Innovation Brand Manager

Sartori Company•Plymouth, WI

9d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Innovation Brand Manager will play a critical role in advancing Sartori’s platform innovation pipeline, turning enterprise strategy into actionable growth across Ingredient & Foodservice (I&FS), Global, and Retail channels. This role is responsible for the front end of innovation—identifying whitespace, shaping scalable platforms, and advancing concepts with pace, rigor, and clear commercial outcomes aligned to Sartori’s strategic and financial priorities. Grounded in consumer, customer, and category insight, the role translates unmet needs into differentiated innovation platforms. The role requires creativity and a strong business acumen to build and pressure-test business cases, evaluate revenue and margin potential, and ensure ideas create long-term value. The position instills discipline within the innovation funnel, managing the explore phase through clear scope definition, decision frameworks, and stage-gate rigor. Working closely with cross-functional teams to connect strategy and insights through creativity, clear storytelling, influence, and alignment.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, or a related field required; MBA preferred
Minimum of 8 years of experience in marketing or brand management with increasing scope and impact is required
Minimum of 3 years of experience in marketing innovation and new product commercialization is preferred
Experience with syndicated data & research insights, R&D, packaging, and operations is strongly preferred
Alignment with Company Values: Demonstrates behaviors that reflect the company’s culture and values of family, commitment, authenticity, ingenuity, integrity, and humility
Strategy-to-Action Leadership: Translates enterprise strategy into prioritized innovation platforms and actionable concepts, driving ideas forward with clear ownership, pace, and measurable outcomes.
Whitespace Discovery & Platform Creation: Leverages consumer, customer, and category insights to identify unmet needs and develop scalable innovation platforms with long-term growth potential.
Business Acumen & Value Creation: Builds and pressure-tests robust business cases, modeling revenue, margin, and strategic value to inform investment decisions and portfolio prioritization.
Cross-Functional Integration & Communication: Synthesizes insights and strategy into clear, compelling narratives that align cross-functional teams, enabling confident decision-making and execution.
Innovation Funnel Ownership & Discipline: Oversees the front end of the innovation process, applying disciplined project management, scope definition, decision frameworks, and stage-gate rigor to advance the right opportunities.

Responsibilities

Translates enterprise strategy into omni-channel innovation platforms by partnering with Marketing and Sales leaders across I&FS, Global, and Retail to develop multi-year platform roadmaps that deliver against revenue and profit targets.
Drives platform development from insight to proof of concept, leading ideations and creative exploration, as well as writing concepts and creating images for research.
Partners with R&D and cross-functional experts to define learning objectives, success criteria, and decision inputs for early concepts.
Responsible for early-stage incubation and decision-making rigor, leading cross-functional incubation teams to create and rapidly vet opportunities, assess risk and feasibility, and provide clear recommendations on how and where ideas should advance with stage-gate rigor.
Identifies and prioritizes whitespace opportunities by synthesizing portfolio needs, market trends, customer dynamics, and consumer segmentation to shape scalable, high-impact innovation platforms.
Builds sound business cases for innovation platforms and concepts, modeling revenue, margin, and long-term strategic value to inform prioritization, investment decisions, and go/hold/kill recommendations.
Acts as a cross-functional integrator and communicator, translating insights and strategy into clear, compelling narratives that align cross-functional partners and drive confident decisions and coordinated execution.
Transforms the voice of the customer and consumer into action, working closely with Sales and Marketing to build a deep understanding of customer situations, challenges, and motivations that inform platform strategy and concept development.
Works closely with cross-functional partners, seeks to improve innovation discipline through tools, methods, and processes, seeking best-in-class approaches to elevate how Sartori identifies, evaluates, and develops new opportunities.
Leverages knowledge of Sartori’s end-to-end capabilities, from milk through cheesemaking and converting, as well as technical sales and supplier networks, to develop differentiated and scalable solutions.