What a marketing leader does at a small snack company

At Color of Vietnam, the marketing leader runs a small marketing team and is responsible for how four brands show up in front of shoppers and buyers. The work covers brand plans, promotions with retail chains, social media content, packaging briefs for new products and the marketing budget. The role works directly with the founder, with no management layer in between.

Does a small company need a marketing leader at all

Yes, and earlier than most people expect. We have four brands: PLAY Nutrition, PLAY Protein Bar, Natural & Healthy and Let's PLAY. Each one has its own eater, its own occasion and its own way of speaking. Without someone keeping the rhythm, four brands drift into sounding the same, or into sounding different every week.

In a large company this work is split between brand, trade, digital and packaging teams. In a small company one person has to see the whole picture and pick the one thing that matters most this week. That is why we call the role a leader even though the team is only a few people. Leading here does not mean signing things off. It means knowing what to do first.

Six jobs that come up in a normal week

• Brand plans: write and keep updating the plan for PLAY Nutrition first, then the other brands. A plan answers three questions: who we are talking to, what we are saying and where.
• Retail promotions: schedule promotions chain by chain, prepare display materials, review results afterwards and note what to do differently next time.
• Digital content: steer TikTok and social media so that each brand keeps its own character. Let's PLAY is playful and made for sharing. Natural & Healthy talks about ingredients. PLAY Nutrition belongs to active days.
• Packaging briefs and names: with the product team, write the brief for a new pack, propose names and check every line of copy before it goes to print.
• Budget: set the marketing budget, track spending and adjust when results are not what the plan assumed.
• Team: hand out clear tasks, follow progress, remove blockers and do the work yourself when the team is short.

No week contains all six in equal measure. Some weeks packaging takes almost everything because a print date is close. Other weeks it is a retail programme. The marketing leader has to know which job is on fire and say so to the team.

What working directly with the founder means

It means decisions arrive fast. A proposed product name can be approved or rejected in the same meeting. It also means honesty. If a promotion is not working, the marketing leader says so early, with whatever numbers are already in hand, instead of waiting for the month-end report.

The founder holds brand direction and product standards. The marketing leader holds execution and brings back what the shelf, the comment section and the distributor are saying. The two meet in the quarterly plan and in sample reviews. In those reviews marketing sits next to R&D and tastes along, because what the pack says has to match what is inside it.

An example: a packaging brief for a new rice cracker flavour

Suppose the R&D team has a seaweed-flavoured rice cracker sample for Let's PLAY and wants to move on to packaging. The marketing leader writes a short brief, usually under one page:

• The eater: who opens this pack, where and with whom.
• What the pack must say in three seconds: which flavour, which brand, what is fun about it.
• What is mandatory: product name, ingredients, pack size and the small stamp that reads A brand of Color of Vietnam.
• What must not appear: any health promise we cannot back up.

The brief travels to the designer together with the physical sample. When a draft comes back, the marketing leader checks every line against the recipe and the specification before approving print. A small job, but it decides whether the pack tells the truth.

Who suits this role

Someone who has done marketing in fast-moving consumer goods or food. Someone who has worked with retail chains and knows how a promotion is approved, run and measured. Someone who understands digital content, especially TikTok, but does not believe a good video can replace a good product. Someone who gives clear tasks and is happy to roll up their sleeves when the team is stretched.

The best fit also has one habit: tasting. Marketing here starts with what is on the table, not with a colour palette. Snack experience is not required, as long as you are willing to learn from samples and say plainly what you notice.

At the time of writing, the marketing leader role in Hanoi is open. If you recognise yourself in the paragraphs above, read the full description on our Careers page and send your CV. If there is no role that fits exactly, a general application works too. Tell us what you would like to help build.