Senior Director
MMR Research Worldwide LTD, China
Job Description
Introducing Huxly
Huxly is a fast growing brand and innovation consultancy, launched in 2018. We’re totally focused on the food, drink and personal care sectors, and have a unique approach that explores the emotional, functional, social, cultural, sensorial and semiotic role of products in our consumers’ lives.
Our business has grown extremely rapidly over the last 4 years, working with the world’s finest CPG businesses, all around the world. We’ve already delivered lots of work in Asia, and we want to accelerate this by creating a team of strategists and creatives in Shanghai, to serve clients based in China and across the region.
We are part of the MMR group, the UK’s largest privately owned market research company, and we have offices in Wallingford, London, Durban, Singapore, Shanghai, Sao Paulo and New York. Joining Huxly in 2022 is a unique opportunity to be part of a small, fast growing start up, backed by the strength and stability of a large global research business.
The Role: Senior Director Asia
We’re looking for a dynamic future leader. This is a great opportunity for someone looking to step up to leadership role. Huxly Asia will be a startup business, so the right candidate will need to be comfortable getting ‘hands on’ with innovation and creative strategy projects in the early months. With backing from the wider MMR group, we will rapidly look to invest and build the team in Shanghai, so we will also value candidates with experience of managing a bigger team. We’re looking for someone who can both deliver excellent projects, and build relationships with potential clients.
The Huxly proposition is working extremely well in the US and Europe. We also recognize that the Chinese / Asian market has some different dynamics, and we’re looking for someone with the experience and gravitas to shape the proposition for local conditions.
Specific accountabilities will include
- Being our first member of the team in China, and being a core part of our management team. Helping our growth journey to 5-10M turnover, in the next few years.
- Working collaboratively with our peers in the MMR parent company in our Shanghai office.
- Building relationships with target clients to increase our profile within the organization, and creating a global network of contacts who support Huxly.
- Hiring and developing a team of consultants, coaching them to deliver high quality work.
- Helping your team of consultants to develop superb proposals, and delivering inspiring, unforgettable projects that make our clients come back to us for more work. Projects will be delivered alongside and with the support of:
- Working with our new business communications team to ensure our content is sent out in a timely manner, to the right people in the accounts you lead.
Requirements
Essential Skills/Qualities
- Proven experience of leading, designing and delivering brand positioning, innovation and communications development projects
- The ability to work collaboratively with teams who have different skill sets and are from different cultures
- Bilingual in Mandarin and English able to run qualitative research in both languages, and write copy for audiences in mainland China.
Passion for and experience in FMCG research
- Excellence in proposal writing, research design and pitching
- Advanced skills in client management, account development
- Moderation of fieldwork (groups, depths, workshops, online communities etc.)
- Experience of leading teams
- Observation of overseas fieldwork
- Report writing / delivery of presentations
- Articulate/expressive/credible/easy to work with
Desirable Skills / Qualities
- ‘Smarts’ the ability to wow your clients with incisive thinking
- Creativity the ability to create new brand and innovation solutions
- An ability to command an audience and present confidently in front of clients
- Ability to travel internationally
Benefits
About Huxly and MMR
Huxly is a small, informal and highly supportive team, and can provide a highly entertaining working environment. We’re also very proud to be part of MMR. MMR offers an open, dynamic, varied and non-hierarchical environment, where bespoke MMR Academy training is offered at every level. We also offer exciting secondment opportunities at our other global locations, as well as a selection of fantastic employee benefits.
MMR delivers a class leading set of marketing science tools and approaches, many of which are proprietary to MMR. We are endorsed by our global client base for our agility, technical expertise and willingness to ada