Director, Category Strategy

About Tropicana Brands Group
The launch of Tropicana Brands Group represents an exciting fusion of some of the world's most beloved and up-and-coming brands in the juice category, including Tropicana, Naked, KeVita, Izze, Dole, Copella and Punica. Established in 2022 as a joint venture between PAI Partners and PepsiCo, our new company blends the best of two worlds: one steeped in industry-leading expertise and the heritage of prestige juice brands, and another rooted in a true entrepreneurial, agile mindset.
With a global footprint of more than 2,000 associates that spans North America and Europe, we are proud of our industry-leading capabilities in areas that include innovation, R&D, manufacturing, distribution, sales, marketing and nutrition expertise.
The company's focused on the vision to quench the world's thirst for more delight and nourishment, while continuing to build upon the many important diversity, sustainability, local community and philanthropic activities that our people and brands have historically supported.
Key Responsibilities:
Tropicana Brands Group is looking for a highly qualified Director of Category Strategy. This senior role reports directly to the VP of Portfolio Strategy, North America and is an individual contributor role responsible for the integrated Category Strategy for North America including US and Canada. This role is distinct from retailer-facing category management and does not contain category advisory responsibilities. Instead, this role articulates the integrated Category Strategy and vision for the full portfolio of TBG brands in North America, ensuring we deploy them collectively, not in siloes, to optimize consumer/HH recruitment and retention, minimize cannibalization, tackle portfolio gaps (be they consumer demographic, occasion or need state, geographic, or channel) and ultimately translate strategy into retail execution.
Key relationships in addition to the VP Portfolio Strategy include

• North American GMs: Canada/Partner brands; Orange Juice/Juice Drinks; Naked/PCSD/Ambient
• Integrated Insights Lead and her directs including Category & Consumer Insights, Shopper Insights and Agile Business Analytics.
• VP Marketing COE and his directs including Media Planning and Shopper Marketing
• Senior Director of Category & Channel Development and her direct reports including Grocery, Club/Mass, and Canada.

Portfolio Strategy:

• Integrate annual brand plans into portfolio level priorities, using data and analytics to drive tradeoff decisions (space, investment) as required
• Determine swim lanes for brands in portfolio. Assess competitive vs. cooperative stance to set innovation, household and occasion penetration guardrails/priorities and use to inform total category vision
• Identify portfolio gaps using an occasion, consumer need state, consumer demographic, geography, channel and/or product lens to inform innovation and M&A priorities in conjunction with RGM leads ensuring clear financial and consumer/shopper roles for each brand/pack in North American portfolio, identifying implications for profit improvement agendas, capital prioritization, brand building investments; support GMs to ensure annual plans drive toward execution of said agendas
• Identify ways to deploy total portfolio to drain competitive profit pools in service of total TBG

Category Strategy:

• Translate total category vision into an actionable blueprint for shelf of the future and priority incremental points of interruption in outlet.
• Mine shopper insights to recommend and align GMs on cross-portfolio shopper marketing opportunities for design and execution by Shopper Marketing
• Mine insights on occasions to inform category strategies
• Mine insights on complementary, substitution and competitive categories to inform category strategies
• Mine insights from fast emerging brands in the broader food/beverage space to inform category strategies
• Integrate annual brand plans and multi-year strategies into portfolio level priorities, thereby ensuring strategies are translated into action. Priorities include
  
  • Input to Sales on: total category vision, retailer/channel priorities, SKU prioritization and space rationalization/allocation; builds core vision that is easily translatable into a measurable Look of Success
  • Provision of consistent "backbone" communication packages to Sales - e.g., Category Visions/Strategies, Brand strategies - that enable Sales to "version" for individual customer meetings and JBPs
  • Tight communication to Sales of competitive targets for incremental space at the overall category/brand level, enabling account teams to translate into actionable recommendations on a retailer by retailer basis
  • Other work as directed

Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree required, MBA a plus.
• Ability to act as a "do-rector", i.e., is excited to both lead through influence while directly "rolling up her sleeves" to conduct analytics and get things done
• Strong excel, database and advanced analytics skills
• Ability to not let perfection get in the way of progress, is comfortable assessing risk and reward to make balanced tradeoffs between speed and accuracy, and has a relentless drive for impact
• Experiences across sales/sales strategy, category management, shopper marketing and/or brand strategy to provide a well-rounded perspective on commercial strategy
• Ability to turn data into actionable insight and is comfortable working seamlessly with senior stakeholders to influence commercial strategy, drive alignment to tradeoffs within the portfolio and help activate strategies into demonstrable actions in the marketplace
• Adept at translating strategies into tactical toolkits such as a retail level "Look of Success" translatable across multiple retail environments and is ready to help partners in broader Commercial get it done
• Bachelor's degree required; MBA strongly preferred
• Must be located in Chicago, IL or willing to relocate to Chicago, IL for the duration of employment
• Minimum of 10 years experience in Category Strategy in CPG space; general strategy and/or consulting experience is a plus; experience in sales or marketing is a plus.
• Willingness to adapt and thrive in a blended work environment, seamlessly transitioning between remote work and in-office operations as required
• Legally authorized to work in the country to which you are applying without requiring sponsorship or additional work permits now or in the future