboration within draftLine teams to unlock broader business opportunities.

Build and maintain relationships with senior stakeholders across internal draftline, brand, strategy & insights, and commercial teams, positioning the department as a strategic resource for key decision-making and driving consumer intelligence discovery and integration with broader strategy to achieve business goals and drive digital excellence.

Key Roles And Responsibilities

• Develop and lead a team of direct reports that drive consumer insights analysis, trend identification, and strategic recommendations to support brand planning and achievement of strategic goals guided by a broader understanding of the business.
• Responsible for evaluating team outputs ensuring a high-quality standard of insights and making key decisions on strategic recommendations for brand teams to achieve KPIs and strive for constant campaign optimization.
• Manage expectations about project execution, educating brand teams on how research, insights and opportunities can be utilised.
• Lead, guide and implement research initiatives, maximising the efficiency and effectiveness of all market and consumer research sources and platforms.
• Build advocacy for sustained organisational investment in consumer knowledge and understanding.
• Review data to extract trends and formulate insights in line with actionable recommendations for brands to experiment with. This could include but not be limited to merchandise opportunities, product innovation, influencers and experiential opportunities.
• Be a custodian of Innovation and best practice, while fostering a team culture of accountability, collaboration, curiosity and creativity to deliver on draftLines vision to strive for 'data driven creativity.'
• Drive team level engagement and contribute to the department and overarching draftLine engagement plans. Act as a senior stakeholder that drives the implementation and management of feedback to drive engagement initiatives and drive incremental improvement in employee sentiment and work-life balance.
• Assist in leading weekly stand-ups for team to facilitate the allocation and requirements mapping of briefs.
• Responsible for the review and development of all direct reports within the full LCM, PDP, OPR processes within the people development cycle. Responsible for maintaining monthly 1:1s with all direct reports to drive constant feedback for growth and development.

Core Competencies / Behaviours

• Create frameworks and structure which improves and optimizes the sub-team's understanding and generation of insights. Ensures team members are driving insights conversion into digital strategy implementation and creative execution.
• Displays advanced problem-solving skills that allow them to analyze and interpret data from multiple perspectives while removing bias and applying external and internal factors. Can support the team in developing hypothesis-driven insights that connect to broader business strategy.
• Displays developed signs of self-awareness, such as the ability to approach conflict management from multiple perspectives. Is mostly cognizant of how their actions and interactions impact others, allowing them to at times predict outcomes and review personal bias when engaging on issues. Developing the ability to drive strong narratives that facilitate outcome-based engagement and expectations management.
• Responsible for sub-team development and engagement survey results, with actionable optimizations to improve or maintain scores within the sub-team.
• Takes constructive criticism and uses it to optimize the sub-team through routines and outlined ways of working. Contribute to department engagement plans and score targets through implementation of sub-team and department-level initiatives.
• Create and participate in special projects which positively contribute to the business and draftLine's growth. Consistently improve the sub-team culture for a healthy working environment. Create filing structures useful for the team. Consistent knowledge sharing on learnings relevant to the sub-team's growth.

Main Outputs

• Ensures personal timesheets and team's completed weekly
• Consumer Dashboards
• Evaluate reporting metrics against specific brand/campaign KPIs.
• Contributes and reviews
• Report collaboration with Brand Intelligence, Digital Strategy, Social Media and Creative.
• Leads identified special projects
• Ideation and brainstorms
• Drives collaboration with Digital Strategy, Social and Creative teams

Key Attributes and Competencies:

• Strategically minded
• Critical thinker
• Meticulous attention to detail
• Client-facing with presentation skills
• Storyteller
• Insights driven
• Digital native
• Integrated work approach
• Adaptable
• Curious

Minimum Requirements:

• Matric
• (Higher Certificate/Diploma) or relevant tertiary qualifications / certifications
• 7+ years either insights analysis/strategy / research key being the ability to interpret data and identify trends and insights
• Knowledge and understanding of KPI setting and management to drive performance
• marketing excellence
• Knowledge and experience using research and reporting tools to drive consumer insights identification and understanding
• Understanding of research techniques and frameworks with the ability to apply them in an agile environment

Additional Information:

• Band: VII

SAB/ABInBev is an equal opportunity employer and all appointments will be

made in line with SAB/ABInBev employment equity plan and talent requirements.

The advert has minimum requirements listed. Management reserves the right to use additional/ relevant information as criteria for short-listing.