Overview
The Director of Category Marketing plays a key leadership role in shaping and executing category strategies for Marzetti Foodservice that deliver sustainable growth and profitability. This role is responsible for driving category planning, P&L and margin management, portfolio strategy, integrated business planning/forecasting, value engineering, innovation, and category/brand marketing for assigned categories.
The Director partners with Sales, Customer Marketing, Finance, Revenue Management, End-to-End Planning, R&D/Culinary and Operations to establish clear category priorities and align the organization around annual and long-range business objectives. The role leads the Category Marketing team and provides leadership and recommendations on portfolio, innovation, margin and investment decisions.
Responsibilities What You'll Do
Category Strategy & Planning
- Lead annual and longer-term category strategies, defining growth priorities and where-to-play/how-to-win choices.
- Translate category, customer, consumer and competitive insights to identify opportunities, risks and recommendations.
- Establish category objectives, key initiatives and measures of success.
- Partner with Customer Marketing and Sales to translate category priorities into customer and channel opportunities.
Category P&L & Margin Management
- Own category (Branded & Customer SKUs) financial performance across volume, revenue, mix, margin and profitability.
- Partner with Finance, Trade and Pricing to establish category margin targets and decision thresholds.
- Lead portfolio profitability, pricing/mix and margin-improvement decisions.
- Oversee category marketing budgets.
Integrated Business Planning
- Lead Marketing's category perspective within the IBP process.
- Own the business assumptions behind the demand outlook and align inputs from Sales and Customer Marketing with Demand Planning.
- Understand capacity, supply and inventory implications and make category, customer prioritization and portfolio recommendations as required.
- Partner with Supply Chain on constraints, risks and longer-term capacity requirements including capital and business case development.
- Ensure innovation, customer initiatives and portfolio changes are represented appropriately in business plans.
Category Innovation
- Develop and lead the category innovation and renovation funnel.
- Establish business case, value proposition and financial expectation for category innovation.
- Lead cross-functional alignment for category-driven projects through Stage Gate and commercialization. Provide approval for customer Stage Gate projects.
- Partner with Customer Marketing on customer-driven opportunities to ensure alignment with strategy, margin expectations and portfolio priorities.
Portfolio & Value Engineering
- Develop portfolio assortment strategy and SKU productivity balancing customer needs, operational complexity, capacity and financial performance
- Lead SKU optimization and rationalization decisions.
- Identify and prioritize value engineering, quality improvement, renovation opportunities and regulatory requirements with cross-functional teams.
Category / Brand Marketing
- Lead category architecture / brand positioning and value propositions
- Partner with Customer Marketing to translate category strategies into channel and customer activation; guide development of selling tools and agency support.
- Monitor category, competitive, and marketplace trends to identify risks and growth opportunities
People & Organizational Leadership
- Build and nurture a high-performing Category Marketing team.
- Create clarity around priorities, decision rights and accountability.
- Communicate category performance, opportunities, risks and recommendations to senior leadership.
- Build strong general-management, financial and category management capabilities across the team.
Qualifications What You'll Bring
- Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, or related field required; MBA preferred.
- 10+ years of progressive experience in CPG marketing, category/brand/product management or related roles; foodservice experience preferred.
- Strong financial and business acumen, including experience with P&L management and forecasting.
- Demonstrated experience leading strategic planning, portfolio management, innovation and commercialization.
- Experience leveraging secondary, syndicated and custom research to inform strategy, and leading agency partners to deliver business and marketing objectives.
- Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence effectively without direct authority.
- Strong analytical and decision-making skills, with the ability to translate insights into action and operate effectively in a fast-paced, evolving business environment.
- Excellent storytelling and presentation skills.
- Collaborative, growth-oriented leader with strong ownership, curiosity and a passion for food, customers and innovation.