Associate Director, Marketing Excellence

Merck Merck · Pharma · Shanghai, China

Associate Director, Marketing Excellence role at Merck, focusing on refining brand marketing strategy, enhancing market insights, strengthening data-driven decisions, and improving customer engagement and execution excellence within the pharmaceutical industry. Responsibilities include shaping marketing frameworks, capability building, and piloting new approaches. Requires 8+ years of experience in pharmaceutical strategic marketing or commercial leadership.

What you'd actually do

  1. Shape and refine the Marketing Excellence framework and the governance mechanisms that raise the quality of both strategy development and strategy execution.
  2. 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.
  3. Use governance forums and review routines to strengthen assumptions, surface trade-offs, and track execution excellence, ensuring timely decisions and follow-through across functions.
  4. Translate the Marketing Excellence framework into practical ways of working through workshops, working sessions, and targeted capability building for brand and cross-functional teams.
  5. 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.

Skills

Required

  • Adaptability
  • Data-Driven Decision Making
  • Feasibility Studies
  • Market Research
  • Pharmaceutical Market
  • Portfolio Management
  • Project Management
  • Resource Allocation
  • Risk Management
  • Strategic Planning
  • Strategic Thinking
  • English
  • Mandarin

Nice to have

  • Master’s degree or MBA
  • Exposure to FMCG industries

What the JD emphasized

  • 8+ years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry
  • 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