Jarden CS seeks a Global Marketing Director (Boca Raton, FL)

The company has a direct marketing division for Jarden Consumer Solutions, which includes Mr. Coffee, Foodsaver, Bionaire, Margaritaville, and 15+ other consumer brands. Additionally, Jarden Corporate operates a number of sporting goods brands, including K2, Coleman, Marmot, and Pure Fishing. Fans of this website may recall that we closed a search for Pure Fishing a while back.

What’s interesting about this search is that, essentially, there is no real ecommerce aspect to it. Sure, there’s a possibility that you will help Jarden CS’ international wholesale trading partners develop ecommerce strategies, but that’s not really within the purview this job.

Jarden asked us to handle the search because they enjoyed working with us the first time, and I took the search because I held a very similar position with AJC International in the 1990s. At a high-level, this job is all about helping Jarden’s European and Asian distributors build a market for Jarden’s brands.

Jarden CS is a manufacturer of small appliances for the home. Their products include kitchen appliances, coffeemakers, toasters, small grills, air purifiers, humidifiers, small heaters, and some professional products for pets, like shears. The bulk of the firm’s business is in small kitchen appliances, and the company’s mission is to take its brands worldwide. Not all of these brands will go global. But most will. For years, the firm has enjoyed great success throughout Latin America, and being based in South Florida Jarden has an extremely talented staff servicing the Latin American market.

The basic purpose of the Global Marketing Director role is to be a facilitator and disseminator of marketing best practices from wherever Jarden is successful, to whichever European or Asian theaters would benefit most from those strategies and tactics. For example, if Jarden’s slow cookers are selling like crazy in Berlin, it will be your job to ask “WHY?” Next, you’ll need to ask “Is it possible to cross pollinate what’s working in Germany elsewhere? HOW? WHOM do I need to get involved? WHAT’s the plan?” Etc.

I have been in international market development before, and I hold a Masters in International Business from a top 5 school. In previous careers, I’ve been an expat three times (once in Europe; twice in Latin America). Clearly, this post isn’t about me — but it’s important for you to understand that I know what I’m selling here.

Roles like this are a riot! However, it has been my own experience that success in roles like this hinges on things like flexibility, common sense, initiative, and the ability to self educate.

For example, there’s a great bit in David Ogilvy’s Confessions of an Advertising Man about how to become an Account Executive (presumably a plum job in that business, back in the day). Instructs Ogilvy, …

“The surest way to rise to the top of the agency is to become the best informed person in the agency on your account. If it is a gasoline account, read textbooks on the chemistry, geology, and distribution of petroleum products. Read all the trade journals in the field. Read all the research reports and marketing plans that your agency has ever written on the product. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, pumping gasoline and talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. Study the advertising of his competitors. And at the end of your second year, you will know more about gasoline than your boss, and you will be ready to succeed him.”

But it’ll be so worth it! If you were ever going to devote yourself to a company, you couldn’t do any better than Jarden CS. The company’s products are excellent — and they last for years. It’s not uncommon to see a grandmother with a Sunbeam mixer from 1950 in her home. And even though many of Jarden’s products are marketed as midpriced items, they perform like high-end products. The company’s reputation for service is excellent, and it is vertically integrated for many of its product lines.

Jarden has tremendous product development capabilities, and it has even more to learn about how its international customers think; how they operate in their kitchens; what they need; and what the WANT. Jarden spends quite a bit of time and money on innovation, and in terms of distribution, Jarden is very well represented. It’s a marketer’s dream.

However, there will be challenges: Ease of entry can be difficult in international markets, particularly where retailers dominate the space. Jarden’s international marketers need to be extremely clever about how to get into those retailers. Online, in some countries and regions, the firm does have its own ecommerce businesses, but it prefers to work through conventional retail store channels because that’s where the volume is. The good news is that Jarden has excellent salesforces in nearly every market where it competes.

Certainly it is if you L.O.V.E. international business. You must be passionate about consumers, both domestically and internationally, and you must be a lover of people. Naturally, you’ll need to dig traveling, as you’ll be bustling throughout Europe and Asia 30% of the time. Of course, we’d prefer someone who is fluent in a European or Asian language. Plus, we’d like for you to understand how to create media plans, creative briefs, and manage agencies.

The market for Jarden’s products is massive. Take a look at what has happened to this company’s stock price in the last 5 years and you’ll kick yourself for not having loaded up a long time ago. Worldwide, every home needs kitchen appliances, and these items wear out and need replacing. Read Tom Friedman. In places where people are getting out of poverty, they’re buying homes, setting up homesteads, and setting up the kitchen. That spells opportunity for Jarden. In India, for example, Jarden has a huge target market of new people who are buying appliances for the very first time. Business is brisk, and in developing markets where the growth rate is 7%, it’s not uncommon to see Jarden clock in at 10% or better.

And here’s the kicker: Jarden doesn’t do much discounting — preferring instead to build strong brands. That’s my kind of company.