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We are working with the Hain Celestial Group in their search for a Director of Digital Marketing / Sales based in Lake Success, NY 11042.
The Hain Celestial Group (Nasdaq: HAIN) is a leading natural and organic food and personal care products company in North America and Europe. Hain Celestial participates in almost all natural food categories with well-known brands that include Celestial Seasonings®, Terra®, Garden of Eatin’®, Health Valley®, WestSoy®, Earth’s Best®, Arrowhead Mills®, DeBoles®, Hain Pure Foods®, FreeBird™, Hollywood®, Spectrum Naturals®, Spectrum Essentials®, Walnut Acres Organic™, Imagine Foods™, Rice Dream®, Soy Dream®, Rosetto®, Ethnic Gourmet®, Yves Veggie Cuisine®, Linda McCartney®, Realeat®, Lima®, Grains Noirs®, Natumi®, JASON®, Zia® Natural Skincare, Avalon Organics®, Alba Botanica® and Queen Helene®.
Reporting to the SVP Marketing / R&D, the Director of Digital Marketing/Sales will lead all digital operations companywide including strategy, marketing, communications, and sales. This position’s responsibilities and the size of its team of reports will grow over time. First year retailers will include Amazon.com and Hain.com, and will have digital marketing responsibility for Earth’s Best, Avalon Organics, Alba Botanica, and JĀSÖN. Position will report to Marketing SVP who reports directly to the Company’s CEO in this function.
HARRY’S COMMENTS: Not too long ago Seth Godin wrote a great blog post about how every company’s brand is a story – not about the company, but rather its consumers. Because people express themselves with what they buy (and how they use what they buy), brands have become extensions of our personality, totems of ourselves, and reminders of who we would like to be. In that light, “great marketers don’t make stuff — they make meaning.”
Seth’s post reminded of Hain Celestial, the world’s largest natural and organic packaged goods, food and personal care company. Hain develops and manufactures products that are all-natural and organic, and its customers are head over heels in love with the firm’s portfolio of products and what the company stands for. Hain’s strengths include the quality and safety of its products, and the amazing care that the firm takes in researching and developing them. It’s a company that’s firing on all cylinders.
None of this has escaped Wall Street’s attention.
Just five years ago the company’s stock was trading at $14.43 per share. Friday’s closing price was $93.47. The reason is simple: Hain Celestial is a well-run, vertically integrated company with great brands operating in a high growth market. As consumers have become much more attuned to their food choices, no other segment in the food industry has seen as much growth as organic food. While organic foods first saw traction in specialty retailers like Whole Foods, mainstream supermarkets such as Walmart, Target, and Kroger have jumped on the bandwagon in a big way.
Naturally, mainstream awareness means greater competition — both online and off. In 2013, EcommerceRecruiter.com closed a VP of Ecommerce search for Colgate, and every month we’re being contacted by CPG firms seeking to staff up for ecommerce. Some of these firms have groundbreaking ideas about how to make the most of digital commerce.
In the area of digital, Hain Celestial has some catching up to do — but the company is completely committed to ecommerce. By 2018, Hain Celestial expects ecommerce to be a major source of revenue for the company. The company has a strong presence on Amazon and looks to increase its sales on similar sites as well as third-party marketplaces.
Having Hain Celestial’s products readily accessible through ecommerce speaks to the firm’s mission of getting natural and organic food options to more Americans at prices that make sense. Given the relative lack of natural food stores in small town America, Hain believes that not only will digital commerce become a huge revenue driver, but it will be central to the firm’s core mission of promoting a healthier way of life as well.
About the Role
As always, I’m prepared to share with qualified candidates a boat load of third party market research and competitive intelligence, along with six pages of personal notes from my project kickoff call with this (wicked smart) hiring manager. But I can’t do that here. At a high-level, I can report that the primary initiatives with which you’ll be tasked are …
- Strengthening Hain’s relationships with Amazon and other major resellers. Frankly, if you don’t have experience managing a relationship with Amazon, your candidacy will face long odds.
