Regional Head of Brand and Innovation

1. Product innovation and NPD (30%)

You will be the regional owner of product innovation and renovation across the portfolio.

This includes:

• Building and maintaining the regional innovation and renovation roadmap.
• Identifying consumer problems, category white spaces, claims opportunities, pack-price opportunities and portfolio gaps.
• Writing sharp product, packaging and proposition briefs.
• Owning the NPD journey from concept to shelf: consumer problem, proposition, claims, packaging, pricing logic, business case, channel role, launch readiness and post-launch review.
• Working closely with supply chain, factories, procurement, QA, regulatory, finance, sales, ecommerce and country teams.
• Managing the operational reality of physical-product launches: artwork, dielines, claims substantiation, timelines, production lead times, MOQ constraints, barcodes, SKU setup, regulatory checks, sell-in decks and launch risk management.
• Ensuring every launch has a clear consumer job, portfolio role, hero claim, target channel, margin logic, launch plan and success metric.

Success means fewer rushed launches, fewer late-stage surprises, and more products that consumers love, retailers understand and country teams can sell.

2. Brand, portfolio and category strategy (20%)

Define how our brands grow regionally while allowing countries to adapt locally.

You will own brand guardrails, portfolio architecture, SKU roles, claims hierarchy, pack-price architecture across channels, category opportunities by country and channel, competitive tracking and the consumer insight agenda.

You should be able to move comfortably between consumer insight, brand strategy, packaging, SKU economics and sales reality.

3. Marketing excellence, launch systems and country enablement (30%)

Build the operating system for how marketing and innovation work across the region.

You will create and enforce practical tools such as NPD stage gates, product briefs, packaging briefs, claims checklists, artwork approval workflows, launch readiness checklists, regional toolkit standards, post-launch reviews, asset governance and monthly / quarterly review rhythms, country marketing calendar rituals, activation playbooks.

You will help countries launch better without taking over country execution. Country teams own local marketing and commercial outcomes this role owns the standards, systems and toolkits that help make the work clearer, sharper and easier to execute well.

This includes building regional launch toolkits/assets, product one-pagers/explainers, sell-in narratives and claims decks, ecommerce product content mandatories and defining what launch ready means before countries go live. You will partner with Country GMs and Senior Brand Managers to improve launch quality, run post-launch reviews and turn learnings into better future launches, whilst sharing best practices across SG, MY, ID, TH, IN and future markets.

5. Design, packaging and brand governance (10%)

Lead regional design and protect the quality of how our brands/distinctive assets show up and memory structures we are building across packaging, shelves, ecommerce, content and customer touchpoints.

You will own visual identity systems, brand codes, packaging standards, claims visibility, shelf impact, retail display guidelines, ecommerce image standards, product photography standards, creative asset governance and design approval standards.

6. Customer experience and cross-functional leadership (10%)

Regional Customer Experience will report into this role because CX is one of the most important feedback loops where we have the opportunity to turn customer complaints, reviews, DMs, marketplace feedback and service issues into product, communication and claims improvements, strengthening brand trust.

You will build CX standards and escalation rules, ensure our brand voice shows up in CX, not just campaigns, and build monthly voice-of-customer reporting.

You will influence across Country GMs, Senior Brand Managers, Sales, Ecommerce, Supply Chain, R, Procurement, Finance, QA, Regulatory, Design, CX, agencies and founders. You need to be collaborative enough to bring people along, and strong enough to enforce standards when needed.

What success looks like

In the first 6-12 months, success should look like:

• A clear regional innovation and renovation roadmap.
• A working NPD stage-gate process.
• Stronger launch discipline across SG / MY / ID / TH.
• Fewer late-stage packaging, claims, pricing, artwork, regulatory or sales-readiness surprises.
• A clean marketing operating system: templates, checklists, rituals, approval flows and asset governance.
• Stronger packaging and creative consistency across markets.
• Country teams feeling more enabled, not more policed.
• CX insights regularly feeding into product, packaging and communication decisions.
• Priority launches hitting agreed timing, quality, margin and readiness standards.
• Post-launch reviews becoming normal, not optional.

What we're looking for

Requirements

• 10-15 years in FMCG brand and/or innovation roles, ideally with both big-FMCG training (Unilever, P&G, Kimberly-Clark, RB, Kao, J&J or equivalent) and challenger/DTC operating experience (a serious DTC brand, a high-growth regional challenger, or a startup-stage CPG)
• Strong brand management fundamentals
• Demonstrable NPD track record - led real products from brief through to in-market launch, not just managed agencies who did who
• Experience with physical products: packaging, claims, pricing, channel launch, artwork, suppliers and launch execution.
• Regional or multi-market experience, ideally across Southeast Asia
• Strong commercial understanding of modern trade and ecommerce
• Experience working with sales, supply chain, regulatory, QA, procurement, finance, agencies and country teams
• Built or substantially upgraded a marketing function's operating standards (SOPs, brand books, launch playbooks)
• Strong creative judgment across packaging, design, messaging, claims and brand consistency
• Strong project management instincts