About Valeo Foods
Welcome to Valeo Foods
Our mission, at Valeo Foods, is simple yet powerful: to make every day moments taste better. We believe that great food has the power to create memories, bring people together, and transform an ordinary day into something special. This philosophy drives everything we do, from sourcing the finest ingredients to perfecting every recipe and product. In today’s fast-paced world, what we eat matters more than ever.
Valeo Foods Group is a leading international food business Valeo Foods was founded in 2015 and has since grown to annual sales of more than €1.6 billion. Through our ambitious acquisition programme, our portfolio has expanded to become the market leader in Snacking & Sweet Treats, Health & Wellness, Baking & Meal Ingredients, Beverages and Food Service. We have a portfolio of Europe’s finest and most established brands, with deep heritage and connections with consumers.
In Ireland our brands, many leaders in their categories include the iconic Jacob’s biscuits, Batchelor’s, Odlum’s, Chef, Kelkin, Rowse honey, Kettle crisps, and Barratts, Fox’s and Poppets sweets and candy. Many have histories that stretch back over 150 years and this heritage, and their strong appeal to consumers, is what makes them stand out as category leaders.
We operate more than 30 manufacturing sites across Ireland, UK, Europe and Canada and employ almost 6,000 people.
The Role
We’re looking for a dynamic, high-impact FTC Shopper Marketing Manager to head up shopper marketing for a diverse portfolio of brands across dry grocery, snacking and confectionary categories.
Brands more than a century old need to be revitalised to stay fresh & successful. We must re-imagine the brands for the future - staying true to core values, while evolving to today’s consumer expectations and we need to embrace bold strategies with a challenger mindset – redefining quality and value.
We are looking for a total business leader – who demonstrates marketing flair, brilliant strategic thinking, commercial edge and great relationship building. Someone who is relentless in pursuit of turnaround and growth, setting great ambition for our brands.
This is a senior role shaping shopper strategy for beloved Irish and international food brands. A role with cross-functional influence spanning marketing, sales, and retail partners. A chance to bring exciting innovation to life within a dynamic, high-growth food business.
Reporting into the Marketing Director. You will be a key member of the Marketing Leadership Team and have two direct reports. This role is accountable for the full shopper marketing strategy, activation planning and execution with excellence. You’ll lead shopper-centric marketing strategies across the Irish retail landscape. It is a complex role, given diverse nature of this portfolio. Your goal? Harness consumer insights and shopper behaviour to drive in-store activation, promotional excellence, and incremental sales across core dry grocery, snacking and confectionary categories.
Key accountabilities:
- Deliver best in class shopper marketing solutions to maximise visibility and drive velocity
- Part of the team delivering the commercial plan and growing market share
- Focus on delivering sustained long-term growth while balancing margin, volume and revenue targets
Key Responsibilities
Shopper Strategy & Insights
- Define shopper profiles, journeys, pain points, and decision drivers.
- Collaborate with data insights team to uncover shopper trends and opportunities.
Activation & Campaign Management
- Create disruptive in-store promotions (POS, displays, merchandising) that engage and convert.
- Work closely with commercial team to align distributor and retailer execution.
- Coordinate end-to-end campaign delivery—from brief, through planning and budgeting, to post-campaign evaluation.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner with Marketing Managers to align shopper tactics with brand campaigns to drive consistency and integrated marketing communications.
- Work with commercial teams to secure retailer support, including negotiation of space, pricing, and promotional deals.
Performance & ROI
- Set KPIs for shopper programs and monitor results (e.g., uplift, basket penetration, rate of sale).
- Use data to optimize tactics and share learnings
Budget Management and optimisation
- Manage shopper marketing budget, ensuring ROI-driven activation.
- Manage costing of materials for display, POS etc to maximise efficiency of spend and value
- Test and pilot shopper innovations.
Key Capabilities: Functional capabilities:
- Create strategies that win
- Translates strategy into highly commercial and differentiated shopper plans
- Drives pace and agility through making the right marketing decisions
- Drives value commercially for Valeo and for our customers
- Has a deep understanding of the total business system and all the levers of value creation and margin enhancement. Actively tracks these in the organization
- Develops effective strategies to make Valeo an indispensable business partner to our customers
- Leads competition beating execution
- Skilled in identifying and aligning the critical stakeholders required to deliver brilliant execution
Key Capabilities: Leadership capabilities
- Turns big dreams into reality, energises and inspires others to deliver the exceptional
- Manage people for success. Build and inspire teams with clear purpose, accountabilities, performance goals and trust
- Be a consistently brilliant performance coach who can grow those around you and create breakthrough
- Consistently deliver great performance. Take ownership of the performance outcomes the team needs to deliver and ensure you create the right relationships and decision-making structures to achieve this.
What You’ll Bring
- Creative Visionary: A proven track record as an effective Shopper marketing manager within FMCG or consumer goods, ideally in biscuits or similar categories.
- Shopper Marketing Maestro: Expertise in integrated marketing communications across all channels, a deep understanding of the retailer ecosystem and shopper marketing partners – Dunnhumby, Elevate and more.
- Data-Driven Storyteller: Experience using Nielsen, IRI, and Kantar to generate insights that drive strategic decisions and fuel innovation.
- Project Management Pro: Outstanding skills in managing multiple high-impact projects in a fast-paced environment.
- Collaborative Leader: Exceptional stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills, with a hands-on, ownership mentality.
