Brand Manager, Innovation

Job description

## About Bobbie Bobbie makes European-style organic infant formula manufactured end-to-end in the U.S., because we believe every parent deserves to feed their baby with confidence, without judgment and without compromise. No mystery ingredients. No shortcuts. Just clean, thoughtfully made formula that parents can trust. But Bobbie has never been just a formula company. When the 2022 national infant formula shortage left parents across the country unable to feed their babies, we closed our storefront to new customers rather than leave a single existing family without formula. We went to Washington. We got loud. And we opened our Heath, Ohio manufacturing facility to make sure something like that could never happen again. That's who we are, and that's what you'd be joining. ## Bobbie for Change Our advocacy arm, Bobbie for Change, exists because making great formula isn't enough if the systems around parenthood are still broken. We fight for paid federal parental leave, push for legislation to prevent future formula shortages, advocate for feeding equity, and support families navigating impossible situations, including donating formula to parents impacted by breast and gynecologic cancers through the Bobbie Breasties program. We're a company that genuinely believes becoming a parent makes you an activist. The people who work here feel that too. **The Role:** The Brand Manager, Innovation will help build the next generation of Bobbie products and growth platforms beyond our core infant formula business. Reporting to the Director of Innovation & Product Success on the New Ventures team, this role will lead innovation from early-stage opportunity identification and concept development through commercialization, launch, and in-market learning. Sitting at the intersection of brand management, consumer insight, product innovation, and commercialization, the Brand Manager will translate unmet consumer needs and market opportunities into differentiated products that can expand Bobbie’s relationship with families across new formats, occasions, and life stages. This role will be responsible for shaping opportunities, developing concepts and business cases, partnering cross-functionally through product development, and creating the learning plans needed to determine where Bobbie should invest and scale. The ideal candidate combines classical brand management training with an innovation mindset, someone who is consumer obsessed, commercially minded, comfortable building from ambiguity, and energized by taking an idea from a blank sheet of paper to an in-market product. **What you will accomplish:** **Innovation Strategy & Opportunity Development** - Help shape Bobbie’s new formats innovation pipeline and identify opportunities for future growth. - Identify consumer tensions, emerging behaviors, category trends, and whitespace opportunities that can inspire new products and platforms. - Translate consumer and market insights into clear innovation territories, product concepts, and strategic recommendations. - Assess opportunities across new formats, occasions, life stages, and categories that can extend Bobbie’s relationship with families. - Partner with Insights, Finance, and cross-functional teams to size opportunities and prioritize where Bobbie should play. **Concept & Product Development** - Lead new product concepts from early-stage ideas through development and commercialization. - Develop strong consumer propositions, positioning, product benefits, claims, and reasons to believe. - Translate consumer needs into clear product briefs and partner with Product Development and external partners to bring concepts to life. - Lead consumer learning throughout development, including concept, claims, product, packaging, and pricing testing. - Partner closely with Product Development, Regulatory, Quality, Operations, and Supply Chain to balance consumer desirability, technical feasibility, and commercial viability. - Ensure products deliver against the original consumer promise throughout the development process. **Business Case & Stage Gate Leadership** - Build compelling business cases for innovation opportunities, including market sizing, pricing, COGS, margin, volume potential, and investment requirements. - Lead innovation projects through Bobbie’s Stage Gate process, ensuring teams have the insights and recommendations needed to make strong investment decisions. - Establish clear hypotheses, success criteria, and learning agendas for early-stage innovation. - Identify key risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs and drive cross-functional teams toward decisions. - Recommend when opportunities should advance, pivot, pause, or stop based on consumer and business learning. **GTM & Launch** - Partner with Marketing, Creative, Sales, DTC, Operations, Supply Chain, Customer Experience, and Finance to build integrated go-to-market plans. - Develop recommendations for positioning, pricing, pack architecture, channel strategy, claims, messaging, and launch approach. - Manage key milestones, dependencies, decisions, and risks to ensure launch readiness. - Ensure the consumer proposition translates consistently from the product itself through packaging, communications, and the end-to-end consumer experience. **Test, Learn & Scale** - Build learning plans for new products and platforms, including DTC pilots and other test-and-learn approaches. - