Sr. Category Leader, Marketing & CommunicationsWork Mode: Onsite
Location:Onsite, four days per week - Kohler, WI
OpportunityThis is an exciting opportunity to shape how Kohler invests in media and marketing partnerships that build our brands, reach consumers, and drive business impact. The Senior Category Leader - Marketing & Communications, will serve as a strategic partner to Marketing, bringing commercial discipline, supplier insight, and market expertise to help maximize value, improve transparency, and enable smarter, faster decisions across a dynamic and evolving media landscape. This senior role will focus on all kinds of marketing media planning, development, execution and distribution.
Scope and Responsibilities - Lead media procurement strategy and sourcing execution for Kohler's marketing organization, including paid media, digital, programmatic, social, search, retail media, agency services, measurement, and related marketing technology.
- Partner with marketing, brand, finance, legal, privacy, analytics, and agency stakeholders to translate business needs into sourcing strategies, scopes of work, contract requirements, performance expectations, and supplier governance plans.
- Lead competitive sourcing events, supplier evaluations, bid analysis, negotiations, award recommendations, renewals, and contract changes for media agencies, platforms, and related suppliers.
- Analyze spend, supplier proposals, rate cards, agency fees, media pricing models, contract terms, market dynamics, and performance data to support fact-based decisions and total value recommendations.
- Manage supplier relationships and governance routines, including scorecards, business reviews, issue resolution, escalation paths, performance commitments, renewal planning, and continuous improvement actions.
- Deliver category value through cost avoidance, savings, risk reduction, improved transparency, supplier accountability, and stronger return on marketing investment including Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
- Provide media procurement expertise on agency models, fee structures, commercial terms, brand safety, content rights and evolving media market trends.
- Communicate sourcing activity, supplier performance, risks, value delivered, and recommended improvements to procurement, marketing, and senior business leaders.
Key Media/Marketing Subject Matter Expertise: - Strong understanding of paid media categories, agency models, media platforms, fee structures, retainer and rate cards, media markups, and other key commercial levers.
- Strong understanding of marketing performance and value metrics (e.g., return on ad spend, cost per acquisition, engagement and conversion)
- Ability to evaluate supplier proposals using business impact, service quality, performance, risk, and total cost of ownership metrics.
- Familiarity with digital marketing ecosystem, supplier landscape, and compliance considerations (data privacy, IP rights, and content usage).
- Connect sourcing decisions to Kohler's brand priorities, marketing objectives, risk mitigation, value creation, and budget effectiveness.
- Manage complexity by making sense of complex media, supplier, contract, budget, and performance information to define issues and solve problems.
Key Procurement Subject Matter Expertise: - Understand the importance of contract quality and deliver to high standards
- Interpret business, commercial and legal contract terms and conditions and communicate them so that associates of all levels can understand them
- Independently manage and lead sourcing and contracting processes
- Negotiation
- Negotiate marketing and communications services engagements and agreements with a focus on media
- Seek to increase the amount of negotiation power and leverage in every opportunity, and when that is not possible, negotiate well within varying degrees of power and leverage
- Analyze commercial aspects of proposals and contracts, with a focus on delivering against appropriate marketing/communications metrics and overall value (not just reductions in cost)
- Category and Supplier Management:
- Develop media category strategies that balance cost, quality, speed, innovation, compliance, supplier performance, and business outcomes.
- Use spend data, supplier insights, benchmarks, market intelligence, and risk assessments to build fact-based sourcing recommendations.
- Govern supplier relationships through scorecards, business reviews, issue resolution, accountability routines, and continuous improvement plans.
- Interpersonal Competencies and Capabilities:
- Delight internal customers and stakeholders by accepting responsibility and holding self, suppliers, and stakeholders accountable to timelines, commitments, service levels, compliance expectations, and performance outcomes.
- Build and maintain key internal and external relationships, including those with senior leaders including directors, VPs and C-suite-level officers
- Proactively keep stakeholders up to date with timely, effective communication
- Inspire internal associate teams to always do what is right for Kohler Co
- Boldly innovate through process improvements and through finding new ways to do things
- Work independently and own workstreams as if this was your company
- Be comfortable asking questions when the desired outcome is unclear
- Prioritize competing workstreams according to their real level of urgency, anticipates risks, improves processes, and drives timely execution.
Skills/Requirements - Bachelor's degree in marketing, supply chain, business, finance, communications, or related field required; advanced degree preferred.
- Minimum of 8+ years of combined experience in strategic sourcing focused on marketing categories, category management, media procurement, media agency management, marketing operations, or related roles.
- Experience managing media, marketing, agency, communications, or technology-related contracts and sourcing projects with $1M-10M+ in annual spend
- Proficiency with supplier management, contract management, eSourcing, spend analytics, Microsoft Excel, Power BI, Microsoft Copilot, and related procurement or analytics tools.
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Applicants must be authorized to work in the US without requiring sponsorship now or in the future.We believe in supporting you from the moment you join us, which is why Kohler offers day 1 benefits. This means you'll have access to your applicable benefit programs from your first day on the job, with no waiting period. The salary range for this position is $135,600 - $211,000. The specific salary offered to a candidate may be influenced by a variety of factors including the candidate's experience, their education, and the work location. In addition, this position is eligible for a performance bonus/variable incentive compensation.
