Futurebrands - Associate VP/Group Head - Brands

Title: Associate VP - Brands / Group Head - Brands

Division: Brand Partnership

Brand: Wild Stone

Location: Bombay

Role: To head brand development and management for Wild Stone.

The main responsibilities include:

- Team management: manage the team of brand managers and asst. Brand Managers

- New product development: conceptualizing the brief, naming, identity, packaging, product testing, competitive benchmarking, consumer and trade launch

a) Fragrances

b) Personal care categories

- Campaign management: Being a media active brand, deep understanding to creating and managing campaigns flawlessly is critical

- Media planning

- Competitive mapping: through market visits, packaging, new launches, media, Nielsen etc

- Research: Ad evals, U&A, product testing etc

- Comfortable with working on data : Nielsen, primaries, IRS etc for reviews as well as drawing action plans

- PR: ensuring the PR calendar is implemented and the brand is appropriately represented in consumer and business media

- Relationship management: with leadership at McNroe (the company which owns Wild Stone)

- New markets: driving the ground work to launch Wild Stone in at least 2 new countries this year

- Annual, quarterly, monthly marketing plans - aligned with sales and other functions

Profile: the candidate should be:

- An MBA

- With min 8-10 years experience

- Must have experience in managing 360 degree TV led media campaigns

- Should enjoy thinking of ideas and bringing alive those ideas

- In addition to brand management experience, additional experience of brand consulting or advertising or media marketing is preferred

About Futurebrands (A Future Group Company):

Futurebrands is a brand consulting and management firm. It has offices in Delhi and Bombay. The company has three verticals:

- Brand Consulting - Santosh Desai, MD of Futurebrands pioneered a school of brand planning and thinking with roots in anthropology, sociology and behavioral sciences. This division provides brand consulting solutions to International and Indian brands like Pepsi, GSK, Titan, Kelloggs, Tanishq, ITC, Fastrack, etc.

- Brand Licensing - Futurebrands ‘owns and manages’ over 30 private brands in categories like fashion, food, electronics across Future Group retail formats. These brands are also licensed out to other distribution companies for general trade and product companies for category extensions.

- Brand Partnership - This division spearheads the initiatives to conceptualize and build brands with well funded Indian entrepreneurs who have ambition to build brands. Some of the successful brands in this practice are:

Wild Stone - The iconic male fantasy brand is no. 2 deo brand in India today growing by over 40% YOY. Its market share is higher than Unilever’s Axe, Park Avenue, ITC’s engage, Marico’s Set Wet etc. It is also the only deo brand which is successfully transitioning into other categories like perfumes, bath, shaving, talc and skincare. It is also the number 1 male talc in India and sells over 1.5 million soaps every month.

‘Fragrance’ is at the heart of Wild Stone and the brand works with the finest French perfumers to design its fragrances. Wild Stone is one of the most aggressive players in fragrance development today and does not develop less than 6-8 fragrances every year.

Over next 2 years Wild Stone will open up in at least 2 other countries and launch 3 new mega categories.

Lenskart - Lenskart is India’s largest online optical store. The brand in less than 3 years has garnered huger consumer equity. Lenskart.com is one of the rare examples of successful omnichannel strategies in India – online, retail stores and vans which come to your doorstep to make your specs. It is one of the leading optical players as well as ecommerce players in India.

During launch, over 1 million people used to visit Lenskart.com every day. The brand also has one of the highest conversion ratio in the industry today.

The brand is anchored on the promise of ‘addictive playfulness’ and elevates the eyewear category from it’s erstwhile prescriptive status to desirable lifestyle accessories.

Biba - Biba is the only national brand in ethnic wear for women in India, apart from fabindia. Over the last few years, Biba has emerged from a consistent MBO brand to a destination for fashionable Indian wear brand. The brand has also expanded it’s portfolio to include the entire salwar kameez wardrobe (for all occasions) and is owning the platform of fashion in accessible Indian wear sharply.