Marketing Manager: Value & Signature

At KFC, we pride ourselves on being original. We even named our recipe after it. But for us, the answer to the question is simple. Be You. Everyone at KFC is different. Unique. It’s what makes us special - Our people, The Originals. And we welcome you to join us. Bring your individuality to the table. Bring your grit and energy. Bring your spirit. Your story. Your drive and your passion. Bring it. Every piece of you. Even the parts you don’t like. Because we value our people no matter what. We’ll feed your potential and we’ll support you; to be your best self, to make a difference, and have fun. Together, we can be part of something truly extraordinary. All you have to do, is Bring it.

This role requires you to lead the strategic and commercial growth agenda for KFC South Africa’s Value & Signature portfolios, setting clear portfolio choices and ensuring marketing, innovation and investment plans strengthen customer relevance, brand equity and sustainable commercial performance.
The role leads the team responsible for translating these choices into integrated plans and partners with specialist functions and cross-functional teams to deliver against KFC South Africa’s growth ambitions.

Responsibilities:

Lead Value & Signature Portfolio Strategy
•Define the strategic role, ambition and growth priorities for the Value & Signature portfolios within the broader KFC South Africa strategy.
•Make clear choices on where the portfolios should play, win and invest based on customer need, brand opportunity and commercial potential.
•Establish clear portfolio architecture and ensure propositions have differentiated roles across affordability, core, premium, product and occasion needs.
•Identify opportunities and risks across the portfolio and recommend where KFC should grow, protect, optimize, reposition or exit propositions.
•Ensure short-term commercial activity strengthens rather than compromises long-term portfolio and brand health.
•Translate the portfolio strategy into clear priorities and guardrails for Senior Brand Managers and their teams.

Own the Portfolio Growth & Commercial Agenda
•Own the overall growth agenda and marketing performance of the Value & Signature portfolios.
•Set clear commercial and customer objectives across sales, transactions, ticket, product mix, margin, penetration, frequency and brand health.
•Diagnose portfolio performance and identify the underlying customer, competitive and commercial drivers of growth or decline.
•Use performance, consumer insight and commercial understanding to determine where intervention or acceleration is required.
•Lead key portfolio decisions and recommend corrective actions when performance is off-track.
•Partner with Finance, Commercial, Operations and other functions to ensure marketing choices are commercially sound and executable.
•Balance immediate trading requirements with sustainable customer and brand growth.

Shape Innovation & Future Growth
•Set the innovation ambition and strategic pipeline for Value & Signature based on identified customer and portfolio growth opportunities.
•Define the customer problems, demand spaces and commercial opportunities innovation should solve.
•Prioritize innovation opportunities across product, value, occasion, experience and partnership platforms.
•Partner with Food Innovation, Supply Chain, Operations, Finance, Insights and Digital teams to develop commercially viable propositions.
•Establish clear criteria for testing, learning, scaling or stopping initiatives.
•Ensure innovation strengthens the overall portfolio rather than creating unnecessary complexity, cannibalization or customer confusion.
•Maintain a forward-looking pipeline that balances near-term growth opportunities with longer-term portfolio development.

Set Marketing & Creative Ambition
•Set the marketing and creative ambition for Value & Signature and ensure activity strengthens KFC’s distinctive brand assets and cultural relevance.
•Ensure portfolio strategies are translated into clear, compelling customer propositions and integrated marketing platforms.
•Provide senior judgement and direction on major campaigns, propositions and creative work.
•Challenge teams and agency partners to deliver work that is distinctive, culturally relevant, commercially effective and appropriate for the KFC brand.
•Ensure Value & Signature activity works cohesively within the broader KFC South Africa customer and communications ecosystem.
•Partner with Media, Digital, CRM, Social, PR and other specialist teams to ensure specialist strategies support agreed portfolio and customer objectives.

Lead Investment & Marketing Effectiveness
•Recommend how marketing investment should be prioritized across the Value & Signature portfolios to maximize customer, brand and commercial impact.
•Make clear investment trade-offs based on strategic importance, expected return and portfolio performance.
•Partner with Finance, Media and specialist teams to evaluate effectiveness and improve the quality of investment decisions.
•Establish clear success measures for major portfolio initiatives and ensure teams understand what success looks like before launch.
•Lead regular portfolio performance reviews and ensure learnings translate into future planning and investment decisions.
•Champion disciplined experimentation and evidence-based decision making.

