Brand Strategy Manager

Brand Strategy Manager

This role is located at our Corporate Office in Arden Hills, MN. We offer a hybrid work environment that consists of 3 days in the office (T/W/Th) and 2 days remote/virtual (M/F). This role does not offer full remote/virtual. This role does not offer relocation assistance.

Join an ambitious and dynamic marketing team that is making a difference in the world.  We’re expanding our brand strategy, insights and analytics team and looking for strategic, empathetic thinkers.  You’ll work on brands that sit at the heart of cultural change and commercial opportunity. You are an adept navigator who consumes and interprets disparate information into powerful insights and ideas.  You are a storyteller who can write and present insights that inspire.  You enjoy a challenge and have experience working on B2B and/or B2C brands.

Responsibilities:

The Brand Strategy Manager will help drive and elevate foundational brand strategy work across a diverse portfolio of brands within Land O’ Lakes. The role will oversee and help lead brand planning, including architecture, positioning, assessment and foundational brand strategy work, as well as trend forecasting and customer journey/experience work.  This role will ensure that all work is grounded in consumer/customer insights. In addition, continue to elevate our brand planning thinking and create thought-leadership on key topics.

• Team management + diplomacy: Lead the team and the department’s work through a highly-matrixed organization. Leverage collaboration and influence to best partner on projects and move the organization forward. Help the team prioritize, navigate and build advocacy for their work. Help tell better stories and share our successes with internal and external audiences.

• Brand Planning: Own the development of compelling brand strategies with internal and external partners and guide the strategic alignment of our brands through clear, concise and actionable strategy. Help refine and guide the craft of brand strategy within Land O’Lakes. Ensure that our businesses and creative remain on-brand, relevant and are a growth engine for our businesses.

• Insight development: Act as the voice of our consumer/customer by identifying, contextualizing and understanding our audiences.  Uncover unique points of empathy and insights that can create growth for businesses and marketing.  Help our internal teams think differently about their consumer/customer.

• Research: In partnership with internal and external partners, lead the analysis of industry trends, competitive positioning, and consumer needs and behavior to understand our brands’ consumer/customer and cultural landscape. Ideal candidate has quant and qual research expertise.

• Trend Forecasting: Steer our trend practice, monitoring cultural/consumer change and creating demand for our trend research. Continue to find new ways to navigate and share the trend stories and maintain the cadence and polish of the work.

• Customer Journey/Customer Experience Development: Lead the cross-functional teams to refine and evolve our customer experience and journey mapping. Facilitate integrated sessions, develop tools, and map the customer journey/experience.

• Thought-leadership: Shape the future of our discipline and own thought-leadership. Advance topics and thinking around emerging trends, technologies (AI) and practices related to brand strategy, insight and research.

Personal Characteristics:

• Curious: dive in with incomplete information and find momentum; ask questions and seek answers when appropriate; equally adept at observing and listening

• Adaptive:  works across brands and business units; able to flex from on carbon farming project to measuring brand reputation to messaging on consumer products

• Ambitious:  want to be part of a company that feeds the world and changes the way we think about farmers and farming

• Energetic: approaches work with energy, passion and collaboration.

Desired Experience and Education:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent advertising agency experience.

• 10+ years of overall marketing experience with 8+ years’ experience with Brand Planner, Creative Strategist, Consumer Insights/Researcher, or related in an agency, research firm or similar environment.

• Strong verbal skills, strong writing skills, and excellent interpersonal relationship building skills

• Strong storytelling skills – deck writing, user stories – develop a narrative and amplify with visuals and data; ability to translate brand strategies to paid/earned/owned activations.

• Experience working in cross-disciplinary teams

• Experienced in balancing multiple projects and tight deadlines, collaborating deeply with people from multiple disciplines along the way

• Experienced working on CPG and/or agriculture brands

The salary range for this role is $123,920 - $185,880. In most cases, candidates offered employment can expect to be hired at a pay rate near the middle of our salary ranges.

Land O'Lakes does not use Automated Decision-Making Technology, as defined by California law, to substantially replace human decision-making or make significant decisions about applications for employment or contracting opportunities. 

About Land O'Lakes, Inc.

Join us and be part of a Fortune 250, farmer- and member-owned cooperative that is reimagining the business of food. We have been named a Top Workplace by Indeed and LinkedIn, and to the TIME 100 Most Influential Companies list.

We provide a broad portfolio of benefits to keep you and your family at your best. Land O'Lakes is Where Your Future Takes Root.

Land O’Lakes and our global entities support diversity in employment practices.

Neither Land O’Lakes, nor its affiliates or search firms, will ever contact you and ask for confidential information over the phone or in email. If you receive a call or email like this, please do not provide the information being requested.    

                                                                                                  

If you need to submit a reasonable accommodation request to complete the employment application process, please call the HR Solution Center at 844-LOL-HR4U (844-565-4748) M-F 8:00am-4:30pm CT.