Brand Manager

About Carnivore Meat Company

Headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and a pioneer in raw pet food since 2009, Carnivore Meat Company provides pets with the opportunity to lead long, vibrant, healthy lives. Carnivore does this by manufacturing ultra-premium quality, raw frozen and freeze-dried pet food and treats using the best butcher cut proteins.

From traditional favorites – beef, chicken, turkey, duck – to more innovative tastes such as ahi tuna, and rabbit. Carnivore Meat Company products are free of grains, gluten, artificial preservatives, rendered by-products, fillers, flavoring, and coloring.All products are U.S.A. made and packaged in the company’s Green Bay, Wisconsin facilities. Carnivore's all-meat freeze-dried products are safe, convenient, and shelf-stable, making them ideal for traveling, training, snacking and everyday feeding, making the segment one of the fastest growing areas within pet food today.

Carnivore’s products are sold under its flagship Vital Essential® brand. Vital Essentials® is distributed in over 7,200 retailers today in the Independent Pet channel, and in 14 international markets. Vital Essentials® is one of the fastest growing brands in the pet food industry.

Carnivore manufactures 100% of its products at its own facilities, leveraging a unique and best-in-class supply chain approach and relationships to ensure that most ingredients are frozen immediately after harvesting to lock in freshness and nutrients. The ingredients are then processed at Carnivore’s own facilities, and dried using proprietary freeze dry equipment and technology.

Carnivore employs 186 associates and will be opening a new 235,000 square foot headquarters and manufacturing facility in Green Bay this spring. The new 28-acre campus will become Carnivore’s Global Headquarters and provide capacity to support its growth over the next 3-5 years.

Carnivore is constantly innovating new products, techniques, and technology to support its commitment to excellence in the raw pet food industry. Carnivore Meat Company is one of the most tenured raw pet food producers in the nation—and one of the leading private label providers of raw pet food. Carnivore has been named among the fastest growing private companies in the United States by Inc. 5000 in its annual list. Further, the company is well ranked nationally and locally among Green Bay companies.

Role Purpose

In this dynamic role, the Brand Manager is entrusted with the responsibility of not only maintaining but also elevating the brand's presence and impact in the market. The brand manager will architect innovative marketing campaigns and strategies that resonate deeply with the target audience, driving brand awareness, customer engagement, and ultimately, business growth.

The Brand Manager will leverage their expertise in brand strategy to develop a challenger brand communications approach to grow brand equity, champion breakthrough innovation projects across the organization, and provide impactful resources to equip the sales organization. The Brand Manager will work directly with the new VP of Brand, help in leading and coaching the marketing team, and collaborate with cross-functional leadership to ignite a best-in-class branding function within the rapidly-growing, middle-market company.

Key Responsibilities:

Brand Strategy, Business Monitoring & Competitive Insights

• Assist in crafting marketing strategy and plans based on consumer, customer, channel, and market trends in the premium pet food space
• Collaborate with the VP of Brand to guide Digital Marketing, PR Agencies, and Shopper Marketing Partners, ensuring brand consistency across marketing tactics, and provide constructive feedback for continuous improvement
• Analyze IRI, panel data, and partner research to understand and utilize market trends effectively.
• Create ongoing consumption & competitive monitoring routine.

Communication, Content & Creative

• Inspire the team to rally behind an exciting challenger brand campaign to be used for 360 creative messaging across social, digital, retail, national shopper programs, sampling, and website management.
• Own brand marketing budget, inclusive of channel media strategy, lead campaign execution.
• Develop focus items and messaging to brief internal and external creative partners in asset creation.
• Manage digital content and assets such as website, SEO, email campaigns, and social media.
• Partner with Senior Graphic Designer to ensure adherence to brand identity standards including colors, logo usage, and content library development. Work alongside Senior Graphic Designer to expand asset library
• Partner with the ecommerce & performance media team to understand digital content performance and optimize guardrails for future campaigns and strategies

Product Innovation

• Lead strategic analysis and recommendation for overall innovation pipeline strategy and project prioritization.
• Coach ABM who will lead project execution + manage teams cross-functionally to successfully launch new products across various segments and brands.
• Creatively collaborate with the team to address cost, margin contribution, and retailer margin challenges to maximize new product launches.
• Contribute to the development of product & packaging briefs and shape the development of the product coming to life.
• Lead the go-to-market strategy for launching new products and ensuring success across channels.

Shopper & Sales Strategy

• Support Create presentations and present at internal & external line reviews.
• Manage national trade shows and potential regional trade show events.
• Coordinate with Sales and partner Agencies for effective product sample management.
• Optimize sales and marketing budget / activities and then recommend changes to drive velocity of the business.
• Craft compelling selling stories and item sheets for launches, pricing strategies, shopper marketing integration, and SKU optimization initiatives in collaboration with Carnivore’s sales team.
• Evaluate the outcomes of marketing programs to support the development and ongoing refinement of marketing activities.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Passion to be entrepreneurial and scrappy and act as a challenger brand - while having fun and building a brand that can have an impact and get noticed
• Experience using key decision tools (Nielson, Circana, Panel Data, etc.) for analysis of market trends and recommend actions. Organizational skills including the ability to prioritize workload to meet deadlines.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills necessary to persuade and influence decision making.
• Promote collaboration by valuing others and building trust‐based relationships. Ability to drive internal buy in between both tenured and new members of the Carnivore team. Approach situations and processes with curiosity and open‐mindedness while applying new learning.
• Expertise to lead and work through complex innovation and commercialization projects.
• Ability to assess data and create a strategic recommendation and present to a cross functional leadership team for buy in.
• Able to motivate and coach junior marketing team members.

Qualifications

• BA/BS required in Marketing or related field,
• MBA preferred. 5+ years of work experience, 3+ years post-MBA.
• Background in Consumer Goods (CPG) required, food experience preferred.
• Ability to travel 25% of the time

Reporting Structure

• Report Up: VP Brand (who reports to CEO)