Marketing Senior Specialist

Job Overview

Reporting to the Regional Marketing Manager, this role is responsible for driving sell-out growth across the assigned territory by creatively leading trade marketing strategy and activation with wholesale and traditional distributors. The role focuses on in-market strategy, but also execution, customer-facing programs, and distributor engagement to increase offtake, visibility, and distribution. Working closely with Sales, Product, and Brand teams, the position ensures important input into building the strategy and high-impact local execution. This role requires deep knowledge of sales and its mechanism, that is why it is strongly field-oriented, and a commercially driven role requiring strong ownership and hands-on activation. This translates to:

• Complete responsibility for implementing market initiatives such as product launches, promotions, brand campaigns, and the development of marketing plans.
• Providing support at the regional level in close collaboration with the regional Marketing Manager, sales team and sales channels.
• Initiating, launching, and coordinating new marketing events to enhance brand awareness, demand and overall business operations in close cooperation with Brand and media team.
• Collecting data on the regional market to optimize overall business operations. This includes involvement in research when input is needed on executing them but first, concluding and building strategy and tactical thinking based on them
• Researching and working on improving the performance of the Valvoline portfolio and providing support to the marketing platform team as well as the regional sales team.
  Supporting the sales team and distributors with specific market demands agreed.
• Supporting and leading critical Valvoline Europe marketing projects in the given territory.
• Taking responsibility for brand-related activities.
• Establishing and maintaining good business relationships with relevant internal and external stakeholders.
• Managing the relevant regional marketing budget – including own projects and partner marketing initiatives.
• Budget control and supervision, including partnership marketing
• Working closely with the market activation team and the sales team to develop, localize, and enhance the effectiveness of marketing initiatives.
• Performing all other duties assigned by immediate managers
• Basic markets (not limited to): Bosnia, Croatia, Moldova, Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece and developed in the future

Primary Duties and ResponsibilitiesTrade-Activation & Sell-out: Drive trade activation programs to increase sell-out across distributors, including promotions, incentives, and retail programs. 

• Design and execute trade programs to increase sales.
• Work closely with partners on marketing long and short-term plans
• Develop promotions, incentives, and activation mechanics
• Drive distributor execution excellence
• Act as equal partner for both sales and cooperating vendors 

Distributor Management: Co-create and own distributor activation plans, ensuring strong execution and alignment with commercial objectives.

• Co-create and own distributor activation plans
• Build distributor marketing capabilities
• Ensure execution compliance

Field Execution: Conduct regular field visits in region to monitor execution, visibility, and promotional effectiveness

• Regular market visits (Balkans, Europe)
• Monitor POS visibility, promotions, and activation quality
• Identify gaps and fix execution

Campaign & Launch Activation: Activate campaigns and product launches with strong local execution and customer adaptation

• Localize and execute campaigns with distributors
• Couching, advisory and support on the strategy and tactical level for distributors
• Ensure strong retail activation of product launches
• Understanding media planning, materials production, own channels communication

Budget & ROI: Manage trade marketing budgets and track ROI of activation initiatives.

• Manage trade marketing budgets – including settlement and monitoring
• Track ROI of promotions and campaigns
• Budget control and responsibility

Education

Minimum bachelor’s degree in business or marketing

Work Experience

• At least 7 years’ working experience
• Has been working in complex organization
• Home office lover
• Has no problem with travelling
• Understand working for big brand

Knowledge, Skills, and Competencies

• Minimum 5-6 years of marketing or sales experience in B2B partner marketing, preferably in the automotive industry (but not “must-be”). Ideally coming from the lubricants sector.
• Experience in FMCG and trade marketing activation is essential.
• Experience with sponsoring activities is a huge advantage
• Must be fluent in English - Russian and all other languages are a plus (Romanian, Bulgarian)
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with a strong customer focus.
• Proactive, self-starter, independent, and willing to take ownership.
• Hands-on mentality, Results driven, sales credibility.
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving environment.
• Fast learning, self-esteem with an eye-for-detail are the BIG pluses
• Comfortable working with people is a BIG plus