Brand Manager, CVRM, Gulf

Role Overview

Brand Manager, CVRM, Gulf at AstraZeneca. This role is based in the Gulf region and is responsible for maximizing the potential of the AstraZeneca therapeutic portfolio through professional and successful working relationships with internal and external customers.

Company Overview

AstraZeneca fuses the worlds of Medical and Commercial to spot opportunities and pioneer approaches that better serve patients. The company bridges Commercial and Scientific goals, applying people and leadership skills to launch cutting-edge products into a growing healthcare ecosystem. AstraZeneca takes accountability to deliver new ways of doing things that create a better future for its markets.

Role Purpose

Manage the promotion, pricing, and positioning of products in the relevant therapeutic portfolio. Develop pre-launch and post-launch strategy, establish a disease area vision and strategy, and allocate resources effectively to optimize sales and profits. Strategize, write, and implement the marketing plan for the brand.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Launch Excellence

• Own the end-to-end launch strategy generating deep customer, patient, and healthcare system insights to shape future strategy of new launches in the CVRM unit.
• Develop and understand market research principles, sources, tools, and methodology.
• Work with local data to contribute to forecasting models.
• Develop Brand plan covering pre-launch, launch, and post-launch phases.
• Define and execute market-shaping initiatives that establish disease awareness, stakeholder advocacy, and treatment pathway evolution with clear milestones, KPIs, and accountability mechanisms.
• Monitor performance and continuously optimize execution based on evolving market dynamics.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Serve as the strategic leader of a large matrix cross-functional team.
• Establish governance structures, launch readiness reviews, and performance tracking processes.
• Drive formulary inclusion, pathway integration, and healthcare system adoption strategies.
• Identify opportunities to expand and accelerate patient access.
• Develop integrated omnichannel campaigns and customer engagement strategies.
• Own launch budget allocation and resource prioritization.
• Act as a role model for AstraZeneca values and behaviors.
• Foster a high-performance, collaborative, and accountable culture.

Communication & Promotion

• Develop all campaign material and briefing documents to ensure maximum impact.
• Brief and select agencies; review performance of agencies and costs to ensure optimal use of available financial resources.
• Lead regional and national sales meetings and business reviews as required.
• Ensure full compliance of material and activities with ethical standards and Code of Ethics.
• Prepare cost estimates for current activities, advertising and informing about AstraZeneca brand products, and investment budgets.

Stakeholder Management

• Build and maintain strategic relationships with key internal and external clients.
• Lead Brand Team, developing and implementing plans for Key External Engagement development and marketing strategy implementation.
• Cooperate with Sales Managers to empower the sales force and strengthen capacity to implement business strategy through field visits at regular intervals to gain insight on current and future marketing initiatives, providing training to the sales team on promotional materials and product strategy, and addressing internal and external questions regarding brand strategy and promotional materials.
• Conduct proactive assessment of brand performance, proposing needed actions to tap on opportunities and successfully addressing outstanding challenges of marketing strategy implementation.
• Own a refined top list of Key External Engagements to visit and follow up on strategic initiatives.
• Ensure proactivity of assessing brand performance together with the line manager, flag performance gaps, and identify areas of opportunities to drive further market share penetration.

Corporate Responsibility

• Maintain highest ethical standards and work in the spirit of AstraZeneca Code of Ethics, following rules and norms set by corporate policies.
• Ensure that all conducted activities are done in accordance with local legislation and corporate standards.
• Report timely, as per respective procedures: health, environment, and wellbeing-related accidents; adverse events; and changes in status of Conflict of Interest.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Medical related field.
• For external candidates: minimum of 3 years of marketing experience in Pharmaceutical and/or Fast-Moving Consumer Goods sectors, demonstrating ability to network, build and maintain relationships with key internal and external stakeholders, and work cross-functionally.
• Strong expertise in market analysis, deep market research insights mining, forecast analysis, and business case development with scenario planning.
• Market development and expansion work (pre-launch and post-launch).
• Proven competency in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Strong presentation skills.

Skills & Competencies

• Excellent interpersonal, organizational, and cross-functional cooperation and project management skills.
• Leadership and autonomy to initiate and execute responsibility under minimum guidance.
• Proven inspirational leadership when working with teams on guidance, alignment, and commitment.
• Financial business acumen and experience working with various forecasting models with ability to analyze data to formulate marketing plans.
• Effectiveness and productivity: ability to maximize use of resources and produce results.
• Stakeholder management to reach solutions and collaborate effectively with internal teams.
• Ability to handle setbacks and work in new environment, showing clear examples of resilience.

Additional Information

Desirable Qualifications

• Experience with specialty medicines with complex ecosystems (patients, healthcare providers, systems, payers).
• Patient centricity: passion for understanding patients, their attitudes to health, and who they interact with and are influenced by along the patient journey to ensure patient needs are at the heart of decision-making.
• Ability to translate information into actionable insight by rigorously analyzing and synthesizing multiple sources of information to uncover powerful new insights for business advantage.
• Ability to generate game-changing ideas by unleashing and nurturing creativity to translate strategies into bold ideas that connect with target audiences and deliver behavior change.
• Ability to design compelling experiences by creating holistic, motivating campaign experiences for multiple audiences across key touchpoints to drive positive change in attitudes and behavior.
• Ability to execute with brilliance by delivering compelling experiences, rigorously reviewing performance, seizing opportunities to optimize in real-time, and achieving greater effectiveness and efficiency.

Diversity & Inclusion

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity. The company is committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds with as wide a range of perspectives as possible. AstraZeneca welcomes and considers applications from all qualified candidates regardless of their characteristics and complies with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment and recruitment, as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.