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We are working with the Hain Celestial Group in their search for a Sr. Director, Digital Strategy based in New York City.
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®.
This role will increase brand awareness, generate inbound traffic and grow online sales.
The Sr. Director, Digital Strategy 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 the Chief Digital Officer, 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.
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 tell you that we’re looking for a rock star who will create and manage Hain’s companywide ecommerce strategy.
Responsibilities will include determining how Hain’s brands appear on all ecommerce platforms, including the marketing content that goes into product and promotional pages. The position will also be responsible for uncovering and creating new digital ecommerce opportunities that profitably fit within Hain’s existing sales/ operations/ distribution structure. This position’s responsibilities and the size of its team will grow over time.
At a high level, this role revolves around developing and executing new ecommerce partnerships and opportunities. You’ll lead the creation of Hain’s new ecommerce enabled global website and manage the sales growth of that website going forward.
At the same time, you will work hand-in-hand with the assigned Sales Team to grow sales with existing ecommerce retailers such as Amazon.com. The role will help manage how the company’s 25+ brands appear on those channels and how they engage with shoppers via those channels.
Moreover, responsibilities will include finding new digital retail channels through which Hain can market profitably (they just had their first event with Zulily, for example), pulling together a business case for each channel, doing the legwork to get the channel productive, and turning that relationship over to the Sales Team who will execute and have P&L responsibility.
Are you right for the job?
We’re looking for an ecommerce expert from a large and successful digital retail environment; someone who has masterfully set up and run ecommerce platforms in the past and has successfully designed campaigns to increase in-house traffic. Mr. / Ms. Perfect would be a CPG Marketing and/or Sales expert who has direct experience growing large digital businesses with partners such as Amazon, Walmart.com, Drugstore.com, etc. If that’s you, then we should talk! Please apply below.
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. Develop Hain.com ecommerce forecasts, pricing structure, fulfillment structures and quarterly reporting
- Create short and long-term action plans based on measurable results to achieve accelerated and profitable Amazon.com and AmazonFresh growth across the entire Hain portfolio. Maintain that partnership over time, in concert with the assigned Sales Team Member the agency OneClickRetail as well as broker, Acosta.
- Develop and manage how Hain appears on all ecommerce platforms, including content / image creation and updates. Work with the Sales Person and cost effective relationships with ecommerce media / sales teams, and help create breakthrough promotions that drive consumption and signal Hain’s leadership position in the marketplace.
- Uncover, develop and engage with new ecommerce platforms, broadening Hain’s reach while working closely with Operations to ensure that new partnerships fit seamlessly into existing business / distribution structures.
- Act as a resource during times of crisis management for all brands to provide leadership on digital communication
- Manage and develop relationships with the digital AOR and other vendors, including freelancers and consultants
- Develop and manage an efficient and smoothly operating team, starting with one shared direct report
- Recruit and grow the Digital Marketing/Sales team as needed, leveraging strong industry relationships
- Report to US Unit Presidents on current business status as well as emerging media and ecommerce opportunities via quarterly update meetings
Skills/Knowledge/Abilities
- Bachelor’s Degree, MBA preferred
- Minimum eight years of digital experience, including not less than 5 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
UPDATE: THIS SEARCH IS CLOSED.
