Director, Brand Marketing

Your Opportunity as the Brand Marketing Director

The Brand Director is a business, brand, and growth leader with a General Manager mindset, accountable for delivering sustainable top- and bottom-line growth while building distinctive, enduring brands. This leader identifies and unlocks consumer, category, brand, and portfolio growth opportunities; sets the long-term brand vision and strategy; owns delivery of the annual operating plan. The Brand Director leads a dedicated brand team and mobilizes Sales, Finance, Insights, Innovation, R&D, Operations, Brand Experience, and agency partners around clear strategic choices and decisive execution. This individual balances creativity and entrepreneurship with strategic discipline, strong business acumen, and a commitment to building the brand equity and organizational capability that create tomorrow's growth.

We are hiring Brand Directors for two of our biggest and most dynamic businesses: Folgers coffee and Dog Snacks.

• Folgers is the iconic brand leader in roast and ground coffee. Folgers, along with the Dunkin' Donuts and Cafe Bustelo brands, makes the coffee portfolio the biggest business within The J.M. Smucker Co. portfolio, and more Americans start their day with a cup of coffee at home from a Smucker coffee brand than any other company.
• The J.M. Smucker Co. is the industry leader in Dog Snacks, where the iconic Milk-Bone brand is #1 in dollars, Canine Carry Outs is #1 in volume, and Pup-Peroni is a leader in soft and chewy treats. More dog-loving households use a Smucker treat to bring joy and build bonds with their dogs than any other company.

Location: Orrville, OH Corporate Offices

Work Arrangements: Hybrid, onsite approximately 9 days per month during core weeks as determined by the Company; may be more as business needs require

Reports To: Vice President of Marketing

In this role you will:

Growth and Business Leadership

• Identify and unlock consumer, category, brand, and portfolio growth opportunities, translating them into clear strategic choices and an actionable long-term growth agenda.
• Develop and implement the long-term brand strategy and annual operating plan for a category-leading brand or portfolio to deliver sustainable growth, market share gains, and stronger brand health.
• Own the brand P&L and deliver annual and long-term top- and bottom-line financial commitments, proactively anticipating and addressing key performance drivers.
• Identify and deliver margin expansion opportunities through portfolio optimization, revenue growth management, cost reduction, value engineering, and supply chain partnership while protecting the consumer experience and long-term brand equity.

Brand-Building Leadership

• Define and champion the long-term brand vision, positioning, consumer promise, and distinctive brand equities that create competitive advantage.
• Build deep understanding of consumers, human motivations, culture, and category dynamics, and translate those insights into differentiated brand-building opportunities.
• Protect long-term brand equity while identifying opportunities to evolve the brand for future consumers, occasions, and cultural contexts.
• Connect brand-building activity to measurable brand health, consumer behavior, and sustainable business growth.
  

Modern Marketing Leadership

• In partnership with Integrated Media team, lead how the brand is built across today's consumer ecosystem, including digital, social, commerce, retail, media, and emerging technologies.
• Partner with Brand Experience to develop, execute, and optimize holistic integrated marketing campaigns, applying test-and-learn thinking to improve effectiveness.
• Translate consumer, category, cultural, competitive, and customer insights into clear strategies, compelling brand positioning, and decisive business actions.

Innovation and Commercial Leadership

• Partner with Innovation and R&D to develop a multi-year innovation pipeline linked to the brand strategy, cultural shifts, and evolving consumer needs.
• Own innovation launch strategy and commercial execution, ensuring launches deliver against consumer, customer, brand, and financial expectations.
• Partner with Sales to develop channel and customer strategies that grow the brand, business, and category. Represent the brand in key customer meetings to understand opportunities and challenges, influence joint business plans, and strengthen commercial execution.

Enterprise and People Leadership

• Build strong, collaborative, and trusting relationships across a highly matrixed organization, balancing brand, business unit, and Company priorities while influencing at all levels.
• Coach, develop, and motivate a high-performing team, fostering a culture of strategic clarity, creativity, inclusion, collaboration, accountability, learning agility, and speed to action.

