Chief Marketing Officer — Food And Beverage Platform

The mandate

The platform owns a broad portfolio of food and beverage propositions sold through modern trade, independent outlets, food service and digital partners. Its brands remain visible, but the connection between marketing activity and operational demand has weakened. Campaign plans are often finalised after supply assumptions, launch ambitions persist after retailer ranging changes, and major cultural or seasonal moments are forecast from precedent even when channel conditions differ. Marketing reports reach and engagement while commercial and supply teams debate what demand was actually created.

The Chief Marketing Officer will restore marketing as an accountable source of consumer growth and forward demand intelligence. The remit includes portfolio strategy, brand management, consumer insight, communications, media, innovation governance, content, marketing capability and agency leadership. Sales retains customer ownership, revenue growth management controls commercial architecture with finance, and supply teams own operational planning. The CMO must connect these disciplines so brand choices are translated into dated, channel-specific assumptions that others can challenge and execute.

This urgent new role is not intended to make marketing responsible for the final forecast. It is intended to end a pattern in which marketing inputs arrive as untestable ambition. The executive will define what evidence should support baseline growth, campaign lift, innovation trial and repeat, then remain accountable for learning when actual behaviour differs. Creative courage remains necessary; it will be strengthened by clearer hypotheses, not replaced by mechanical attribution.

Scope and operating context

Based in Dubai under a hybrid arrangement, the CMO will influence approximately 775 employees and material partners across the United Arab Emirates and a wider international region. Direct teams will include brand, insight, innovation, media, content and marketing operations leaders. Country marketers and agencies operate through matrix and contractual relationships, requiring a leadership model that combines common portfolio discipline with genuine local cultural authority.

Demand patterns are shaped by religious and cultural calendars, travel, weather, household occasions, hospitality activity and varying retailer promotion cycles. A campaign that creates immediate purchase in one category may build consideration over months in another. Food-service adoption can depend on menu placement and operator training, while retail demand may be constrained by assortment or shelf availability. Marketing measurement must reflect these distinct paths rather than impose a universal conversion window.

The portfolio contains global equities, regional propositions and market-specific products. Some brands require sharper investment and consistent expression; others occupy overlapping occasions with insufficient differentiation. The CMO will make portfolio choices using consumer meaning, category profit pools and operational reality. Heritage or internal attachment alone will not protect a brand from scrutiny, and short-term scale alone will not justify eroding a valuable proposition.

First-year agenda

The opening hundred days will create a joined baseline of brand health, consumer demand, investment and execution. The CMO will examine category and occasion growth, penetration, repeat, price sensitivity, channel availability, innovation performance, campaign history and the quality of research behind current assumptions. They will also review how marketing calendars enter the planning process and where timing, ownership or granularity causes preventable surprise.

The executive will then reset portfolio and investment choices. Each priority brand will have a defined consumer, occasion, growth task and set of measures, accompanied by an explanation of which activities will stop. Media and content plans will be connected to availability, customer activation and supply readiness before commitment. Investment reserves may be used for opportunities that emerge during the year, but their release will require a clear hypothesis and operating capacity.

Innovation governance is a second priority. Concepts must establish the consumer problem, expected repeat behaviour, price-pack role and channel fit before scale assumptions are accepted. After launch, trial, repeat, distribution, service and margin evidence will trigger decisions to accelerate, adapt or stop. The CMO will protect genuine learning periods while preventing weak propositions from remaining alive through repeated changes to the success definition.

Seasonal and cultural demand will receive dedicated planning. Marketing teams will document scenario ranges, leading indicators and decision dates for the most consequential moments. Where creator activity, live events or rapid digital response can move demand quickly, the CMO will agree pre-authorised actions with commercial and supply leaders rather than rely on emergency escalation. Consumer relevance must never become an excuse for uncoordinated execution.

Within twelve months, the organisation should operate one marketing calendar linked to customer and supply decisions, use consistent but category-appropriate effectiveness methods and have a smaller set of clearly funded growth priorities. Leadership should be able to distinguish brand-building progress from temporary shipment movement and explain how changed evidence alters the next demand decision.

Leadership responsibilities

The CMO will chair portfolio and marketing investment forums, ensuring choices include expected consumer behaviour, channel conditions, execution dependencies and financial consequences. They will present the board with a balanced account of brand strength and uncertainty. Vanity metrics, selective research and post-hoc attribution will be challenged regardless of whether they support an internally popular campaign.

Agency and partner leadership is material. The executive will simplify overlapping mandates, ensure intellectual property and data rights are understood, and create incentives for integrated outcomes rather than production volume. Internal teams need enough strategic and analytical capability to remain informed owners of the work. Sensitive cultural judgement and local-language nuance must not be outsourced without accountable market review.

The role will build a stronger marketing leadership bench. Expectations for brand leaders will include commercial fluency, planning discipline and consumer closeness, not communications skill alone. The CMO will improve succession, move talent across category and market experiences and ensure disagreement can occur before senior decisions become public commitments.

Measures of success

The executive committee will review profitable category growth, penetration, repeat, brand consideration where it predicts behaviour, innovation productivity, full-year investment return and contribution after trade and fulfilment effects. Demand measures will include the accuracy and bias of marketing inputs, campaign scenario performance, launch forecast stability and the proportion of major activities activated with confirmed availability.

Portfolio focus will be visible through resources moved from weak propositions to stronger growth tasks, fewer overlapping activities and faster stop-or-scale decisions. Capability measures include agency concentration, internal ownership of insight and analytics, succession depth and adoption of the new planning cadence. No single attribution model will be permitted to claim more certainty than the consumer journey supports.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years of marketing and general-management experience in food, beverages, consumer goods, hospitality, retail or an adjacent high-frequency category. They must have led a substantial multi-brand, multi-market remit and held accountable influence over innovation, investment and commercial outcomes. Experience across both physical and digital channels is required.

The board seeks evidence that a candidate has changed demand assumptions rather than merely supplied campaign plans. They should be able to show how consumer research, customer conditions and early market signals altered investment or supply decisions, and how they measured the outcome without overstating attribution. Experience across culturally diverse markets and major seasonal occasions is particularly valuable.

The successful executive will combine instinct with intellectual honesty. They must defend a differentiated creative idea when evidence supports the underlying consumer truth, abandon it when behaviour disproves the hypothesis, and communicate both decisions without blame. Strong partnership with sales, supply, finance and country leaders is essential.

Compensation and appointment terms

Indicative base compensation is AED 1,600,000–2,200,000, supplemented by annual incentive and long-term participation tied to brand and enterprise value. Final placement will take account of comparable scope, market experience and present arrangements. Mobility support and any treatment of deferred awards will be handled individually during final negotiation.

Confidentiality

The platform is unnamed because the appointment involves unreleased portfolio choices, agency relationships and leadership succession. Shortlisted candidates will receive detailed brand and market information only after identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Application examples must anonymise sales, research, media rates and partner information belonging to another organisation.