Nigeria Customer Strategy and Planning Manager BWPC at Unilever

Our brands are trusted everywhere and, by listening to the people who buy them, we’ve grown into one of the world’s most successful consumer goods companies.

Look in your fridge, or on the bathroom shelf, and you’re bound to see one of our well-known brands. We create, market and distribute the products that people choose to feed their families and keep themselves and their homes clean and fresh.

People’s lives are changing fast. As the way we all live and work evolves, our needs and tastes change too. At Unilever we aim to help people in their daily lives. So we keep developing new products, improving tried and tested brands and promoting better, more efficient ways of working.

We have a portfolio of brands that are popular across the country. Popular because of our two key strengths:

Strong roots in local markets and first-hand knowledge of the local culture.
World-class business expertise applied internationally to serve consumers everywhere.
Focusing on performance and productivity, we encourage our people to develop new ideas and put fresh approaches into practice. Hand in hand with this is a strong sense of responsibility to the communities we serve. We don’t only measure success in financial terms; how we achieve results is important too. We work hard to conduct our business with integrity – respecting our employees, our consumers and the environment around us.

Unilever is proudly one of the country’s leading suppliers of fast-moving consumer goods in all our three divisions – Foods, home care and personal care.

Foods
We are the largest seller of packet tea with our Lipton brand leading the Foods and Beverages category.
We are the category leader in margarine in the country with the Blueband brand.
In savoury, our Royco and Knorr brands are household names you can’t ignore.
Home & personal care
We are highly visible in the home care market in the country, which includes cleansing and hygiene products.
Our home care products, Omo and Sunlight are household names synonymous with home care.
Within the personal care market, we are very visible with brands like Lux and Pears to help you look and feel good.About the Role

We're looking for a commercially driven and highly analytical Customer Strategy & Planning (CSP) Manager to drive category growth and channel excellence across the Beauty & Wellbeing and Personal Care portfolio in Nigeria.

This role is accountable for developing and executing winning channel and category strategies, delivering best-in-class customer and shopper insights, and ensuring strong alignment between Customer Development, Brand, Category, and Supply Chain teams.

The successful candidate will serve as the voice of the customer and shopper, helping shape commercial decisions that drive brand penetration, profitable growth, and execution excellence across multiple channels.

Key Responsibilities

Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)

Lead consolidated Customer Development input into the S&OP process.
Own and drive monthly and quarterly business performance.
Represent customer and shopper perspectives within forecasting and demand planning discussions.
Leverage consumer and market insights to improve forecasting accuracy and business decision-making.
Drive alignment between commercial teams and supply chain priorities.

Channel & Category Strategy Development

Develop and execute channel and category strategies that deliver annual business targets.
Partner with Brand and Category teams to ensure customer and channel priorities are fully embedded in business plans.
Identify growth opportunities across traditional trade, modern trade, e-commerce, and emerging channels.
Drive execution excellence through the effective deployment of the 6Ps.

Innovation & Project Management

Provide strong customer input early in the innovation funnel.
Act as the voice of the customer during market deployment decisions.
Ensure launch plans are optimized for successful customer and shopper execution.
Manage key customer objectives including distribution, pricing, assortment, merchandising, and visibility.

Integrated Business Planning

Represent customer and channel needs within innovation and renovation business cases.
Provide input on pricing, trade margins, category management, and channel opportunities.
Lead Customer Development contributions to Integrated Business Planning processes.
Support category growth plans through robust channel and customer insights.

Net Revenue Management & Trade Investment

Lead customer and category conversations relating to profitable growth.
Drive the optimal mix across packs, SKUs, channels, and customers.
Ensure effective management and allocation of trade investment budgets.
Develop channel-specific strategies that improve availability, assortment, and execution quality.

Category Leadership

Develop compelling channel strategies and blueprints across traditional, modern, and digital channels.
Drive category growth through clear understanding of shopper missions and channel opportunities.
Support the transition from channels of today to channels of the future.
Enable in-market execution to unlock sustainable growth across brands and categories.

Required Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Business, Marketing, Commerce, or a related field.
Minimum of 7 years' experience within Sales, Marketing, Customer Development, Trade Marketing, Category Management, or Customer Strategy & Planning.
Strong experience in Category Management (CATMAN).
Experience in Shopper Marketing and Field Sales environments.
Proven project and innovation management capability.
Strong understanding of Shopper Toolkits and Design for Channels principles.
Demonstrated Net Revenue Management (NRM) experience.
Strong commercial, financial, and analytical capability.
Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills.
Proven leadership and people management experience.
Ability to operate successfully within a fast-paced and complex commercial environment.