Sr. Director of Market Insights and Analytics

Sr. Director of Market Insights & Analytics

Location:

Evanston, IL (Hybrid – 3 days a week onsite)

Job Type: Full Time

Our client is seeking a Sr. Director of Market Insights & Analytics to build and lead a world‑class insights practice within our client’s Marketing organization. This is a rare opportunity to shape how one of the world’s most beloved food and dairy brands understands its consumers, measures its investments, and makes decisions that drive growth.

Reporting the CMO, this individual will own the strategy and team behind all consumer insights, market research, growth analytics, and behavioral research for our client’s marketing group. They will be tasked with building and leading a high‑performing team that shapes how the business sees the market, drives growth, and makes decisions, elevating the competitive advantage by translating consumer, category, and performance data into clear strategic direction.

They will be a catalyst for transforming data into decisive action—helping the organization understand not just what consumers are doing, but why: what motivates a household to reach for a product, what drives trial, repeat, and advocacy, and where our client should invest to grow.

The ideal candidate brings deep CPG experience including a background in agency work and has made the transition to brand‑side leadership where they have built insights practices, influenced commercial decisions, and earned the trust of senior stakeholders.

• Design and stand up a high‑impact Market Insights & Analytics practice from the ground up, including team structure, operating model, and resource allocation.
• Hire, mentor, and develop a team of insights, analytics, and research professionals across growth marketing, behavioral, and brand research disciplines.
• Serve as the internal champion for data‑driven marketing, educating, and influencing senior and executive leadership on where to invest time, budget, and focus for maximum commercial impact.
• Lead behavioral research to uncover the decision‑making triggers and purchase drivers that bring consumers to our client’s products, exploring the interplay of advertising exposure, word‑of‑mouth, in‑store experience, habitual behavior, and household influences.
• Develop deep consumer journey frameworks that illuminate what motivates a first‑time buyer, what converts a trial customer into a loyal one, and what builds brand advocacy over time.
• Synthesize insights from multiple research methods—qualitative, quantitative, ethnographic, and passive data—to build a 360‑degree view of the consumer.
• Own brand health tracking, consumer segmentation, and competitive landscape research. Translate findings into clear strategic implications for the marketing team.
• Establish rigorous market research practices including primary and secondary research, panel studies, consumer surveys, and focus groups to continuously deepen understanding of our client’s current and prospective customers.
• Partner with brand teams to inform positioning, messaging, and innovation pipelines with data‑backed consumer perspectives.
• Build the measurement framework for growth marketing initiatives across paid, earned, owned, and retail channels ensuring teams have clear, actionable performance signals.
• Develop attribution and ROI frameworks that help marketing leadership understand where spend is working, and provide confident recommendations for reallocation.
• Own the strategy and execution for marketing mix modeling (MMM) or multi‑touch attribution solutions, ensuring outputs are credible and operationalized into planning cycles.
• Act as a strategic advisor to Marketing, Sales, Finance, and Commercial teams helping them understand which analytical questions will have the greatest business impact and sequencing efforts accordingly.
• Establish a clear analytics roadmap and governance model so stakeholders understand what the insights team is prioritizing and why, building trust and managing demand effectively.
• Manage vendor relationships including research agencies, data providers, and analytics platform partners overseeing RFP processes, contract negotiations, and ongoing…