Sr Director of Marketing

Description

Location: Headquarters – Athens, GA                                                                 Job Family: Sr. Director

Reports To: SVP of Commercial Operations                                                         Exemption: Exempt

Position Purpose: The Senior Director of Marketing is responsible for setting and leading Creature Comforts’ overall marketing strategy to build enduring brands, deepen consumer relevance, and drive sustainable business growth. This role serves as the senior integrator of the company’s above-the-line and below-the-line marketing efforts—connecting brand strategy, creative, digital and social media, communications, partnerships, field activation, consumer experience, and commercial priorities into a cohesive marketing system.

The Senior Director will lead and develop the Marketing organization, establish clear priorities and measures of success, manage key agency relationships and resources, and work closely with Sales, Innovation/Product, Taproom, Finance, Operations, and executive leadership to ensure Creature Comforts shows up consistently and powerfully wherever consumers encounter our brands.

Duties and Responsibilities: 

1. Brand & Portfolio Strategy:

• Own the overarching marketing vision and strategy for Creature Comforts and its portfolio of brands.
• Establish clear positioning, target consumers, value propositions, messaging architecture, and long-term growth strategies for priority brands.
• Develop annual and multi-year marketing plans that translate company objectives into clear brand priorities, investments, and executional plans.
• Ensure each brand has a distinct role within the portfolio and a compelling reason for consumers to choose it.
• Partner with Innovation, Sales, Finance, and Operations to identify consumer and market opportunities and inform the innovation pipeline, packaging strategy, format strategy, and go-to-market approach for new products.
• Balance the stewardship of established brands with the development of emerging brands, innovation platforms, and new consumer occasions.
• Protect and evolve Creature Comforts' master brand identity, reputation, voice, and standards.

2. Integrated Marketing Strategy & Planning:

• Establish the strategic direction for integrated marketing initiatives across paid, owned, earned, experiential, retail, digital, social, PR, partnerships, events, and community channels.
• Create a disciplined annual marketing calendar that aligns brand priorities, product launches, seasonal opportunities, partnerships, sponsorships, taproom moments, and commercial programming.
• Ensure above-the-line brand building and below-the-line activation work together as one consumer journey rather than as separate functions.
• Establish clear strategic objectives, target audiences, key messages, channel priorities, and measures of success for major marketing initiatives.
• Partner with the Senior Creative Director to translate marketing and brand strategies into coordinated creative campaigns, storytelling, digital marketing, and consumer engagement initiatives.
• Ensure brand strategies translate effectively into packaging, point-of-sale materials, retailer programming, distributor tools, digital content, events, and account-level execution.
• Champion culturally relevant, differentiated marketing that strengthens emotional connections to Creature Comforts and its brands.
• Evaluate marketing initiatives to ensure alignment with brand priorities, consumer needs, commercial objectives, and available resources.

3. Commercial & Sales Partnership:

• Serve as Marketing's senior strategic partner to the Sales Department.
• Translate consumer and brand strategy into programs that help drive distribution, velocity, trial, repeat purchase, and retailer/distributor enthusiasm.
• Partner with Sales leadership on market prioritization, channel strategy, retail programming, wholesaler support, point-of-sale strategy, and key account opportunities.
• Develop scalable marketing platforms that can be successfully executed by distributor and field teams across both anchor and expansion markets.
• Maintain a strong understanding of the three-tier beverage system, retailer dynamics, competitive activity, channel trends, and consumer purchase behavior.
• Regularly spend time in-market with Sales, distributors, retailers, consumers, and field teams to ensure strategy is informed by marketplace reality.
• Ensure Marketing can clearly articulate both the consumer reason to buy and the trade reason to sell each priority brand.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of marketing investments in supporting brand growth and commercial performance.

4. Creative Direction & Brand Experience:

• Establish and lead the overarching creative design direction for Creature Comforts and its portfolio of brands, ensuring alignment with brand positioning, consumer insights, and long-term marketing objectives.
• Define the strategic vision for how each brand is visually and experientially represented across advertising, packaging, design, photography, video, social, merchandise, point-of-sale materials, out-of-home advertising, digital experiences, and other consumer-facing materials.
• Set a high standard for creative excellence, ensuring brand expression is distinctive, culturally relevant, and consistent across consumer touchpoints.
• Provide strategic direction and effective briefs to the Senior Creative Director, internal creative teams, and external design and creative partners.
• Partner with the Senior Creative Director to translate brand strategy and creative direction into compelling campaigns, storytelling, and consumer experiences.
• Provide strategic leadership for major brand identity, packaging, and brand-refresh initiatives, ensuring consistency while encouraging creative teams to continually push the work forward.
• Evaluate major creative concepts and initiatives for alignment with brand strategy, target consumers, and business objectives.
• Ensure all consumer touchpoints work together to create a recognizable and differentiated Creature Comforts experience while empowering creative leadership to manage day-to-day development and execution.