Champion the Customer & Competitive Agenda
•Ensure deep customer understanding sits at the centre of Value & Signature portfolio choices.
•Partner with Insights and specialist teams to identify meaningful shifts in consumer behaviour, culture, category dynamics and customer needs.
•Maintain a strong understanding of the South African QSR and broader competitive environment, including emerging propositions, pricing, innovation and customer behaviour.
•Translate customer, cultural and competitive intelligence into implications and choices for the portfolio.
•Challenge teams to distinguish between short-term competitive reaction and opportunities that create sustainable advantage for KFC.
•Represent the customer perspective in senior commercial and cross-functional decisions.

Lead High-Performing Teams
•Lead, coach and develop Senior Brand Managers, Brand Managers and other direct reports to deliver against clear portfolio priorities.
•Set clear accountability between portfolio leadership, brand teams and specialist functions.
•Create the conditions for teams to make good decisions while maintaining appropriate senior oversight of strategically or commercially significant choices.
•Build strong strategic, commercial, creative and leadership capability within the team.
•Establish high standards for thinking, execution, ownership and accountability.
•Build succession and capability plans that strengthen the long-term marketing talent pipeline.
•Foster a culture of curiosity, constructive challenge, collaboration, experimentation and continuous learning.

Cross-Functional & Franchise Leadership
•Align senior stakeholders around the major strategic and commercial priorities for Value & Signature.
•Build strong partnerships with Operations, Finance, Supply Chain, Food Innovation, Digital, Technology, Insights and other functions required to deliver the portfolio agenda.
•Partner with franchise stakeholders to build understanding, confidence and alignment around major portfolio choices and initiatives.
•Surface material risks, trade-offs and dependencies early and drive resolution at the appropriate level.
•Represent Value & Signature in senior business forums and advocate for customer and brand-led growth.
•Build productive senior relationships with key agency partners while leaving day-to-day agency management with the appropriate brand and specialist teams

Education:
Bachelors Degree in Marketing, Business Manager or related fields
Post Graduate Qualification essential
MBA highly Preferred

Experience:
•Approximately 7 to 10 years of progressive marketing and brand management experience, preferably within FMCG, QSR, retail or another fast-paced consumer business.
•Strong experience leading brands, portfolios, categories or significant customer propositions with clear commercial accountability.
•Demonstrated ability to translate consumer insight and commercial performance into clear strategic choices and growth plans.
•Experience leading major integrated campaigns, innovation and portfolio initiatives from strategy through to in-market performance.
•Strong understanding of portfolio management, pricing, value, innovation and customer proposition development.
•Experience managing and prioritising significant marketing investment.
•Strong commercial understanding and experience influencing sales, transactions, margin and broader P&L outcomes.
•Proven experience leading and developing marketing talent.
•Experience influencing senior cross-functional stakeholders and presenting strategic and investment recommendations to senior leadership.
•Experience working effectively with creative, media and specialist agency partners.

Capabilities:
•Commercial judgement: Strong understanding of the relationship between customer behaviour, pricing, product mix, marketing investment, sales, transactions, margin and long-term value.
•Consumer & cultural intelligence: Ability to translate changing customer needs, culture and competitive dynamics into meaningful business opportunities.
•Brand & creative leadership: Strong judgement on propositions, brand building and creative work, with the ability to set a high standard without taking over day-to-day execution.
•Innovation leadership: Ability to identify growth opportunities, prioritise innovation and make disciplined decisions on what to test, scale, optimise or stop.
•Marketing effectiveness: Ability to set meaningful success measures, evaluate performance and make informed investment choices.
•Strategic decision making: Ability to simplify complexity, make trade-offs and establish clear priorities.
•Enterprise influence: Ability to align senior leaders, franchise partners and cross-functional teams behind strategic choices.
•People leadership: Ability to coach, challenge and develop high-performing marketing teams.
•Digital, data & AI fluency: Sufficient understanding of modern marketing capabilities to set expectations, identify opportunities and partner effectively with specialist leaders, without being the functional owner of those disciplines.
•Execution leadership: Ability to create clarity, accountability and pace through teams while maintaining focus on the highest-value priorities.