Global Director - Innovation - The Hershey Company - Hershey

Job description
Hershey Marketers create marketing legacies!

Job Location: Hershey, PA

Leads global innovation pipeline and development to achieve company strategic objectives for expansion into adjacent categories, a key growth platform required to achieve Board/CEO growth ambition. Responsibilities include the identification and assessment of business/consumer insights that will lead to the development of new initiatives from discovery and business case development through to commercialization. Scope includes engaging and exciting leadership and broader organization behind these initiatives. Objectives will be accomplished through leadership and development of direct reports, cross functional teams, suppliers and external partners.

Responsibilities:
Strategy/Positioning of New Products:
 Builds Global strategies based upon thoughtful consumer insights, thorough competitive and market analysis, deep understanding of emerging trends and operational realities
 Manages the development of established or new brands through the stage gate process
 Defines the positioning for new brands in the pipeline and/or integrates new proposition with established brand positioning and brand evolution strategy
 Advances company processes in support of globalization
Discovery/Ideation:
 Defines strategic platforms, identifies insight opening plan and builds a robust pool of insights and ideas to mine
 Build an innovation pipeline against strategic platforms to deliver 5 year plan
Analysis
 Leads the analysis protocol – business case development, testing and associated hurdles and tracking mechanisms.
Planning/Stakeholder Alignment:
 This role requires leadership and communication across all parts of the business, engagement and alignment of senior leaders and working through internal and external partners to achieve target results
 Plans appropriately through each stage of the innovation pipeline to ensure adequate depth/resources to meet business objectives
 Leads transition of new products/new business projects to appropriate commercial team
 Ensures organizational transparency through active communication with geographic business units
 Determines and aligns the organization on which innovations will be global, regional and/or local, and determine appropriate roles/responsibilities (e.g., which innovations will be lead at local level vs. which will be considered global launches)
Leadership and Organization Alignment (Internal / External Stakeholders):
This role requires leadership and communication across all parts of the business, engagement and alignment of senior leaders and working through internal and external partners to achieve target results
People Development:
Attracts, leads, manages, and mentors employees in such a way to ensure retention, development, and superior performance of talent
Desired Skills and Experience
Qualifications:

Education: MBA in Marketing or related field
Experience:
 8 – 12 years relevant Marketing experience including Beverage category
 Progression of successful accomplishments in marketing that includes leadership through ambiguity to identify and commercialize a significant new brand or major new marketing program that delivered target business results.
 Experience leveraging health-related claims or properties to drive growth for a food business across adjacent categories.
 Experience balancing long term and short term business requirements, via: identifying and leveraging category growth drivers, consumer insights, global brand visions and/or marketplace realities to develop innovation roadmap that spans 3-5 year time horizon (with innovations spread across various gates to ensure continuous pipeline), while delivering more immediate core business innovation to achieve short term targets.
 Solid front-end and/or in-aisle innovation capability including the identification of insights and translation to business growth strategy. Experience with a major innovation consultancy (e.g. !What If? IDEO, Doblin, Monitor, Innosight, Jump Associates, Eureka Ranch, New & Improved) supporting multiple clients to accomplish the same.
 The ideal candidate will have progressed through the marketing ranks at a top-tier consumer packaged goods company (preferably in the food, snacking or health care industries).

Core Competencies
 Superior strategic thinking and planning
 Proven consumer understanding, to serve as foundation for sustainable innovation
 Overall business knowledge and holistic general management approach
 Ability to nurture and contribute to innovation and creative solutions
 Superior leadership skills
 Outstanding analytical abilities
 Demonstrated ability to deliver target results
 Strong verbal and written communicator to wide breadth of audiences including senior management
 State-of-the-art functional marketing expertise
 Lifelong learner and strong people developer

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