Innovation Brand Manager

Position Title

Innovation Brand Manager

Regular - Full-Time

41158

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The Innovation Manager is a key contributor of the Global Snacking Innovation Team at McCain and is part of a team building out a strategic disruptive growth pipeline. This individual is responsible for executing a multi-year platform strategy to unlock profitable growth and drive more of the menu as part of the 2030 business unit strategy. Reporting to the Director of Global Snacking Innovation the Innovation Manager will lead end-to-end commercialization of breakthrough innovation across the globe, including Food service and QSR channels.

This role is responsible for driving scalable innovation from ideation to market readiness that delivers against the company strategy, enhances McCain’s market position, builds competitive advantage and fuels momentum for continued business growth. Leveraging market trends and intel to identify opportunities and unmet needs, this role will define propositions and drive initiatives from ideation to launch readiness in collaboration with cross-functional partners (brand marketing, Insights, R&D, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Go to Market Hub, and Agriculture).

The successful candidate will have natural curiosity and the ability to generate breakthrough “what if” thinking. They will thrive in ambiguity, translating emerging trends, market analysis, and insights into groundbreaking product concepts. They possess a strong commercial acumen and the ability to lead cross-functional teams to success, overcoming challenges to drive profitable growth for the brand and the business.

• Deliver compelling disruptive innovation platform strategy, based on consumer, customer and category insights, and market trends, grounded in the McCain long range plan objectives (where to play, how to win, growth targets), category, brand, portfolio strategy and demand space framework
• Deliver a 3-year disruptive innovation pipeline, with a focus on new environments, new occasions and new platform capabilities, with clarity to horizon pathing and pacing of work streams
• Lead global projects from opportunity to insight to proposition development and validation, through to launch readiness, leveraging the Navigator (Stage Gate) process, liaising with the insights, marketing teams and Go To Market hub. Manage projects to agreed budgets, timelines and KPI’s
• Build innovation commercial propositions with clarity to product mix, pricing, packaging, placement and promotion, with end-to-end oversight from design to deployment, leveraging opportunity framing, concept writing, briefing and launch proposal processes from design to deployment
• Support accelerating the company’s innovation process and disruptive innovation planning, leading big bet sizing and fueling pipeline sufficiency (reporting into PGR) to meet our growth objectives and contributing to best practices for how we innovate that unlocks collaboration and feeds desirability, feasibility and viability
• Execute innovation process improvement, enhancing process agility while delivering on quality of launch
• Act as a hub of communication to ensure all stakeholders are fully integrated in key disruptive innovation activities, while driving accountability to deliver launch timelines
• Participate in industry events to understand market trends and developments that can be leveraged by the company
• Champion innovation by actively learning and sharing best practices, keeping a pulse on the competitive environment and identifying rising trends and capabilities
• Contribute to an insight-led and demand centric growth culture, putting insights at the heart of our disruptive innovation plans and strategy
• Support global platform innovation strategy & governance, creating strong global partnerships, sharing best practices, leveraging synergies and influencing with global & cross-regional teams

• Bachelor’s degree required; MBA preferred
• 3-5 years of Marketing or brand management, with a minimum of 1-2 years leading innovation
• Experience developing new-to-world or new-to-company innovation,…