Marketing Associate

As the leading nutrition, health and wellness company, we are committed to enhancing people’s lives, everywhere, every day. We strive to make our brands tastier and healthier choices that help consumers care for themselves and their families, thus earning their trust and recommendations to others. Delivering on this commitment enables us to create long-term sustainable value for our consumers and customers, for our communities, for our shareholders and for our employees.

The successful candidate will have a Master’s Degree in Business, Marketing, MBA or related field graduating between December 2016 - June 2017. This position’s role is to drive brand performance, grow brand equity and share by activating distinctive consumer insights.The Marketing Associate supports the brand team’s pursuit of insights that enable the team to know its consumer deeply and create engaging brand experiences and supports the Manager in setting the brand’s consumer communications and innovation strategies.The Marketing Associate is responsible for leadership and execution of projects related to the brand’s communications and innovation plans as defined by the Marketing Manager. This role interacts with agency partners in support of communications strategy, planning and implementation. This role supports a brand’s communication and innovation activities by collaborating with sales, shopper marketing, operations, product development and finance on various generating demand initiatives.

**Insights** * Use consumer and marketplace data and trends to support developing a deeper understanding of the demographics, psychographics, and behavioral drivers of the brand’s consumer or a particular consumer segment. * Dive into demand landscape for the consumer/brand by utilization of digital insight tools * Manage brand projects and assignments in a way that demonstrates an understanding of key consumer insights and an ability to activate them in relevant communications and innovation activities. * Support the brand’s need to identify and understand what the brand stands for in the hearts and minds of consumers including brand identity, essence, vision, mission and core values to drive relevant communications and innovation. * Leverage data, trends and support from Manager, Shopper Marketing and Market Research to help build a robust and actionable learning plan to address knowledge gaps in consumer, brand, product, business and marketplace learnings. **Consumer Communication** * Manage consumer communications projects that develop a creative territory that brings the brand to life and enables effective consumer communication with a digital and social first approach * Assist in identifying optimal engagement strategy and campaign structure to reach consumers when and where they are most receptive. * Lead initiatives in the communication plan around specific touch points or consumer targets including agency and cross-functional team management, strategy, planning, execution and results measurement. * Demonstrate the ability to manage projects on time and on budget as well and demonstrate decision-making abilities around investment alternatives that mitigate risk and maximize return.Identify opportunities and lead initiatives that activate thebrand’s nutrition health and wellness proposition in communications **Innovation & Renovation** * Leverage consumer, shopper and marketplace data to support defining a brand’s short-term and long-term innovation strategy. In collaboration with cross-functional and external experts, lead innovation projects in support of the brand’s innovation strategy such as new idea generation and validation, commercialization strategies and plans and channel- or customer-specific opportunities. * Identify innovation and renovation opportunities and lead initiatives in support of the brand’s nutrition health and wellness proposition * Assist with the development and execution of a product strategy for a brand **Planning** * Leverages brand, consumer and marketplace data and trends to support Manager in developing an annual plan to closely align the efforts of Marketing and Sales to generate optimal demand for the brand * Prepare, present and sell-in aspects of the brand plan to management, cross-functional partners and external stakeholders. * Assists in creating the annual communications plan including recommended touch point plan, activation/implementation plan, stewardship and measurement * Support Manager in implementing a 3-year consumer centric brand plan to drive and/or sustain long-term brand health including equity, awareness and engagement.

**Requirements And Minimum Education Level:** Master’s Degree in Business, Marketing, MBA or related field is required graduating between December 2016 - June 2017. **Preferred Experience:** * Experience leading marketing communication projects including digital and media strategies is preferred * Experience in Consumer Packaged Goods Industry (CPG) is preferred * Experience partnering with cross-functional teams and agency partners is preferred * Experience developing strategic brand/product plans, such as communication campaigns, commercialization strategies is preferred * Experience leveraging data and trends to generate insights to understand consumer behavior is preferred