Is this the role for you?

Are you a passionate business builder and brand builder motivated by the opportunity to shape strategy, inspire teams, and unlock meaningful growth? Are you energized by combining deep consumer and cultural understanding, creativity, modern marketing fluency, and commercial discipline to move an iconic brand and category forward? If so, you are the type of leader we want to add to our Company.

Success in this role requires equal strength as a business builder and a brand builder: the ability to deliver today's P&L while building the distinctive brand equity, consumer relevance, and organizational capability that create tomorrow's growth.

What we are looking for:

• Bachelor's degree required; Master of Business Administration preferred.
• Minimum of 10 years of brand marketing experience, including significant experience in consumer packaged goods; food, beverage, or pet experience is preferred.
• Proven track record of identifying and unlocking growth opportunities and delivering top-line growth through demand creation, brand building, innovation, and strong commercial execution.
• Demonstrated ability to build strong, distinctive brands by translating consumer and cultural insight into positioning, brand strategy, portfolio choices, and compelling consumer experiences that strengthen equity and drive business growth.
• Experience developing long-term strategies and annual business plans for a large, established consumer brand or portfolio of brands.
• Demonstrated experience owning a P&L, managing a significant marketing budget, and making trade-offs that improve profitable growth.
• Strong understanding of financial drivers, including pricing, trade, commodities, operations, supply chain, and demand generation.
• Modern brand-building fluency across media, social, digital, commerce, retail, technology, and emerging consumer behaviors, with curiosity and learning agility to adapt as the ecosystem evolves.
• Proven ability to develop, inspire, and activate high-performing teams to deliver best-in-class results.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to craft a compelling story and influence at all levels inside and outside the Company.
• Demonstrated enterprise leadership and ability to build alignment and mobilize cross-functional teams and external partners around clear strategic choices.
• Ability and willingness to travel within the United States approximately 20% of the time.

Additional skills and experience that would make someone successful in this role:

• Sets a high standard for performance and pursues goals with purpose, sound judgment, and a sense of urgency.
• Leads with a General Manager mindset and balances creativity and entrepreneurship with strategy, discipline, and accountability.
• Maintains a deep understanding of consumers, human motivations, category dynamics, and culture, identifying shifts in behaviors, attitudes, and cultural conversations that create opportunities to strengthen brand relevance and unlock growth.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and able to envision future opportunities, make decisions with incomplete information, and adapt quickly.
• Persistent through setbacks and skilled at gaining acceptance for ideas and rallying teams behind a shared vision.
• Deep curiosity about consumers, customers, culture, technology, and the competitive landscape.
• Passion for taking initiative, simplifying work, testing and learning, and driving constructive change.

The Right Place for You

We are bold, kind, strive to do the right thing, we play to win, and we believe in a strong community that thrives together. Our culture is rooted in our Basic Beliefs, and we believe in supporting every employee by meeting their physical, emotional, and financial needs.

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We're an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, age, national origin, disability status or protected veteran status.

Where Talent Thrives and Community Grows

We’re a community of passionate, talented professionals dedicated to creating food people and pets love—while supporting the communities in which we work and live. We value what makes each person unique, champion growth and development, and foster collaboration that fuels productivity and drives our shared success.

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What Makes Us Unique

At Smucker, we're passionate about creating a workplace where you truly belong. With a culture rooted in our Basic Beliefs and a competitive Total Rewards program, we aim to support every employee by meeting their physical, emotional, and financial needs.

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How We Hire

Our culture is sustained and brought to life every day by the people of Smucker and our hiring process is designed to identify the right candidate for every position at our company.

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Equal Opportunity Employer Statement

The J. M. Smucker Co. (the “Company”) is an Equal Opportunity Employer. No person will be discriminated against in hiring or in any other aspect of their employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, transgender status, marital status, familial status, disability, genetic information, protected veteran/military status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local law.