Director, Restaurants Vertical – BASES

Intro to the BASES Restaurant team

With best in class research and predictive analytical tools, the BASES Restaurants Vertical provides comprehensive, end to end consulting for our global restaurant clients across limited service and full-service, including McDonald’s, Burger King, Chick-fil-A, Olive Garden and Popeyes, to name just a few.

From product messaging that inspires action, fresh in restaurant designs and optimal menu innovation launch strategies, with BASES Restaurants, you will work with industry leading marketers and see your work come to life.

Have you ever wanted to modernize a restaurant’s message?

How about discovering the next menu trend?

With BASES Restaurants, you can.

The BASES Restaurants team is a key part of BASES North America Growth Verticals.

BASES is the global leader and gold-standard for helping our clients identify, develop and launch new innovations, impactful messaging, compelling designs and optimal activation to realize their growth strategies.

BASES has decades of successful leadership across fast moving consumer goods, with the Growth Verticals teams focused to extend beyond traditional Consumer Packaged Goods.

We are the fastest growing and biggest driver of incrementality for the global BASES enterprise.

Our teams operate in an end-to-end model where everyone is responsible for opportunity identification, strategic consultation, client management, analytics and reporting.

Be curious.

Be creative.

Be collaborative.

Be forward thinking.

Join the BASES team and work with our clients as a consultant, a problem solver and the voice of BASES Restaurants.

Position Description

When you join the team, you’re signing up for an experience that requires flexibility, creativity, curiosity, and passion.

As a Director, BASES Restaurants you will: 

Job Purpose

• Be accountable for supporting the BASES Restaurant business in achieving and exceeding $3-5MM annual revenue targets through strategic leadership of key restaurant clients and developing strong analysts, ensuring outstanding project delivery and analytics

• Act as a strategic client partner and trusted advisor to key and complex clients

• Have accountability for knowledge management, including client playbooks, best practices, vertical expertise, etc.

• Work closely with the North America Growth Verticals Leadership team and BASES product leadership to ensure BASES bundle of products and services are robust and actionable for the restaurants industry 

• Manage a team of 2-3 managers/associate managers, guiding them to be successful

• Ensure high quality client deliverables

Responsibilities

• Client Leadership

  • Serve as a key leader, collaborating closely with the full verticals team, for client relationships, understanding business needs and driving to better client outcomes 

  • Be a contributor and driver of account plans to increase depth and breadth of penetration of BASES solutions to meet client specific needs 

  • Have responsibility for final draft of reports presented to client, serving as final reviewer

  • Deliver consultative and big picture insights to drive innovation success

  • Drive BASES business results through relevant commercial best practices of opportunity identification and consultative selling

  • Independently lead client meetings and conducts external presentations, as appropriate

  • Independently design and estimate costs of projects; develop and present proposals to key client buyers

  • Understand the full BASES Restaurants ecosystem/process, including the competitive environment, preferred agencies, relevant tools to drive client value

  • Interact with clients on discovery and best practices to drive strategic direction

• Strategy

  • Work closely with Restaurants Vertical Leader to define and execute against an analytic strategy that is aligned to client expectations

  • Ensure consulting on client portfolio and bigger picture needs is present in all deliverables

• Analytic Expertise

  • Act as the “expert on call” for clients, resolving issues and driving technical dialogue

  • Drive expertise of services, tools and metrics across the Restaurants vertical

  • Help troubleshoot analytics/quality and other misc.

    issues throughout project life-cycle

  • Leverage Analytical Excellence and Strategic Consulting to drive client relationships

  • Consult with BASES Specialties teams (Design, Line & Price, Advertising, Product Testing), and provide final sign-off upon, complex deliverables

  • Actively leads/participates in relevant thought leadership projects and awareness driving tactics (e.g.

    podcasts, etc) as defined by the North America Growth Verticals Leadership team

• Achieve group revenue goals.

  • Contributes to the revenue management process for the vertical, including development and review of opportunity pipeline and establishment of revenue plan to achieve/exceed revenue goals

  • Develops and maintains account plans and forecasts, including pipeline goals using Salesforce.com and other tools

  • Understands and guides team comprehension of the the total client experience linkage to strategic growth of the client and overall vertical

• Talent Development

  • Directly manages a team (2-3) Managers/Associate Managers, providing performance coaching, reviewing work

  • Responsible for annual Personal Performance Review process for direct reports

  • Collects and provides feedback from clients and internal cross-functional teammates; both overall and on a study by study basis

  • Identify development areas for team, looking for opportunities to stretch and grow junior talent

  • Celebrate success and milestones of junior level associates

  • Assists in hiring and termination decisions, conducting interviews with potential candidates to fill open roles

  • Monitors influx of project work and manages across the team to ensure work is distributed efficiently

  • Works with Restaurants Vertical leadership to ensure adequate resourcing to manage future client demand

• Manages the overall success of research projects

  • Reviews teams recommendations and attends results presentation to ensure alignment and understanding of client objectives 

  • Manages client reaction and team response to any project issues; seeks quick resolution to overcome any and all challenges 

Success Factors

• Understands BASES Restaurants products and services, forecasting theory and broader NielsenIQ solutions that impact innovation

• Proven ability to work with team to deliver strategically insightful deliverables to drive client engagement, building deep client relationships and ultimately be viewed as a trusted advisor 

• Strong working knowledge of Innovation Practice products and services, and ability to execute a variety of complex projects

• Ability to manage client expectations through the life-cycle of a project, ensuring client satisfaction by providing feedback, insights and updates in a timely manner

• Meets revenue targets, and grows relationships with clients

• Strong analytical and communication skills

• Able to act independently

• Inspiring leader, with an ability to effectively coach and develop a team of junior associates

• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to deal with a variety of performance situations

• Detail orientation and strong organization skills

• Team-oriented mindset, with ability to manage conflicting interests

Scope

• Vertical Business Plan Target: $3-5MM (minimal change).

• US centric clients with occasional global projects in other global territories

• Team of 2-3 direct reports

• Anticipated less than 25% travel once COVID restrictions are lifted 

Additional Information

While this position will likely start remotely, once we are back to an in office work environment, this position will be located at our office in either Chicago, IL, Cincinnati, OH, Wilton, CT, or Parsippany, NJ

About NielsenIQ 

NielsenIQ is a global measurement and data analytics company that provides the most complete and trusted view available of consumers and markets worldwide.

We provide consumer packaged goods manufacturers/fast-moving consumer goods and retailers with accurate, actionable information and insights and a complete picture of the complex and changing marketplace that companies need to innovate and grow.

Our approach marries proprietary NielsenIQ data with other data sources to help clients around the world understand what’s happening now, what’s happening next, and how to best act on this knowledge.

We like to be in the middle of the action.

That’s why you can find us at work in over 90 countries, covering more than 90% of the world’s population.

For more information, visit

NielsenIQ is committed to hiring and retaining a diverse workforce.

We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action-Employer, making decisions without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability status, age, marital status, protected veteran status or any other protected class.