Advocacy Manager

The Advocacy Manager is a critical role within the North America Advocacy function, responsible for building genuine brand belief with the trade across the Bacardi portfolio. Contributing to the strategic vision, you will work with brand, commercial and HQ teams to ensure Advocacy is focused on supporting each stakeholder on placing the right brands with the right resource into the right market and right accounts.

You have extensive commercial and/or brand management experience and can translate your knowledge and insights into shaping the success of the advocacy function. With a Founder’s mentality you drive results and excellence in execution by being a leader in the department and strong communicator. Working cross functionally with commercial teams in market, brand/customer marketing, HQ and brand partners you develop commercial capabilities that convert advocacy efforts of education, engagement, account management and consultation into results for Bacardi now and over the next 10 years.

• WITH OUR CONSUMER AT THE HEART YOUR KEY FOCUS WILL BE Execute the NAM Advocacy strategy in market, ensuring brand stories land with consistency, conviction and commercial relevance, championing the full Bacardi portfolio with a portfolio mindset
• Support our ambassador team to build and maintain deep, authentic relationships with on-premise accounts, bartenders, beverage directors and cocktail enthusiasts - across the portfolio

Ensure that our education materials operate in a variety of formats, including category-level knowledge, with storytelling that creates genuine believers who drive recommendation of our brands. Represent Bacardi at key trade events such as Tales of the Cocktail, Bar Convent Brooklyn (BCB), Speed Rack, Arizona Cocktail Weekend, Portland Cocktail Week and other market-level activations. Contribute to community partnerships such as FIU/Bacardi Center of Excellence as required.

Partner with Commercial/CPA to ensure advocacy activity and investment aligns to commercial priorities, account plans and business objectives such as menu feature and rate-of-sale performance. Ensure ‘wiring’ in market and communicate brand advocacy programming and events to the BUSA field-based commercial teams in a timely manner for commercial leverage. Collaborate with Marketing teams as part of the Integrated Activity Planning (IAP) process to ensure advocacy is embedded within through-the-line brand programming.

Collaborate with Customer Marketing to create tools that drive desire, relevance and rate of sale. Track performance in market with strong knowledge of financial metrics and return on investment - by market, city, account and ambassador. Manage KPI targeting and tracking, laddering up monthly performance reports for senior leadership and sharing best practices more widely with key stakeholders. Channel on premise insights, trends and analytics to provide actionable opportunities for teams to create more meaningful programming, excellence in execution and ultimately drive performance.

Create content for digital advocacy programming, including social content and online community engagement as part of a year-round content calendar, both externally and internally via Corporate communications.

• 5-10 year’s experience working in the on-premise and/or brand roles at a Manager level or similar
• Trade expertise:
  Established relationships within the on-premise community and a deep understanding of what bartenders and operators actually care about
• Brand storytelling:
  The ability to translate brand history, liquid credentials and category knowledge into compelling, conversational narratives that drive genuine advocacy
• Commercial acumen:
  Understanding of how advocacy activity connects to rate-of-sale, menu placement and account profitability - not just relationship management
• Planning and organization:
  Proven ability to manage a complex, multi-account, multi-brand market calendar with precision and without losing sight of priorities
• Communication and influence:
  Excellent interpersonal and presentation skills - equally comfortable in a pre-shift with a bartender and a quarterly business review with commercial leadership
• Data and insight literacy:
  Comfortable working with commercial data, advocacy metrics and tools such as Ground Signal to identify opportunity and report impact
• Collaboration:
  
  A natural team player who can work effectively across a matrixed organization - with brand
• Entrepreneurial,…