The Brand Manager, Innovation will be responsible for supporting Strategic Planning processes, leading new product proposition development across different categories & brands. Requires the ability to identify strategic opportunities, translate them into attractive, brand-building business propositions, and usher initiatives and projects through the stage-gating process as the “business lead” to prepare them for our Go-To-Market teams.

Essential Functions: Other responsibilities, and activities may change or be assigned at any time.

• Identify strategic category, brand, or channel opportunities that expand portfolio.
• Mine market, competitive, & trends landscape to identify consumer/channel insights.
• Identify big knowledge gaps and translate learning objectives into learnings plan with the Insights team.
• Weave insights and market information to uncover strategically-aligned opportunities.
• Influence the evolution of new product pipeline to ladder to company’s strategic priorities.
• Identify assumptions and needs to build insight-driven propositions.
• Develop business propositions to enable delivery of annual and strategic plan sales and profitability objectives.
• Collaborate with cross-functionals to develop platform and initiative business cases.
• Analyze data from a wide variety of sources to develop effective business plans; including competitive analysis, pricing analysis, and estimating distribution and volume builds.
• Develop storytelling narratives to inspire and build confidence of leadership, rally project teams, and influence and assess innovation pipeline health.
• Create responsive learning plans to uncover consumer learnings to discover white spaces, assess and validate product concepts, and define product benefits and guardrails.
• Utilize stage-gates process for commercialization and get launch-ready.
• Prepare platform projects for commercialization in partnership with functional experts and cross-division partners, (e.g. Project Management Office, Marketing, R& D, Operations, Finance, Sales, Consumer Insights, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain).
• Identify key assumptions to drive profitable opportunities.
• Comfort with budgeting, forecasting, P& L analysis, and data analysis to develop new products.
• Develop collaborative inputs to feed P& L around pricing, trade, distribution & volume builds to meet revenue & profitability targets with Finance, Brand, and Sales.
• Develop, recommend, align stakeholders to pipeline recommendations.

Position Requirements

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals qualified with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Able to connect dots on various information into synthesize into digestible story.
• Influences and aligns leadership by crafting compelling stories with business & strategic rationale, opportunity sizing, and points of difference.
• Comfort with ambiguity and imperfect information.
• Strong Business and Analytical Acumen - Competency using IRI/Nielsen data POS, and Panel data.
• Comfort with Financial Analysis, e.g. P& Ls, Costing, Pricing, & Promotional Strategies.
• Curious and adept with problem-solving.
• Able to be flexible, adaptive, and responsive
• Ability to handle changing timelines and priorities and processes.
• Resilient nature – Ability to champion initiatives while remaining pragmatic in the face of disappointment.
• Seeks to understand and effectively navigate the organization.
• Organized, intentional, clear, and concise communication to all levels of organization. Able to simplify complex ideas for the desired audience.
• Strong soft and influencing skills to motivate and rally teams and groups.
• Self-starter and self-directed with a highly collaborative style.
• Builds consensus among teams and stakeholders, while driving decision-making.
• Ability to organize self and structures work to meet deadlines with minimal supervision.
• High integrity and honesty, promoting trust in all actions
• Able to travel as business needs require; minimally 10% of the time

Education and/or Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Business Administration or similar fields required; MBA in Marketing or related field strongly preferred.
• Minimum of 5+ years of relevant Marketing and/or innovation experience.
• Experience with innovation, marketing, and commercialization processes in consumer-packaged goods.
• Experience in the food industry, innovation consultancy, or within private companies is beneficial.

Physical Demands and Work Environment:

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to stand, sit, talk, hear, and use hands and fingers to operate a computer and telephone along with reaching. Specific vision abilities include close vision requirements due to computer work. Moderate noise, ability to work in a confined area, and ability to sit at a computer for an extended period of time are also included.

The policy of The Krusteaz Company is to hire, train, and promote all persons in all job groups in accordance with law, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital or military status, national origin, gender identity, the presence of any sensory, mental or physical disability, genetic information, or any other status or characteristic protected by local, state, or federal law.

Hybrid Work Model: At The Krusteaz Company, we have in-office "core days" of Tuesdays and Wednesdays where all corporate employees are expected to be onsite. Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays are flexible remote days to allow for work/life balance. You may be asked to come in outside of a core day from time to time, based on business needs. We have found aligning our scheduled in-office days provides an opportunity for employees to build connections and collaborate together.

Get to know us:

• A people-focused company that cares: We're a 90-year-old company with the entrepreneurial spirit of a startup and a focused eye on the future. As a midsized, privately held company with a portfolio of beloved food and beverage brands, our people are the most important ingredient in our success.
• A valued and supported workforce: We place tremendous value in our employees and provide competitive pay and comprehensive benefits to ensure our employees can create the best life for themselves. Benefits include a top tier health insurance plan with lower-than-average employee cost share, generous PTO, 401(k) match, and more.
• An engaged and energized culture: At The Krusteaz Company, collaboration and ingenuity drive our fierce commitment to creating extraordinary product experiences that people love.
• A place to grow and make a difference: An entrepreneurial spirit has been at the core of our company since the beginning, attracting self-starters who are curious and love to learn and to share ideas.

Benefits: We are proud to offer generous benefits including comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance (starting at $60/month for employee-only coverage on the PPO Plan or starting at $30/month for employee-only coverage on the HDHP), 401(K) matching, 3 weeks of paid vacation, 10 paid holidays, 1 paid personal holiday, company provided life insurance and disability insurance, flexible spending account, healthcare saving account, voluntary accident insurance, voluntary critical illness insurance, and tuition reimbursement.

Salary Information: An employee in this position can expect a salary range between $115, 398 and $190, 399 We typically pay out between $130, 000 and $165, 000. The actual salary offered will carefully consider a wide range of factors, including internal equity, experience, education, certification, training, and location. All positions are eligible for additional incentives based on business performance.

We hope you'll take the time to get to know us!

The Krusteaz Company is not sponsoring new applicant employment authorization at this time, and please, no third-party recruiters.

Equal Opportunity Employer
This employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws. For further information, please review the Know Your Rights notice from the Department of Labor.