Senior Director; Brand, Integrated Marketing

Description

Senior Brand Director, Integrated Marketing

Reports to: VP, Brand Marketing
Function: Brand Marketing
Location: Oak Creek, WI / Hybrid

THE ROLE

Stella & Chewy’s is entering its next chapter of growth. As we expand our reach, enter new channels and introduce more pet parents to the power of raw-inspired nutrition, we need to build demand differently. The consumer does not experience “brand media,” “shopper,” “retail media,” “social,” “commerce” and “PR” as separate disciplines and neither should we.

The Senior Brand Director, Integrated Media will be responsible for turning Stella & Chewy’s brand and business strategy into one connected, full-funnel demand plan that builds the brand, recruits new households and accelerates conversion wherever consumers choose to shop.

This leader will sit at the intersection of brand building and commercial growth, connecting paid media, retail media, shopper marketing, social, creators, commerce, communications and experiential activation around a common consumer journey and a common set of business outcomes.

This is a senior brand leadership role for someone who understands that the best modern marketing does not choose between brand and performance—it deliberately builds both.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

1. Build the Integrated Demand Strategy

Translate our annual Brand Plan, growth priorities and commercial calendar into a single integrated communications and demand-generation strategy.

You will:

• Create the annual and rolling integrated media plan across paid, owned, earned, shopper, retail media, commerce, creator and experiential touchpoints.
• Establish the role of each channel across the consumer journey. From mental availability and consideration through trial, conversion, repeat and advocacy.
• Connect national brand-building investment with retailer and market-specific activation so consumers experience one Stella & Chewy’s brand, regardless of where they encounter us.
• Lead an integrated planning rhythm built around one plan, one brief, one calendar, one measurement agenda and one in-year optimization rhythm.
• Ensure media strategy starts with a consumer and business problem.

2. Own Media Strategy & Investment

Act as the senior business owner of Stella & Chewy’s media investment and ensure every dollar has a clear strategic role.

You will:

• Lead development of the total media architecture, investment strategy and channel mix.
• Determine how investment should balance brand building, household penetration, trial, conversion, retention and retailer-specific growth.
• Own paid media strategy across major platforms and partners, including social, video, streaming, programmatic, search and emerging channels.
• Integrate retailer media networks including: Walmart Connect, Amazon, Roundel and other strategic partners into the broader brand plan rather than treating them as isolated performance programs.
• Establish clear investment guardrails and principles for national, regional, retailer and innovation support.
• Partner with Finance and Sales to continuously improve the productivity of working and non-working marketing dollars.
• Lead annual media agency scopes, negotiations and performance management.

3. Create One Consumer Journey Across Brand + Commerce

Break down the traditional divide between “brand marketing” and “shopper marketing.”

You will:

• Map the consumer journey from first exposure through shelf, PDP, cart and repeat purchase.
• Ensure campaign ideas are designed from inception to travel effectively across national media, social, retailer media, digital shelf and physical retail.
• Partner with Shopper & Customer Marketing to connect national campaigns to retailer-specific programming, retail theater, sampling and conversion.
• Partner with eCommerce and retailer teams to ensure media, digital shelf, search and PDP experiences work together.
• Identify the highest-value moments where brand investment and commerce investment should intersect.
• Build scalable activation systems that can flex by retailer without creating fragmented brand experiences.

4. Lead the Integrated Briefing Process

Create the connective tissue between strategy, creative and execution.

You will:

• Translate business objectives and consumer insight into clear, inspiring integrated briefs.
• Bring Brand, Creative, Communications, Shopper, Sales and agency partners together around a single consumer objective and behavior change.
• Define the job-to-be-done for every major marketing initiative before channels and tactics are selected.
• Partner with Creative leadership to ensure ideas are developed for the way consumers actually consume media today—not retrofitted after the campaign is complete.
• Establish clear message hierarchy and asset architecture so creative can scale effectively across channels, audiences and retailers.
• Raise the standard of briefs, media plans and agency thinking across the organization.

5. Build a Modern Measurement & Learning System

Move the organization beyond channel-by-channel reporting and last-click ROAS.

You will:

• Establish the integrated marketing measurement framework and learning agenda.
• Define KPIs by the role each investment plays across the funnel.
• Measure marketing against outcomes including household penetration, new-to-brand recruitment, awareness, consideration, trial, repeat, velocity, incremental revenue and profitable growth.
• Build a disciplined approach to incrementality testing, geographic testing, brand lift, retail media measurement and experimentation.
• Establish clear hypotheses before investment and codify learnings after execution.
• Partner with Insights, Analytics, Finance and retailer partners to connect consumer behavior with commercial outcomes.
• Lead regular executive-level media and marketing effectiveness reviews that answer three questions:

What happened?
Why did it happen?
What are we going to do differently because of it?

