Sr Manager Consumer Insights

Guayaki Yerba Mate, SPC•Oakland, CA

56d•$112,000 - $145,000•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a strategic and innovative Senior Manager of Consumer Insights to lead our Consumer Insights function at Yerba Madre. This role will lead various forms of research to build a comprehensive understanding of our consumers through integration of multiple data sources (quantitative and qualitative), advanced analytics, and (ideally) AI-powered insights. This role requires extensive collaboration and partnership with the cross-functional teams to synthesize complex data and drive strategic decision-making across new products, marketing, and brand positioning. This is a hybrid position, and this person will be expected to be in our Oakland, CA office 2-3 times a week.

Responsibilities

Consumer understanding at depth: Lead primary research (e.g., Segmentation, A&U, journeys, personas, motivations/psychographics).
Omnichannel synthesis: Combine quant + qual, social listening, reviews/Reddit, CX feedback, custom studies, and sales/customer data (with Category Dev) into a single view.
AI-powered insight generation: Operationalize ML/NLP to mine open-ended feedback and large datasets; build repeatable pipelines for faster, richer learning.
Education & enablement: Create toolkits, readouts, and learning forums that strengthen the org's consumer fluency.
Hands-on + partner-led research: Comfort executing DIY scrappy work and guiding external vendors to scale.
Design and run strategic primary studies with internal/external partners.
Maintain a living knowledge estate (personas, JTBD, journeys) that informs brand and product decisions.
Organize multi-stream insights into clear, accessible narratives for teams.
Consumer Needs & JTBD: Map unmet needs, barriers, rituals, whitespace to feed the pipeline.
Category & Trend Research: Track macro/micro trends, culture scans, competitive landscape, future-of-beverage signals.
Innovation Research Toolkit: Agile testing from concepts/claims to packaging, flavor names, pricing.
Product Testing: Build processes for exploratory work plus CLTs/IHUTs; define success metrics.
Post-Launch Evaluation: Measure trial, repeat, sentiment; translate learnings to the roadmap.
Claims Development: Optimize consumer-facing claims across touchpoints.
Brand inputs: Feed positioning, messaging, and creative briefs with sharp consumer truths.
Trend translation for content/comms: Turn signals into briefs and campaign springboards.
Brand tracking & equity: Partner with vendors to monitor awareness, consideration, penetration, associations vs. competition.
Creative/message testing: Pre-test ideas, headlines, and claims (e.g., Loops).
Cultural listening: Keep teams tapped into relevant food & bev culture.
Build approaches with an innovator's mindset to increase speed, quality, and efficiency.
Bridge general population + Yerba Mate consumer research with our Ambacebadores (influencer community) for authenticity and scale.
Implement AI/ML to accelerate synthesis and pattern detection; apply NLP to open-ends, social, and review data.
Pilot emerging tools/methods that deepen understanding without sacrificing rigor.
Manage budget, vendors, and standards to optimize cost and quality.
Build/maintain a research panel & community for ongoing engagement.
Establish best practices, file hygiene, version control, and a searchable insights library.