Pilot Coffee Roasters – Head of Brand Creative

With a passion specialty for great coffee, Pilot Coffee Roasters was built around its core values of sourcing ethical, Direct Trade coffee and building transparency in the process from farm to cup.

Pilot is a full-service roastery, wholesaler and cafe operator with multiple locations across the Greater Toronto Area. It operates as a specialty café and roastery, supplying coffee, equipment, training, technical support, and consulting services for new café owners across Canada.

Scope of Position

The Head of Brand Creative reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer and is the strategic role responsible for setting and executing against the Brand’s vision for what Pilot looks, feels and sounds like in its communications, campaigns, brand initiatives and media. An exceptional storyteller and true brand marketer, you will shape and elevate Pilot’s overall brand identity in line with the company’s culture, values and legacy.

The successful candidate will be responsible for leading Pilot’s in-house creative and marketing team, which currently includes two direct reports, and lead the conceptual vision and art direction for campaigns, brand initiatives and marketing programs.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities

● Brand Management:

• Provide answers to the questions:
  What categories and products should we be in? How do we position and price? Where and how do we sell our products?
• Serve as a passionate steward and advocate for the brand and its values.
• Own the product segmentation strategy including consumer insights, category trends, and market dynamics.
• Manage the positioning of the brand so that it uniformly succeeds across various touch points including but not limited to: advertising, social, digital, website, events, point of sale, packaging, sales decks, internal comms, etc.
• Lead the creative and marketing team for the P&L for each product family, as well as manage all briefed work while directing the creative teams and alignment.
• Work shoulder to shoulder, to support all sales channels.
• Serve as the architect of the marketing strategy and set the goals for the brand.
• Manage relationships with external agencies.
• Set and manage the marketing budget.
• Responsible for our shopper marketing facets, including strategy, calendar, agency management, POS, coupons, demo/store events, etc.
• Lead communications internally in line with Pilot’s culture and values.
• Lead external public relations and manage events.
• Collaborate with the creative team to provide analysis-based strategic insights that support the sales channels (where we should be, when we should be there, what we should say). Provide direction that will allow the creative team to develop the right qualitative language, images and design for effective marketing.
• Develop Creative Briefs, Strategy and drive Execution based on collaboration with cross-functional partners (Brand and Product Marketing, Marketing Activation, Omnichannel).
• Responsible for managing the team’s overall operating model, including the setting and enforcing of brand guidelines.
• Inspire the team to drive methods, creative processes and thinking (brand storytelling, and differentiation).

● Service Internal Customers:

• Provide support to internal customers including Operations, treating them as customers with an understanding that their success is crucial to overall brand success.
• Help define the future look and feel of Pilot’s brand, in line with our culture, values and legacy.
• Be an optimistic change agent that helps energize and lead the rest of the organization toward the fulfillment of our mission.

● Maintain an understanding of and commitment to Pilot’s mission and values.

● All other reasonable duties assigned by the company.

Preferred Experience and Education

• 10+ years of experience in multi-channel brand marketing within the CPG/Food & Beverage Industry.
• 5+ years of team management or cross-functional team management in a fast-paced and dynamic organization.
• Solid understanding of project management methodologies.
• Advanced experience with digital analytics and reporting technology.
• Proven ability to identify and resolve issues, manage risk, develop detailed project plans, specifications, and reports.
• Ski…