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We are working with the Hain Celestial Group in their search for a Sr. Manager, Digital Communication 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®.
Reporting to the Chief Digital Officer, the Sr. Manager, Digital Communication will develop strategy and implement interactive marketing initiatives for Earth’s Best, Ella’s Kitchen, Alba Botanica, and JĀSÖN This role will increase brand awareness, generate inbound traffic and grow online sales.
Leveraging a passion for content strategy, blogging, micro-blogging and community participation leadership, this position will create unique voices for each of the assigned brands. The position will manage the digital agency of record on a daily basis and collaborating to develop strategic digital communication initiatives that reach current consumers / fans, prospective shoppers and the target audience at large. This position’s responsibilities and the size of its team of reports will grow over time.
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.
As always, I’m prepared to share with qualified candidates a boatload 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 social media superfreak to engage the firm’s audience of current fans, in addition to broadening its brands’ reach to increase trial.
But here’s the kicker: We are not exclusively looking for a CPG person, but possibly an individual who comes from a platform like Pinterest, Instagram or BuzzFeed.
Basically, the client seeks a social media EXPERT who is way ahead of the curve in terms of what’s possible today, where social media will be in 5 years, and how the client can use these technologies to improve the emotional bond its customers have with its brands now and in the future.
Very likely, the ideal candidate is an agency (Digital Advertising or even PR) maven with tremendous experience creating viral campaigns that increase brand awareness/trial and fan engagement. Additionally, we’d like to see digital media platform experts who can translate their direct knowledge of what works on the platform to campaigns that work for Hain. Finally, we’d like to find a CPG Marketing expert who has direct experience creating viral campaigns that increase brand awareness/trial and fan engagement.
Look, there are a million social media candidates on the market. I get that. What we want is someone who can “get into the heads” of the company’s slamdunk consumers and use social media to create huge, viral events to exponentially grow awareness and trial – turning same-old fans into a growing legion of loyal consumers. If that’s you, then please apply below!
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Develop, manage and optimize measurable digital marketing campaigns aligned with the various Marketing Teams’ key objectives, as well as the Company’s investment areas and priorities. Create leading digital branding and communication campaigns that increase awareness, trial and consumption for Earth’s Best, Ella’s Kitchen, Alba Botanica, JĀSÖN and the Hain Celestial brand. Help manage the agency relationship and use benchmarks and analytics to maximize performance and user engagement. Analyze and provide regular reports of the performance of Hain’s campaigns and conversion of fans into consumers.
- Manage the Digital AOR’s Social Media daily activities including: Creating blockbuster, cross-brand social events that drive awareness and new trial; writing and curating content calendars; overseeing design as well as developing and expanding community and/or blogger outreach efforts. Manage the associated Digital Communication Budgets. Over time, develop and successfully execute awareness and consumption growing strategies across all of Hain’s top 12 brands
- Be ahead of the curve in spotting new trends in the interactive/mobile space and integrating technologies for Hain’s brands. Make strategic recommendations to Sr. Management regarding which technologies and platforms to adopt on a per-brand basis.
- Working with the Sr. Director of Ecommerce Strategy, manage the digital AOR to integrate social media into all of Hain’s Ecommerce strategies on HainCelestial.com and all other e-retailers. Oversee implementation and updates on on-going basis. Create data-driven, dynamic email campaigns and tests that deliver against ROI targets through a segmented customer base.
- On the Hain.com, implement a proactive strategy for capturing customer online reviews. Monitor online ratings and respond accordingly. Across Hain’s social media platforms and the firm’s website, identify threats and opportunities in user generated content and report to appropriate management. Working with Consumer Affairs, Regulatory and Legal, act as a resource during times of crisis management for all brands.
- Provide weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual analysis to Sr. Management on the effectiveness and ROI of campaigns
- Manage and develop relationships with the digital AOR and other vendors, including SEO teams, 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
- Create social media best-practices guidelines for global use with particular emphasis on ROI through quantitative key measure analysis
- 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
- 6-8 years of digital marketing 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 expereince including web design, construction and e-commerce integration, SEO, user experience, newsletter deployment, database building
- 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
UPDATE: THIS SEARCH IS CLOSED.
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.
