Associate Director, Consumer Insights

Job Description

The Consumer Insights Associate Director will be responsible for championing the consumer, and own the innovation agenda for the Taste Elevation  business unit brands, Including Heinz, Philadelphia Kraft, Classico and many more! The Associate Director is responsible for identifying, developing and integrating consumer insights throughout these businesses to drive a growth mindset and agility while driving to a consumer-obsessed culture.   Although the Associate Director will have overall responsibility of the US TE BU innovation agenda, this leader will be a key partner to the Global Innovation CIS team leads and the NA CIS business unit team leads, driving synergies and learnings across to optimize and maximize brand and category success.  The Associate Director will have accountability for custom strategic market research and must also draw from a variety of information sources and internal/external resources to develop insights that provide a competitive advantage to the Kraft Heinz innovation agenda.

The Role – Key Skills:

• Strategic: Be a key strategic business partner to Marketing team and a thought leader. Leverage their understanding of the consumer, research methodologies/techniques, best practices and experience to drive the business forward

• Influential: Influence at all levels of organization (above & below) and work seamlessly with cross-functional teams

• Impactful: Drive to "so-what’s" by making actionable recommendations routed in deep understanding of marketing, business and consumer

• An Owner:  Possess a willingness to get your hands dirty, think and act like a start-up, and build out a function against a blank slate without buying pre-packaged solutions or methodologies. 

• Flexible: Be flexible and creative to adjust to changing priorities and business challenges.  Deal with ambiguity, while showing strong drive for results and project leadership skills; Highly adaptable, works well in an environment of change

• Strong Communicator: Showcase strong communication skills through distilled clean/concise insights that drive empathy and storytelling behaviors though the organization

• Self-motivated: Ability to handle many workstreams, competing priorities and distill a plan that can be implemented for the team

• Analytical: Ability to see through data and recognize patterns to inform brand actions

• Collaborator: Team player, works well in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment

• Coach & People Leader: Drive to share knowledge and develop a high-performing team

• Curiosity & Action: High degree of intellectual curiosity and creative insight, coupled with a drive for actionable, tangible results

• Influence: Ability to influence at senior levels of an organization and drive focus and impact

Key responsibilities

• Key strategic insights partner to the Taste Elevation BU

  • Leads the Consumer Insights Innovation road map development (whitespace identification, ideation, validation) across TE and specifically executes the learning agenda for the Kraft and Miricle Whip brands themselves. 

  • Identify breakthrough solutions delivering speed and rigor in all aspects of consumer learning; challenging status quo and strategic oversight in building out strategy and supporting consumer learning plans.

  • Drive to larger/scalable platform ideas vs. one-off innovation launches.

• Influence and build internal buy-in for the innovation pipeline with rigorous consumer understanding.

• Shape the long term (3, 5 and 10 year) category story and innovation go to market strategy for the Taste Meals and Snacks categories through right-sized consumer learning and influential storytelling.

• Lead, coach and develop a team of three to deliver on the TE BU Innovation Agenda

• Requires working in high levels of ambiguity; creating strategic direction for growth opportunities.

Qualifications

• Has prior experience being a people leader with a passion for leading teams.

• Significant experience in innovation insights, with a strong understanding and ability to lead the path from whitespace identification work through ideation and validation. 

• Thrives in agile ways of working, the iterative innovation process, and a track record of strong collaboration with cross-functional partners like Marketing, R&D, Supply Chain, Sensory an