Brand Manager - Light Duty Lubricants Strategy & Innovation (LATAM)

Valvoline•Charlotte, KY

16d•Onsite

About The Position

The Brand Manager for Light Duty Lubricants Strategy & Innovation (LATAM) is responsible for Valvoline Global Operations light duty portfolio in the Americas, with direct focus on the LATAM business. The role is the conduit between the regional business units and the supply chain to drive organization growth. This role will input to and drive the global and America’s strategy at a regional level. The Brand Manager will utilize global processes (Innovation Master Plan creation, New Solutions Development, target margins, etc.) that have been created to build cross functional collaboration. This role will facilitate the success of LATAM through the below three pillars: Product Discovery - identifying regional customer unmet needs, Product Planning - creating the regional innovation roadmap, and Product Development - New Solutions Development Process.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Marketing, Business, or related field
Minimum 5-7 years of experience in brand management, product marketing, product management, or commercial strategy.
Ability to demonstrate intellectual curiosity, asking thoughtful questions and exploring emerging customer needs, market trends, technologies, and possibilities to uncover opportunities that may not yet be obvious.
Analytical thinking to identify unmet needs, evaluate opportunities, and make informed product and innovation recommendations.
Understands the financial drivers behind product and portfolio decisions, including target margins, pricing, business cases, investment requirements, and commercial viability.
Manages multiple innovation initiatives across different stages of development, balancing priorities, timelines, resources, and dependencies while maintaining focus on the regional innovation roadmap.
Demonstrates ownership and a strong bias for action, driving innovation initiatives through the New Solutions Development process and overcoming obstacles to bring new solutions to market.
Builds strong cross-functional partnerships across the organization, regional business teams, Supply Chain, Product, Sales, Finance, and global stakeholders to move innovation initiatives from customer need through commercialization.

Nice To Haves

MBA preferred or other relevant degrees
Bilingual in Spanish

Responsibilities

Work in concert with the Sr. Brand Manager to utilize market, enterprise, and business unit data to build a vision of the global future for the VGO commercial and industrial product portfolio.
Drive consumer research to create research plans that will identify consumer unmet needs and answer critical business questions to unlock innovation pathways.
Constantly ideate against strategic business questions.
Evaluate the competitive landscape and identify portfolio gaps and claims opportunities.
Develop claims that drive product superiority and overall Valvoline competitive advantage.
Create a long-term product portfolio vision for LATAM.
Develop a 5-year innovation road map (product, package, portfolio) that is aligned to the corporate and business unit strategies.
Maintain the road map based on market and business unit trends.
Help prioritize product related projects for the organization.
Be the center of excellence for VGO innovation.
Follow the New Solutions Development stage gate process for all new initiatives.
Create gate documents for all products on the innovation master plan.
Lead key initiatives globally to drive international harmonization of the Valvoline product portfolio.
Cross-connect between all Valvoline segments to deliver single solution branding and product promises for customers & consumers.
Conduct Strategic Portfolio Reviews in accordance with annual timelines to determine long term strategic fit vs. competition along with market opportunities for innovation refinement.
Become integrated into the daily operations of the LATAM business to ensure all customer and consumer needs are understood and fed back into the above planning process.
Ensure business partners in LATAM view this role as a key connected partner to help deliver results, grow Valvoline, and support local business acceleration.