Earlier this year, Unilever announced an agreement to combine its Foods business with McCormick & Company, creating a scaled global flavour powerhouse. The proposed combination would bring together iconic Foods brands, including Hellmann’s and Knorr, with McCormick’s portfolio to create a global leader across spices, seasonings, condiments and complementary food categories, supported by strong retail and foodservice platforms. McCormick brings more than 135 years of heritage, a presence in 150+ countries and territories, and a portfolio of trusted brands. The transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, with completion estimated for mid-2027
Job Purpose
We are seeking a passionate and self-driven Data + Tooling Innovation Media Lead for the Integrated Demand Generation Team (IDG), who will help shape how Foods drives stronger media performance through better use of platforms, technology, automation, data and AI. This is an exciting time to join the Foods business as it builds sharper global capabilities, creates new ways of working, and unlocks the next level of growth and performance.
This role helps shape the end-to-end media performance infrastructure for Foods — across execution, technology and data — to drive stronger business outcomes at global scale. It brings together platform best practice, AI-enabled activation opportunities and trusted data foundations so Foods can move towards more connected, responsive and optimisation-led ways of working. The role will span areas such as media buying, media spend and performance reporting, asset code frameworks, Rapid ROI, competitor reporting, ad accounts, buying principles, smart bidding, ad tech partnerships, media technology stack management and emerging agentic tools.
Key Responsibilities
1. Media Buying Excellence & Platform Best Practice
Define and scale buying best practices across major media platforms
Drive adoption of Smart Bidding and platform-native optimisation capabilities
Own core media platform responsibilities including ad account structures, governance, buying principles and smart bidding approaches
Own media spend and performance reporting across markets, ensuring clear visibility of investment, delivery and optimisation opportunities
Manage the reporting foundations that enable consistent measurement, including asset code frameworks, Rapid ROI, spend reporting and competitor reporting
2. Ad Tech & Automation Innovation
Maximise the value of ad tech partners
Identify opportunities to simplify, automate and improve activation workflows
Prepare media activation for deeper content integration, ensuring platform, data and workflow readiness as content and media become more connected
Manage and evolve the media technology stack, including partner usage, tool governance, integration opportunities and performance use cases
Explore and scale agentic tools that can reduce manual work, improve decision-making and unlock faster optimisation across markets
3. Scaling Innovation Across Markets
Translate platform and technology innovations into scalable solutions for markets and agencies
4. Agency Partnership & Performance
Partner with agencies to continuously improve activation quality, efficiency and performance
Experience
Deep hands-on experience across major digital media platforms
Strong understanding of media buying, optimisation, and auction dynamics
Experience using ad tech partners such as Smartly, The Trade Desk, Innovid, and DoubleVerify
For the recruitment of this position, we would like to emphasize that local conditions apply to the position and for this vacancy in principle we will consider candidates based on the set locations. If you are based outside of these locations and you are interested in applying, please feel free to do so but at this stage we will not take your application forward. We will only consider your application if a decision is made to also recruit outside of the set locations.
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