Brand Manager, Innovation

The Krusteaz Company Careers•Tukwila, WA

1d•$115,398 - $190,399•Hybrid

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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
Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Business Administration or similar fields required
Minimum of 5+ years of relevant Marketing and/or innovation experience.
Experience with innovation, marketing, and commercialization processes in consumer-packaged goods.

Nice To Haves

MBA in Marketing or related field strongly preferred.
Experience in the food industry, innovation consultancy, or within private companies is beneficial.

Responsibilities

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.

Benefits

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
tuition reimbursement