Reporting to the International Personal Care (IPC) Baby & Child Care Sector Growth Leader, the IPC Personal Care Design Director will lead a team at the segment level in service of elevating the overall design strategy and execution in both the Baby & Child Care and Adult & Feminine Care sectors across the International Personal Care markets at Kimberly-Clark. This position is critical in bringing to life one of the 3 broader commercial transformation priorities for IPC, which is to elevate brand promise and storytelling. This position will strengthen the strategic role of design in innovation design, packaging development, product demo and ecommerce asset development. He/she will also work in strong partnership with the segment brand team, digital team and country marketing teams to elevate our propositions and drive consumer preference across the IPC Markets (Korea, ANZ, Indonesia, Greater China, Brazil). In addition to leading strategy and design excellence for IPC, this position will ensure seamless packaging operations and delivery to bring the design vision to reality.
Role Accountabilities & Responsibilities
- Build strategic design/creative capabilities in accordance with the rapidly changing customer and consumer needs.
- Drive ongoing brand design team engagement with cross functional partners to deliver competitive advantage to Kimberly-Clark while elevating design in the entire consumer experience.
- Demonstrate the power and value of integrated Design solutions/visual design systems for assigned brands across all sensorial consumer touchpoints with a direct link to commercial campaigns and market activations.
- Demonstrate the impact of design in the consumer ecosystem.
- Ensure alignment to the global foundational tools/Global Brand Identity guidelines for assigned brands.
- Drive brand design strategy development all the way to seamless market execution (product, physical/digital package, the shelf, merchandising, and commercial components/promise)
- Identify, develop, and deploy external Brand Design capabilities; build design agency/freelancer network rosters to deliver incredible design/creative.
- Lead a team of design managers/designers to elevate the brand promise and storytelling through design excellence and execution. Enable and empower the team to flow to work dependent on business need, with an agile mindset.
- Provide leadership to attract, develop and retain incredible design talent while fostering an environment which motivates a diverse team to fully use its capabilities in achieving desired business result.
- Collaborate with brand teams and countries to drive efficiencies, work differently, foster agile development, and elevate the role of design to deliver exceptional consumer experiences.
- Drive thought leadership in Brand Design; identify and interpret trend, competitive activities and implications, key consumer/customer activities and needs, and emerging technologies and their potential applications.
Qualifications
- Bachelors degree in graphic design, marketing and/or related field. Masters degree in related field preferred.
- 10+ years of design experience within CGP industry leading and developing strategic design/creative initiatives with at least 3 years’ experience supporting personal care related brands.
- Strong people leader and developer of talent with at least 3 years of direct people leader experience.
- Demonstrated ability to be a creative and strategic thinker who has deep empathy for people and has passion for creating purposeful brands and meaningful consumer experiences.
- Track record of applying strategic, analytical, and design thinking to solve challenging problems across a range of topics.
- At least 5 years of relevant design experience supporting Asia markets especially with China, Korea, Australia and Indonesia. Preference for experience with Brazil preferred but not required.
- Track record of success working effectively across a highly matrixed organization.