5. Consumer, Market & Performance Insights

• Build a more insight-led Marketing Department by combining consumer research, sales data, digital analytics, retailer/distributor feedback, competitive intelligence, and cultural trends.
• Establish a disciplined marketing measurement framework with clear KPIs for brand health, consumer engagement, campaign effectiveness, trial, conversion, commercial impact, and return on investment.
• Use audience insights, market research, and performance data to continually improve brand positioning, marketing strategies, channel priorities, and investment decisions.
• Partner with Marketing team members to evaluate campaign performance, consumer engagement, and opportunities for improvement.
• Require meaningful post-mortems for major campaigns, launches, partnerships, and investments, ensuring insights are incorporated into future planning.
• Monitor emerging consumer behaviors, competitive activity, market trends, and new ways consumers discover and engage with brands.
• Regularly communicate Marketing performance, key insights, risks, and opportunities to executive leadership.
• Use data to improve decisions without allowing measurement to replace informed creative judgment.

6. Communications, Partnerships & Brand Reputation

• Establish the company's external communications priorities in partnership with executive leadership, ensuring alignment with brand positioning and business objectives.
• Own the strategic relationship with the company's PR consultant and other external communications partners.
• Provide strategic direction for product launches, major partnerships, company announcements, executive visibility, thought leadership, and earned-media opportunities.
• Ensure alignment among public relations, social media, brand communications, community impact, and corporate messaging.
• Provide strategic oversight of major brand partnerships, sponsorships, and community initiatives, ensuring they support consumer relevance and long-term brand development.
• Serve as a senior steward of the Creature Comforts reputation and help anticipate and manage reputational opportunities and risks.
• Partner with executive leadership and appropriate internal stakeholders on sensitive or high-profile communications when necessary.
• Evaluate partnerships and communications initiatives based on their contribution to brand awareness, consumer engagement, and business objectives.

7. Budget & Resource Management

• Own development and management of the annual Marketing budget.
• Allocate resources across brands, markets, channels, partnerships, agencies, and initiatives based on strategic priorities and expected impact.
• Maintain disciplined forecasting, tracking, reconciliation, and return-on-investment evaluation.
• Make thoughtful tradeoffs between short-term commercial needs and long-term brand-building investments.
• Evaluate when capabilities should live internally versus with agencies, freelancers, or other external partners.
• Negotiate and manage major agency scopes, contracts, deliverables, and performance in partnership with Finance and other appropriate stakeholders.
• Identify opportunities to improve operational efficiency and maximize the impact of marketing investments.

8. Team Leadership & Organizational Development

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing Marketing Department with clear roles, priorities, decision rights, and accountability.
• Provide strategic leadership to the Senior Creative Director and other Marketing team members, ensuring alignment across brand strategy, creative design, advertising, digital marketing, communications, and consumer engagement.
• Establish clear expectations and decision-making authority, empowering functional leaders to manage day-to-day execution within established strategic priorities.
• Establish an operating rhythm that creates strong communication and coordination across the Marketing Department and with cross-functional business partners.
• Develop future leaders, actively coach direct reports, identify capability gaps, and build succession plans for key roles.
• Guide the development of departmental capabilities, processes, and resources to support evolving business needs and long-term growth.
• Build strong collaborative relationships with Sales, Innovation, Taproom, Finance, Operations, and executive leadership.
• Encourage constructive debate, curiosity, experimentation, accountability, and continuous improvement while fostering a department culture that reflects Creature Comforts' purpose and values.

Requirements

• 7+ years of progressive marketing experience, preferably within beverage alcohol, CPG, consumer lifestyle brands, hospitality, or another highly brand-driven consumer category.
• 5+ years of meaningful people-leadership experience, including experience managing senior or functional leaders.
• Demonstrated success developing and implementing integrated brand strategies that contribute to measurable business growth.
• Significant experience across several of the following disciplines: brand strategy, creative development, consumer marketing, digital/social, media, PR, experiential marketing, field/trade marketing, partnerships, innovation, and consumer insights.
• Experience developing annual marketing plans and managing significant marketing budgets.
• Demonstrated success managing creative, PR, media, or other external agency relationships.
• Strong understanding of consumer research, performance analytics, and marketing measurement.
• Experience working closely with Sales and translating marketing strategy into commercially executable programming.
• Beverage-alcohol, distributor/wholesaler, retail, and three-tier-system experience strongly preferred.
• Experience successfully launching new products, brands, packages, or major brand initiatives strongly preferred.
• Exceptional written, verbal, presentation, and executive communication skills.
• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or a related discipline preferred; equivalent relevant experience will be considered.
• Ability to travel regularly to markets and attend occasional evening and weekend consumer, industry, partnership, and company events

Physical Requirements:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to stand; walk; use hands to

finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms; climb or balance; and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee is also regularly required to sit at a desk and work at a computer for long periods of time throughout the day. The employee frequently is required to talk or hear. The employee is occasionally required to taste or smell. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, and ability to adjust focus.

Disclaimer

The job description provided here is intended to outline the general nature and key responsibilities of this role. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all tasks, duties, and responsibilities that the employee may be required to perform. The employee may be asked to perform other duties as required. Furthermore, the duties and responsibilities of this position may change at any time, with or without notice, based on the needs of the organization.