Meet Bas Kuijs, the Category Planning & Activation Manager

Friday, October 11, 2024

Please introduce yourself.

I am Bas Kuijs, the Category Planning & Activation Manager for the Bakery category in The Netherlands. After previously working on different CPG companies, I joined MDLZ thirteen years ago, in 2011, as a Brand Manager! After that, I held several positions in marketing and sales, and I have been working in my current role in CP&A for three years.

What do you like most about working at MDLZ, your role, and what motivates you every day?

What I like about working at MDLZ, is threefold. It’s the people, the brands, and the opportunity to keep learning and developing myself every day.

In my current role with my team, I have the opportunity to create the path to future growth for our categories with our customers. All these while strengthening the role of our brands in future growth. The mindset of collaborating as one team with other departments (marketing, sales, finance, logistics) to create the future of snacking with strong brands like Oreo, Milka, LU, LiGA, TUC, and Grenade in joint partnership with our customers is something that motivates me every day.

What are your responsibilities and daily challenges as a Category Planning & Activation Manager?

The role of Category Planning & Activation Manager entails three different elements: Category Management, Shopper Activation, and Revenue Management. As a team lead, I lead and guide the team in these various disciplines. In Category Management, we advise our customer partners on how to drive future growth for our Sweet Biscuits, Nutritonals, and Savoury snacks categories. In contrast, in Shopper Activation Management, we are driving the sales for our brands with our shoppers with strong campaigns, such as the massive Oreo innovation, the launch of TUC Bakerolls, or the portfolio rollout of our newly acquired brand, Grenade!

Is there something that inspires or motivates you in your spare time and helps you at work?

As a big football fan, I am always intrigued by team tactics, game plans, individual motivations, and getting the best results within a strong people-centric culture. And I firmly believe there are quite some similarities between sports and business in achieving results as a team. Therefore, I love to read the various biographies of the coaches who have impacted modern football. Next to that, being a proud supporter of my local football club taught me to deal with disappointment and keep strengthening my resilience muscle.

What is something that you are specifically proud of, and is something we could see come to life soon?

That’s for sure our Snacking Growth Vision! In the past two years, we have been working closely with internal stakeholders and external partners to shape our future of snacking in Benelux. And the final result is something we are very proud of. I look forward to having impactful conversations with our customers to bring this vision to life in the following months. This project is a strong example within MDLZ of how international insights and knowledge go hand-in-hand with local entrepreneurship and where we, as a team, really impact shaping the future of our categories and brands. Super thrilled about it!