Makers Mark Diplomat

What makes this a great opportunity?

Our Maker’s Mark Diplomats are the face of the brand to key influencers and interested consumers.  They are our storytellers, guardians, and educators about all the things that make our brands so special. 

As a Maker’s Mark Distillery Diplomat, you’ll be responsible for developing the local advocacy strategy bringing the magic of Maker’s Mark and our national historic landmark distillery to life. Serve as critical in-market liaison to facilitate communication, planning, and execution between Global Brand House and the Australian market. Establish & leverage a network influenced by the Global Brand House, Global Diplomats & Brand Influencers to maximize our market performance

Role Responsibilities

Public Relations: (PR)

• Be the face of the Maker’s Mark brand - exhibit expertise and detailed knowledge of  the full Maker’s Mark portfolio as well as the history and future of the brand, serving as an extension of the distillery in Australia.
• Lead the development of the Maker’s Mark advocacy strategy to deliver “end-to-end” programs that emotionally connect with the trade to make them advocates of our Maker’s portfolio.
• Establishing yourself to be sought after by trade and media influencers for insight on Kentucky Bourbon culture, Suntory’s company and brand history, production techniques and overarching whiskey category trends.
• Lead Social media strategy and digital content management with necessary stakeholders.

Education and Training:

• Build, lead and deliver the brand training and education strategy for the business in line with the brand and commercial objectives for both on and off premise channels as well as our internal teams. 
• Deliver industry-leading educational seminars, engaging consumers, trade, distributors, internal and media. Bring the distillery experience to our market, through education and engaging brand immersive experiences.
• Drink strategy specialist – Keeping up to date with market trends - delivering both global a local and relevant drink strategy with ability to deliver commercial return.

Innovation and new (Sku) product launches:

• Leading brand innovation launches through product introduction and education in focus cities, collaborating with brand and sales teams to achieve distribution and sell-through.
• Creator of local drink strategy – supporting in market trends and needs.

Advocacy

• Collaborating with the wider advocacy team to embed Club Suntory team on local trade advocacy strategy and event ideation.
• Event co-ordination – Supporting team on event execution.  Creation of Pre and Post-event communication driving awareness and attendance, ensuring the delivery of every event to the highest standards.
• Measuring and reporting on the effectiveness of all activations and brand engagement via attendance and measurables.
• Act as the conduit between Global brand house, local and global advocacy team for bartender education materials, merchandise materials, and serving as the local expert.
• Train the trainer and educate the local Ambassadors and sales teams.

Key Accounts ( HALO accounts)

• Lead generation for desirable accounts, working with our Sale team to commercialize any opportunity
• Relationship management and hyper care as required, with the autonomy to drive decisions.
• Bartender training and educational support.
• Strategic Sell-In and Execution of consumer events with brand building efforts, in the local market to drive strong consumer connections and consumption.
• Input and influence the 1:9:90 list in market.

Insights & Consumer Behaviours

• Deliver market-relevant insights to the brand and advocacy teams, distillery, and sales teams to help to further drive the portfolio growth strategy.
• Opportunity to provide regional category expertise and provide input into the national brand strategy.
• Collecting market feedback from consumers & Key account partners on what's working, what's not with in market activations.
• Ability to give feedback on agency responses or internal ideas.  Be the influential voice of the trade.

Qualifications

• Industry Professional individual with at least 5 years’ experience in related field with a strong hospitality and/or sales background, 3+ years of experience within the alcohol industry preferred
• Excellent spirits knowledge and a good knowledge of the wine and beer markets
• Genuine passion for Bourbon and Whiskey with extensive spirit knowledge
• Proficiency using Microsoft applications: Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint etc
• Proficiency on social media platforms and ability to adopt new tech platforms as required (eg External: Instagram Facebook etc, Internal-: Yammer etc )
• Excellent communicator, both verbal and written across various stakeholder level
• Experience in budget management
• Time management and analytical capabilities
• A nuanced understanding of the hospitality industry in focus markets
• Possess strong public speaking and presentation skills
• Key City Travel up to ~30% of time, (open to travel to other destinations to meet business needs)
• Candidate must have a current Australian drivers license and have own mode of transport
• This role may require some evening and weekend work as required
• Candidate to be based in Sydney
• Holds a relevant passport and has the ability to travel internationally (in particular U.S) when required by Brand House to attend brand summits or events.