The long-awaited news on the candidate for the Marketing and Innovation Director position at Guinness Nigeria, a major player in the brewing industry, has finally come with Yinka Bakare announced.
Effective December 1, 2024, Yinka Bakare, a seasoned Marketing Expert and Leader, was promoted to the position of Marketing & Innovations Director at Guinness Nigeria Plc. His duties include managing the company’s portfolio and customer acquisition strategy to increase profitability and market share.
As a creative and goal-oriented executive with over 24 years of successful experience in strategic marketing, brand development, communications, media planning, digital and buying, sales, and general management, the visionary marketing leader has established a reputation for being an expert in leading many aspects of top-tier marketing and communications strategies.
Yinka has received praise for always igniting creativity and leading marketing communication teams to exceed goals. have a long history of taking full responsibility for leadership choices, personnel development, operations, P&L (revenue performance), and improvement plans across the Middle East and Africa.
Continuing, fluent, and bilingual in both basic French and English. After more than 14 years with British American Tobacco & Cadbury Nigeria Plc, Yinka joined Guinness Nigeria Plc in 2018 as Head of Lagers and APNADs from Heineken, Nigerian Breweries. To maximize the category’s impact on our P&L through value chain engineering and a well-integrated NRM program, he rearticulated our engagement in lager for the short, medium, and long term and guided us out of the dilutive tail during his first year.
In May 2019, he assumed the expanded role of Head of Beer for the Beer portfolio, which included Guinness. During this time, we developed and introduced Guinness Gold in Lagos, achieving the first-ever consumer metrics levels in the first year of launch. Under his cross-functional leadership, Guinness regained its position as the strongest brand in Nigeria, providing our customers with the freshest beer in five years, and growing its top line at nearly double-digit CAGR P3Ys.
BrandSpur national news stories report that with the launch of products like Captain Morgan, Smirnoff Pineapple RTD, Gordons Pink & Orange Gin, and most recently Don Royale Spirits and Gordons Gin & Tonic Pre-mixes, he has been leading the delivery of Guinness Nigeria’s Innovation Strategy & Ambition, transforming top-line innovation profitability, for three years in a row. He started his most recent position as Head of Innovations and APNADs in August 2021.
Yinka is renowned for his meticulousness, in-depth analysis, problem-solving style, and enthusiasm for nurturing talent. I’m excited to see how it affects this crucial component of our company and long-term engagement strategy in Nigeria. He earned a Master of Business Administration from the esteemed IMD after studying economics at the University of Ibadan.
