Trade Marketing Manager – FMCG / Shopper Activation

Location: Maidenhead, hybrid

Salary: £50,000-£58,000 + £6,120 car allowance + 15% bonus + 10% pension + healthcare

Type: Permanent

We’re supporting a fast-moving consumer goods business with the hire of a Trade Marketing Manager for its UK & Ireland team.

This is a hands-on, commercially focused role sitting between Brand, Sales, Category and Customer teams. You’ll be responsible for turning brand and commercial priorities into effective customer activation across retail channels.

This is not a pure brand/comms role. It is also not a pure sales role. The successful candidate will need to understand how shopper activity lands with retailers, how to build activation plans that support the customer conversation, and how to measure what worked commercially.

The role

You’ll work closely with Sales, Category and Brand teams to build and deliver customer activation plans across key retail channels.

Responsibilities will include:

• Developing trade / shopper activation plans across UK retail customers.
• Supporting customer sell-in through activation plans, retailer-ready materials and commercial thinking.
• Working with NAMs and Category teams on range, promotional and activation opportunities.
• Managing the customer activation calendar across in-store and online channels.
• Briefing and managing agencies, POS, shopper assets and customer-facing materials.
• Supporting promotional, NPD and seasonal activation plans.
• Using data to understand activation performance, including sales uplift, rate of sale, baseline, distribution, ROI and customer feedback.
• Working cross-functionally with Brand, Sales, Category, Shopper, Supply and external partners.
• Challenging activity where the commercial case does not stack up.

What we need

We are looking for someone with FMCG trade marketing, shopper marketing, customer marketing or commercial activation experience.

You must have experience in a consumer goods / FMCG environment. Relevant sectors could include:

• food
• drink
• household
• personal care
• beauty
• health and wellness
• pet care
• consumer healthcare
• other grocery-led FMCG categories

You’ll need to be able to show experience of some of the following:

• trade marketing, shopper marketing or customer marketing
• UK retailer / grocery / high street / consumer channel activation
• working closely with NAMs, Category and Brand teams
• customer activation plans
• retailer sell-in support
• promotional activation
• POS, FSDUs, sampling, retailer media, digital shelf or online activation
• using data such as Nielsen, Kantar, Circana, retailer EPOS or customer performance data
• measuring activity through sales uplift, rate of sale, baseline, distribution, ROI or margin
• managing agencies or external activation partners

What probably won’t be right

To be clear, this role is unlikely to suit someone whose experience is mainly:

• pure brand management with limited customer/shopper activation
• ATL/comms/campaign management only
• agency-side shopper without strong commercial/customer exposure
• sales/NAM only, with no marketing or activation experience
• category analysis only, without activation delivery
• non-FMCG B2B marketing

The person

This is a lean, fast-paced environment, so you’ll need to be comfortable with pace, ambiguity and broad ownership.

You’ll suit this role if you are:

• commercially minded
• hands-on
• confident working with Sales and Category teams
• comfortable challenging decisions
• data-led but pragmatic
• able to manage multiple activations and stakeholders
• interested in how activity performs, not just how it looks