8th Avenue Food & Provisions

8th Avenue Food & Provisions is a growing organization made up of businesses that produce and sell quality products including pasta, peanut butter, granola, and fruit and nut trail mixes to retail, foodservice and ingredient customers. The company was formed in October 2018 through a combination of Post Holdings’ private brands businesses and is owned by Post Holdings and funds affiliated with Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. (“THL”), a private equity firm.

Responsibilities

Job Description Summary

The Sr. Brand Director of all Pasta Brands (Ronzoni, Dakota Growers, Dreamfields) owns and leads the strategic development and execution to drive sustainable growth of each pasta brand. In this role the Sr. Brand Director defines core strategies, translates those strategies into initiatives that will result in accelerated share and profit growth through focused and holistic go to market plans, marketing plans and portfolio innovations. This growth focused leader is responsible for is expected to work closely with Category Management, Director of Business Development, R&D, Finance and Sales to bring strategies to life and deliver sustainable profit growth. This role reports to the General Manager-Pasta.

Essential Duties And Responsibilities

• P&L Management: delivers annual business plan results and owns decisions that impact the brand P&L. Trade Spending Management is a key component to the P&L results.
• Brand Strategy: In close collaboration with General Manager and Director Category Management/Insights, owns and develops brand strategies bringing brand purpose to life inclusive of overall growth strategy, channel positioning, tactical plan, price/value proposition, strategic target activation and new product strategies across all channels including out of home/food service. In conjunction with Brand Marketing Manager, develop effective omnichannel promotional strategies including off-shelf events, digital promotions, key merchandising requirements, consumer price incentives and impactful packaging graphics/messaging.
• Go-To-Market Strategist: exhibits deep understanding of Customer channels and product route to market; ability to partner with Sales and Supply Chain through the SIOP and Innovation process as well as in day-to-day business.
• Planning Leadership: creates and aligns senior management to multi-year brand strategic plans as well as annual marketing plan based on critical analysis of business performance and channel strategies.
• Innovation Strategy: partners with Category Management/Insights/R&D to define and execute portfolio innovation plans for line extensions and new product introductions, ensuring effective and on-time route to market.
• People Management: owns talent management and development for their brand team (1)
• Communications Leadership: leads agency partner relationship to ensure maximum efficiency and breakthrough marketing activations. This includes ensuring agency partners deliver strong work product that drives sustainable growth for the brand.

Qualifications And Competencies

• Minimum: Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, or related field. MBA preferred.
• 10+ years of relevant and progressively responsible CPG marketing experience
• Must have expertise in data analysis (Nielsen/IRI preferred); translating data into insights, demonstrate strong leadership, teamwork and strategic thinking skills.
• High degree of business acumen – classic and digital marketing, budget management and P&L understanding.
• This person must have a demonstrated track record for success in leading cross-functional teams, strong customer experience in either sales rotation or close sales collaboration in marketing function, and knowledge of manufacturing and distribution processes.
• Ability to communicate (both verbally and in writing) concisely and effectively with direct reports, cross-functional team, and agency partners.
• Deep experience in consumer insights and leveraging analytics of primary and secondary research, emerging trends, POS results and competitor/category actions to drive sustainable profitable volume growth.
• Demonstrated expertise in understanding the consumer. Ability to listen and uncover consumer insights and determine the appropriate consumer research needed to support business strategies and deliver winning propositions to market.
• Ability to enroll and align leaders at all levels through effective storytelling and clearly articulated (verbal and visual) strategic thinking and build strong relationships with cross functional partners to effectively drive decision making.
• Must have experience managing multiple projects at once in a fast paced, scrappy environment.
• Ability to challenge the status quo and pursuing new ideas and ways of thinking.
• Experience growing brands in an eCommerce channel
• Must be an independent and proactive contributor that can excel in changing and ambiguous situations – biased for action.
• Strong leadership skills, detail-oriented, organized and self-motivated
• Private Label experience is a plus

Performance Expectations

• Takes full ownership/general management mindset towards applicable business lines, strategy, and associated performance.
• In close collaboration with Category Management/Insights:
• Responsible for developing and maintaining a dashboard of metrics to help entire organization understand brand performance (volume, profit, brand health) while targeting best-in-class brands and annual AOP.
• Build data-driven brand selling stories for Sales Team to ensure successful field execution.
• Gains trust and respect of management, direct reports, cross-functional teams, vendors, and agency partners. Maintains the integrity of confidential business and product information.
• Makes decisions in a complex environment without having all the information at hand.
• Demonstrate initiative to proactively raise a concern, offer a proposed course of action or seek additional support to advance the Brand agenda.
• Gives and can receive ongoing, straightforward, and constructive feedback.
• Can prioritize his/her key areas of focus and projects in challenging contexts. Can do the same for his/her team.
• Develops trustful relationships and engages teams towards common objectives.
• Lead Quarterly Business Reviews to present to cross functional partners
• Can be trusted to contribute key deliverables on-time with quality and accuracy.
• Identify opportunities to leverage AI tools and technologies to enhance brand management efforts. Stay updated on advancements in AI that can streamline processes, improve data analysis, and optimize brand governance where relevant.