- Improving Hain’s social media marketing as it pertains to digital commerce. Hain’s marketing team currently handles much of the firm’s social media activities, and it will be up to you to work with them to integrate digital commerce into those activities. For some brands (like Earth’s Best, Avalon Organics, Alba Botanica, and JĀSÖN), you’ll be taking the lead. For other brands, you’ll have more of a supporting role.
- The corporate website could use an update, and the new version should be tricked out for ecommerce. Within 180 days, Hain’s management would expect to see the new site running flawlessly, with the look, feel, and functionality being youthful, compelling, and extremely easy-to-use. (Don’t worry: Hain uses LOTS of excellent agencies, so you have plenty of world-class help.)
This search is not new. We’ve worked on this search for a few weeks and have several strong candidates in play. However, the client has asked us to source additional candidates with CPG experience – particularly as it pertains to selling on Amazon, etc. Ultimately, this role will report to Hain Celestial’s Chief Digital Officer (when that executive is hired), so it’s essential that you know how to function in a sophisticated, buttoned up CPG environment. CPG people tend to be incredibly business oriented, and they’ll expect Hain’s new Director of Digital to have a solid grasp on formal business concepts.
This role is perfect for a self-aware, politically savvy self-starter who wants to have a big impact and can leverage many kinds of digital media in brand friendly, commercially viable ways. You’ll need to be a high achiever with energy, drive, and enthusiasm for all things digital — and you’ll need to be extremely self-reliant and show initiative in a culture where digital commerce is widely appreciated yet little understood. If that describes you, then by all means ring me up.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Manage the digital AOR to develop a new, best-in-class, corporate, global website that establishes HCG as the leader in the Natural/Organic space while driving online product sales
- Execute short and long-term action plan based on measurable results to grow consumer awareness of assigned brands and profitable Amazon sales company-wide
- Cultivate partnership with Amazon for accelerated and profitable growth, owning the sales line, associated Digital Trade Budgets and fulfillment responsibilities
- Over time, successfully execute strategies for additional ecommerce opportunities with existing and new-to-the-company e-retailers, eventually owning all ecommerce for the Company
- Lead digital branding and communication for our Personal Care brands, the Earth’s Best brand infant and toddler foods and the Hain Celestial brand itself
- Manage the associated Digital Communication Budgets
- Over time, successfully execute awareness and consumption growing strategies across all of our top 12 brands, eventually owning all Digital Marketing for the company
- Act as a resource during times of crisis management for all brands to provide leadership on digital communication
Skills / Knowledge / Abilities
- Bachelor’s Degree, MBA preferred
- Minimum five years of digital marketing experience, including not less than 3 years on consumer packaged goods brands in food or HBA
- Hands-on digital marketing strategy and management including, but not limited to, web design, social media, display advertising, ecommerce design and execution (through fulfillment)
- Strong technical skills and experience including web design, construction and ecommerce integration, SEO, user experience, newsletter deployment, database building
- Previous experience must include direct, successful and profitable partnership with Amazon.com, overseeing marketing/media budgets as well as distribution
- Familiarity with native and leading digital and social analytics tools (i.e. Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, Radian6, Topsy, Piquora, Nitrogram)
- Strong analytic forecasting, business development, relationship building, presentation and writing skills
- Great organizational and long-term business planning skills
- Proficient knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite
- Ability to work both independently or as part of a team
- Timely execution of urgent tasks and strong ability to prioritize and manage a demanding workload in a fast-paced corporate environment with strong attention to detail
- Ability to manage internal and external resources and effectively work with many teams to successfully transform innovative ideas into actionable roadmap and tactical execution
Travel: Up to 30% to manage the sales line, meeting with buyers and representing the company as needed in digital forums.
Note that remote work will be done while managing the AOR (located in Manhattan) or during business travel but on a daily basis, the position is located in Lake Success, NY.
UPDATE: THIS SEARCH IS CLOSED.
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PS – If you’re thinking about changing jobs this year (though us or anyone else), you might want to check out this post on why even TOP candidates get rejected.
