Associate Director, Marketing Excellence

Job Description Roles and Responsibilities The Associate Director, Marketing Excellence partners closely with Business Units/Brand Team and cross functional team to sharpen brand marketing strategy, enhance market insights, strengthen data-driven decisions, and translate strategy into effective customer engagement and execution excellence.

1. Marketing Excellence & Governance

• Shape and refine the Marketing Excellence framework and the governance mechanisms that raise the quality of both strategy development and strategy execution.
• Partner with business teams to ensure strategies are sharp, focused, and grounded in facts, and that customer engagement plans are clearly linked to strategy and translated into high-quality execution.
• Use governance forums and review routines to strengthen assumptions, surface trade-offs, and track execution excellence, ensuring timely decisions and follow-through across functions.

1. Capability Building & Best Practices

• Translate the Marketing Excellence framework into practical ways of working through workshops, working sessions, and targeted capability building for brand and cross-functional teams.
• Build and continuously enrich internal and external benchmarks and best practices across key marketing topics & customer solutions, and convert them into clear guidance or practice that teams can apply.
• Strengthen marketing excellence by scaling proven approaches, case examples, and lessons learned across brands.
• Work closely with L&D team to develop Marketing Excellence training courses to cover key MEX topics

1. Strategic Pilots & Growth Opportunity Enablement

• Identify systematic business issues and high-potential growth opportunities that cut across brands, and define priority improvement areas.
• Pilot new approaches with selected brands to validate solutions, demonstrate impact, and turn opportunities into scalable models.
• Drive cross-functional implementation and follow-through to ensure successful pilots are embedded into business practice and translated into measurable results.

Requirements

Education

/ Professional Certificate

• Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s degree or MBA is a plus. Working Experience
• 8+ years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with deep experience in strategic marketing, brand strategy, or related commercial leadership roles.
• Strong track record of leading or materially shaping strategy for large, high-priority brands or complex portfolios, with clear evidence of business impact.
• Hands-on experience translating strategy into execution, including customer engagement, cross-functional alignment, and disciplined follow-through.
• Exposure to FMCG industries is a plus. Professional knowledge and skill
• Deep strategic marketing expertise, with strong understanding of brand strategy, customer engagement, and the drivers of sustainable brand growth.
• Ability to work collaboratively across functions to drive clarity, sharpen priorities, and translate strategy into focused execution.
• Able to bring structure and clarity to complex business questions, sharpen strategic choices, and help teams stay focused on the few priorities that matter most.
• Collaborative and influential, with the ability to align diverse stakeholders, challenge constructively, and drive clarity without direct authority.
• Strong executive communication skills, with the ability to synthesize issues clearly and support high-quality decision-making.
• Agile, proactive, and outcome-oriented, with strong ownership, learning agility, and a high compliance mindset.
• Professional proficiency in English and Mandarin.

Required Skills

Adaptability, Data-Driven Decision Making, Feasibility Studies, Market Research, Pharmaceutical Market, Portfolio Management, Project Management, Resource Allocation, Risk Management, Strategic Planning, Strategic Thinking Preferred Skills: Current Employees apply HERE Current Contingent Workers apply HERE Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully Merck & Co.

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