AXE CMI Lead

Job Title: AXE CMI Lead

Location: 100VE

BACKGROUND

Are you ready to work on one of Unilever’s most iconic and exciting brands? Launched in 1983, Axe/Lynx has developed into one of the most recognizable brands globally, becoming the #1 male personal care & fragrance brand in the world and a true cultural phenomenon.

With our younger audience becoming increasingly harder to engage, boring brand content simply isn’t good enough. Humour is at our core. We love taking the piss & being insightfully absurd, because the only thing we take seriously is fragrance. It’s a really exciting time on the Axe brand with double-digit growth year-on-year across key markets. We’re already onto the next acceleration phase, with exciting roadmaps on both Deodorants and Skin Cleansing, while also looking into future market-making opportunities.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As the Axe CMI Lead you will be instrumental in putting Axe in the heart of youth culture.

You will partner with the AXE BG team in London and Buenos Aires. Working closely with creative and design agency partners. As well as Marketing & CMI partners in key BU Design Cells – UK, Mexico and Germany.

• Leading the full cycle of insights for innovation, renovation and content creation.

• Design and lead a strategic learning plan to put Axe at the heart of youth culture and how to make stories of fragrance changing everything relevant and contemporary.

• Bringing youth culture and generational insights to the heart of everything we do.

• Being an expert on Brand Say and Others Say content across mainstream & emerging channels  

• Leading integration of media and digital learning and insight into the communication strategy planning.

• Experimenting with new tools or thinking to unlock youth recruitment.

• Bringing foresight to everything we do: not just insights but also the implications (“so what?”).

• Support and develop a future fit/ top talent CMI Assistant Manager

• Manage social listening tools and conduct searches, keep a pulse on trends, and deliver insights related to growing spaces.

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ALL ABOUT YOU 

• Your mission is to be an insights leader for the Axe Community- bring deep connection with audiences and communities, that amplify, transform and elevate the brand.

• You have a passion for consumers, communities and audiences, and have a passion for youth culture which is constantly evolving.

• VERY comfortable with learning agility, you are enjoying the AI revolution, and are on top of AI tools for research.

• You constantly learn, experiment and pilot. You have a healthy understanding of the status quo, but have lots of new ideas that you can bring to transform the world of insights. have curiosity to explore and develop ways to unlock recruitment and growth.

• You can walk the line between logic and magic.

• You are an intelligent risk taker - embracing opportunities & pushing boundaries.

• Sharp, articulate and clear, you are as comfortable working with junior marketeers as presenting to a GBVP.

• You are able to actively prioritise, negotiate, and set boundaries that allow CMI to shine and can work independently work with business partners to prioritise this.

• You appreciate the iterative & often ambiguous nature of creative development, while demonstrating need for speed and agility to deliver to networks.

• You are able to use & connect data and studies to drive compelling stories, but are not afraid to share your opinion based on experience, learning & inspiration.

It’s likely that:

• You have established CMI research experience

• You have some global experience/ worked on a global brand

• You have experience of end to end insights from strategy to design to execution and operational excellence

You’re not:

• Of a fixed mindset. This role needs to fuel growth for an amazing brand, and the job holder will be flexible, creative and agile.

• Flustered with juggling many things, and can use judgment for effective prioritization.

• Wedded to linear and fixed brand /people partnering, status, hierarchies, ‘size’ domains of teams, direct reports, budgets, etc. You will flow to work where the growth is and find resourcefulness within us.

• Afraid to fail fast and learn from experience; instead, you believe in coding best practices for future initiatives.

• Someone who only answers to briefs. You initiate and co-create briefs and interrogate briefs. You go beyond briefs in response to a business question to spot opportunities/challenges independently.

• Someone who waits for testing results/research outcomes to input into the development process. You voice your opinions and influence in time for action.

• Someone afraid to call it as it is and make tough decisions, even when unpopular.

You will demonstrate the following behaviours:

Care Deeply:  You care deeply about how consumers experience our brands every day, everywhere; about our people’s growth and development and our impact on the planet. You care about our performance, to a point where it hurts when we don’t win.

Stay 3 steps ahead: You are bold and creative in your thinking to make breakthroughs in performance. Anticipating and staying ahead of consumer needs and external trends, shifting from reacting to leading, shaping, and disrupting the market.

Deliver with Excellence: The emphasis is on delivering everything with excellence and pace, taking personal ownership, and holding each other accountable. We aim to shift from pride in thinking to pride in execution, developing breakthrough solutions

Focus on what counts: We prioritize what truly matters, setting clear and stretching goals. We aim to shift from having everything as a priority to focusing on fewer, bigger things that are delivered to conclusion and are being rewarded.

WHAT WE OFFER

Whilst the role is advertised on a full-time basis, we would be happy to discuss possible flexible working options and what this may look like for you. We strive to achieve a family-friendly and inclusive workplace and to, above all, create possibilities for all.

Diversity at Unilever is about inclusion, embracing differences, creating possibilities and growing together for better business performance. We embrace diversity in our workforce. This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants and continuing development of all employees regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity. We are also more than happy to provide reasonable adjustments during our application and interview process to enable you to be present your best self. To find out more, including about our Employee Resource Groups, please click here Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (unilever.com).

Location

In 2020, Unilever announced the intention to build a new sustainable campus site in Kingston, London to house the employees who currently work in 100 Victoria Embankment in Blackfriars ("100VE"), Lever House in Kingston and Graze in Richmond, the build is due to be complete in early 2025. Most recently, in August 2024, we announced our intention to retain our premises in 100VE until our lease expires in 2027.

We are due to consult with our existing workforce on the new proposal to retain 100VE for the duration of our lease. Therefore, until such a time consultation has concluded as to the retention of our 100VE office, this role will be based in 100 Victoria Embankment until early 2025 and then will move to the Kingston Campus.