6. Turn Retail Media Into a Strategic Growth Capability

Elevate retail media from a collection of customer requests into an enterprise growth capability.

You will:

• Establish a clear role for retail media within the broader media ecosystem.
• Create investment principles that determine when retailer media should recruit new consumers, convert existing demand, support innovation or defend strategic shelf positions.
• Partner with Sales and Shopper Marketing on Joint Business Planning and retailer-specific growth opportunities.
• Build learning agendas across retailer platforms rather than evaluating each program in isolation.
• Identify opportunities to connect retailer first-party audiences with broader consumer targeting and brand-building programs.
• Ensure retail media investment drives incremental business and not simply attributed sales.

7. Lead Agencies & Build Organizational Capability

Be both a strong external agency leader and an internal teacher.

You will:

• Lead media agency strategy, scope, performance and ways of working.
• Build productive senior relationships with major media, commerce and technology partners.
• Challenge agencies to bring business ideas—not simply media plans.
• Develop tools, frameworks and operating rhythms that make integrated marketing easier for the organization.
• Educate cross-functional teams on modern media, retail media, consumer journeys and marketing effectiveness.
• Create a culture of curiosity, experimentation and continuous improvement.

HOW THIS ROLE WORKS ACROSS THE ORGANIZATION

Brand owns the destination.
Brand strategy, consumer positioning, portfolio priorities, communication strategy and the long-term equity we are building.

Creative owns how the brand comes to life.
Creative ideas, distinctive brand expression, content systems and asset development.

Communications owns the earned conversation.
Corporate and brand PR, reputation, issues management and external communications.

Shopper & Customer Marketing owns the retail experience.
Retailer activation, shopper programming, in-store experience, displays and customer-specific execution.

Sales owns the customer relationship and commercial plan.

The Senior Brand Director, Integrated Media owns how these pieces work together to create demand.

The role creates the connective strategy across consumer touchpoints, investment, audiences, sequencing, activation and measurement.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Within the first 12–24 months, this leader will have helped Stella & Chewy’s:

• Establish one integrated annual demand plan across brand, media, commerce and shopper.
• Increase household penetration and new-to-brand recruitment.
• Improve aided and unaided brand awareness.
• Increase the percentage of marketing investment proven to be incremental.
• Improve media efficiency while simultaneously strengthening brand health.
• Increase retailer and SKU velocity in priority markets.
• Improve repeat and cross-purchase among recruited households.
• Build a repeatable learning system across Amazon, Walmart, Target, PetSmart, Petco, Chewy and other strategic partners.
• Create dramatically better integration between national campaigns and retailer activation.
• Shift organizational conversations from “What was the ROAS?” to “Did this investment create incremental, profitable consumers and strengthen the brand?”

Requirements

THE EXPERIENCE WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We are looking for a brand builder first and a media expert second.

The strongest candidates will likely bring:

• 12+ years of progressive marketing leadership experience within consumer brands, ideally CPG, food, beverage, beauty, wellness, pet or another highly competitive consumer category.
• Classical brand management training or equivalent experience developing consumer strategy, annual business plans and integrated marketing programs.
• Deep experience leading large-scale paid media and full-funnel communications programs.
• Strong working knowledge of retail media networks, eCommerce, shopper marketing and digital commerce.
• Experience managing significant media and marketing budgets with direct accountability for effectiveness.
• Demonstrated ability to connect brand-building activity with commercial outcomes.
• Experience leading media, creative, commerce and/or integrated agency partners.
• Strong understanding of modern measurement including incrementality, experimentation, attribution, brand lift and marketing effectiveness.
• Experience working with major retailers and understanding how retailer economics, merchandising and media intersect.
• Comfort operating in a high-growth environment where the infrastructure is still being built.

THE LEADER WE WANT

• You are intellectually curious without becoming theoretical.
• You can move comfortably between a consumer insight, a creative idea, a Walmart media plan and a P&L conversation.
• You know enough about performance marketing to challenge an agency—but you also know that optimizing only to the bottom of the funnel can slowly destroy a brand.
• You are equally comfortable talking about mental availability and incrementality, distinctive brand assets and conversion rates, household penetration and ROAS.
• You believe great marketing starts with a human problem—not an algorithm.
• You simplify complexity and ask hard questions.
• You know when the answer is in the data—and when the data is simply describing what already happened.
• Most importantly, you know how to bring multiple functions together around a common objective without needing to own every function yourself.

WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS

Stella & Chewy’s already has something many brands spend decades trying to create: a product consumers genuinely believe makes a difference in the lives of their pets.

Our next challenge is scale.

The Senior Brand Director, Integrated Media will help build the demand engine capable of taking that belief to millions more pet parents—while protecting what makes Stella & Chewy’s distinctive.

The mandate is simple:

Build the brand.

Recruit more households.

Create demand.

Convert it brilliantly.

Learn faster than the competition.