Head of Marketing - North Africa, Levant & Pakistan

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

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Position Summary

The Senior Director/Head of Marketing for North Africa, Levant & Pakistan (NALP) will lead marketing strategy, planning and implementation for the NALP Market, working closely with internal and external stakeholders to ensure that marketing priorities support and align to business goals.

This marketing executive will have responsibility for leading the NALP regional marketing team, partnering with internal functions and external partners to maximize Visa’s performance in the key areas of revenue generation, brand preference, sponsorships, social and client advisory with the aim of growing transactions, payment volume and market share, across both the physical and card-not-present (digital) environments.

This leader will manage country level marketing investments, ensuring full assessment and prioritization of country marketing strategies and plans against business and marketing objectives. S/he will lead value creation that the Visa Marketing team delivers for its clients (both issuers and merchants), with a key focus on delivering Value Added Services through Value-in Kind marketing.

They will maximize marketing output by delivering excellent creative content and cost synergies that address market opportunities and needs, and ensuring business case assessments and measurement of results against established KPIs and Visa’s marketing measurement framework.

S/he will establish and develop strong, collaborative working relationships across the spectrum of stakeholders, including Clients, Visa Region and Country Level Management, Sales, Product, Acceptance, and regional CEMEA and Global Marketing teams.

Specific Responsibilities

• Lead regional and country level marketing initiatives and investments, ensuring full assessment and prioritization of country marketing strategies, delivering against business and marketing objectives.
• Lead development and implementation of strategic marketing and communication plans designed to meet business and marketing requirements.
• Drive market research activity within the region, and suggest new market research projects to provide information for the development and enhancement of marketing programs
• Ensure the identification and analysis of card payment trends, market opportunities and cardholder behavior, evaluating their value and viability within the marketing plan to make strategic recommendations on future business direction
• Monitor and analyze existing and potential competitor marketing activities to identify new opportunities
• Manage budgets for the region and ensure all marketing activities are performed within budgets and in full compliance with existing rules and policies. Advocate and develop business cases for incremental investment.
• Assess all local marketing activities against key marketing KPIs
• Act as the Visa brand guardian and ensure all communications comply with regional and global brand strategies and guidelines
• Negotiate and secure contracts with external partners

Manage Marketing Agency Relationships

• Manage relationships with external agencies and manage their activities, effectively ensuring efficient delivery of agreed plans
• Lead NALP briefing process for creative and media agencies on all campaigns, and safeguard the Visa brand and its values
• Review and evaluate all NALP agency work product
• Ensure the NALP agencies deliver on their contractual obligations

Provision of Marketing Support with, to and for Client Banks

• Provide professional marketing advice and consultancy to clients to support clients in delivering on their business objectives
• Lead development and implementation of client co-op marketing strategies and plans
• Provide clients with new effective approaches to achieving business and marketing goals with the use of marketing value added services and execution of marketing activities
• Gain the support and commitment of clients to participate in Visa marketing activities
• Build client activation programs for Visa’s Sponsorship Properties including FIFA, F1, Olympics, AFCON and WAFCON sponsorship programs to amplify marketing investments and programs across the region
• Lead development and implementation of local sponsorship strategies and plans

General

• Actively contribute to the development of the NALP marketing team through coaching, support and the development of formal training plans
• Establish, maintain and develop strong working relationships with senior management at global, regional hub and country level
• Manage budget allocation and budget reporting according to Visa Inc. procedures

Reporting Relationships & Interactions

This marketing executive will report into the SVP, Chief Marketing Officer CEMEA, with matrixed accountability to the General Manager of NALP. This individual will be expected to interact effectively will all levels of Visa Management and staff across regions and functions. This position will involve significant interaction and communication with key Visa Clients, both issuers and merchants.

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

Required Experience
• Tertiary education (MBA preferable)
• 15+ years senior marketing (and preferably) general management experience in blue-chip fast moving consumer goods, tech, telco, banking and/or financial services
• Global and/or regional senior marketing responsibility across range of channels and businesses
• Strong track record in the management of external agencies and the development of effective, through the line campaign materials

Competencies
• Strong business acumen and P&L management experience
• Exceptional leadership skills, with ability to inspire and motivate team
• Disciplined strategic thinker with superb analytical skills and ability to understand and use quantitative models
• Demonstrated depth of experience across all marketing channels, including social/digital
• Good creative instincts, and proven ability to translate insights into ideas
• Ability to manage well by influence across matrixed organization to build strong relationships and drive to timely solutions
• Exceptional verbal and written communications skills in English and Arabic (and preferably French), adept at executive management briefings and large scale presentations
• Multi-culturally sensitive and comfortable working across different cultures
• Negotiation skills
• Great skills and sensitivity in relationship management to get the best out of partnership activities
• Agility and flexibility to work in a fast-changing environment

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.