Marketing Planner – Automotive Industry

Talascend is currently seeking a Marketing Planner – Automotive Industry for a contract opportunity located in Franklin, TN.

DURATION: 6 months with possible extension
LOCATION: Franklin, TN (Hybrid Combination of On-Site and Remote
NOTE:*** This position requires US Citizenship or Green Card 

OVERVIEW: 

The Planner role supports our Product Planning Teams to create consumer insights which create products and services with high relevance to consumers and better linked to the brand positioning. This position begins working on programs that have become officialized within the company and have formally entered the Upstream phase.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Work with Product Planning and Agencies to provide the “Voice of the Customer” for upcoming programs.
• Conduct qualitative and quantitative market research following our product development milestones.
• Conduct pricing and technology market research.
• Support any market research necessary for a program that may not fall into the formal milestone process (i.e., Liftback, EV, e-Power).
• Work with Brand and Marketing Teams to explore different positioning routes for model development.
• Oversees multiple external vendors.
• Interact with Global MI for project support, results sharing, and PDCA. Work with both Teams.

Job Functions:

Specific Studies which Planner may lead alongside supervision from Sr. Manager: Target Customer Segmentation; Target Customer In-depth Interviews; Product Testing; Product Competitiveness Studies; Marketing and Communications Study; After Launch Studies; Pricing and Technology Studies; Specific Functions required for all the above:

• Manages external and internal Stakeholder relationships for both product research studies.
• Follow established methodologies, sampling plans, and reporting for these studies.
• Conduct qualitative and quantitative research to support client teams.
• Synthesizes results and provides insights and recommended actions to internal clients, executives, and global teams.
• Responsible for managing and supervising the work of multiple suppliers/vendors and ensuring that the output is of high quality, relevant and value added.
• May conduct new trials of innovative research techniques to answer ambiguous research questions, especially to support new digital tools and social media.
• As necessary, performs other related duties of which the above are representative.

POSITION REQUIREMENTS: 

• Bachelor's degree and 3 years of experience -or- Master's degree and 1 year of directly related professional level experience. Masters or related advanced degree; MBA preferred.
• Experience working with agencies, advertising market research, precision and digital research tools is preferred.
• Occasional day, overnight, and extended travel.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:   

• Support upstream product research 4+ years before product launch.
• Clinics, work with Vendors, manage the details of what vehicles are used, what people do, why they want to attend the focus groups, what people will participate in from in-home.
• A lot of ad hoc requests - employee focus group -get feedback from employees - surveys with product owners, what do we ask, how do we get that feedback.
• Use the online software - easy to use Questions come to them, they have syndicated studies.
• Look at the data to see what demographic the customer falls into.
• Weekly - plan, respond to requests.