BRAND MANAGER, Lifestyle Brand (Creative Design)
KENT® Nutrition Group is seeking a Brand Manager to oversee its lifestyle-focused animal feed brands. This role involves overseeing product lines sold through various channels, including retail, company-owned stores, ecommerce, and dealers. The Brand Manager will champion assigned products, embody the voice of the customer, and be a well-connected industry expert. Key responsibilities include monitoring market trends, supporting the Sales team, and driving competitive and profitable product development. Strong collaboration, leadership, and interpersonal skills are essential, as the Brand Manager will work cross-functionally across the company.
- This role will be based in Muscatine, Iowa.
PRIMARY DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Manage the complete lifecycle of products and product lines. Identify opportunities to introduce new products, refresh existing ones, or retire products that are no longer viable.
- Assist in defining product specifications, including performance, quality, and customer perception characteristics.
- Stay informed as the subject matter expert in your category, which involves understanding key competitors, market trends, pricing strategies, SWOT analysis, and identifying the best ways to achieve success.
- Work seamlessly with cross-functional partners to lead the innovation and planning process, while capitalizing on internal capabilities, market opportunities, and trends to manage and grow the category and product portfolio, including Sales, Finance, R&D, Operations, Regulatory, Legal, etc.
- Act as the voice of the customer by collaborating with Sales, Nutrition, Production, Procurement, and customers to create a vision and develop a multi-year product plan.
- Lead medium and long-term product planning, which includes managing new and existing product life cycles, initiating product development projects, launching line extensions, and phasing out underperforming products by analyzing market trends.
- Produce forecasts and reports on overall sales trends, promotional periods, and seasonal fluctuations, while maintaining category reports related to profitability and volume. Additionally, track new product launch activities, assess the success of promotional efforts, and analyze trends by dealer and region.
- Analyze and project overall profitability trends for individual lines as well as the entire category.
- Work in close partnership with the Marketing Services and Sales teams to strategically plan, coordinate, and execute a range of marketing activities aimed at achieving business objectives.
- Brand budget allocation and management
- Assists in brand forecast and annual product plans.
- Establishes and maintains agency relationships, leads connected brand planning with all partners.
- All other duties as assigned.
EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE AND/OR QUALIFICATIONS:
- Bachelor's degree in Animal Science, Ag Business, Marketing, or related field. MBA is a significant plus.
- Minimum 10 years of experience in Product or Brand Management roles, with a focus on brand, innovation, and product life-cycle management, is preferred.
- Previous experience in the animal feed or agricultural business, particularly in commercial beef and swine, is strongly preferred.
- Strong analytical & logical thinking ability
- Excellent communicator in both written and oral communications
- Capability to synthesize data into action plans
- Ability to work cross-functionally and up and down the corporate hierarchy
- Excellent use of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
- Strong demonstrated acumen in financial understanding and sound business principles.
- Strong organizational and leadership skills. Able to lead cross-functional teams.
- Ability to multitask and manage multiple major projects at one time
TRAVEL EXPECTED:
- +/- 15% Travel; Attendance at evening or weekend work events may be required
Equal Opportunity Employer
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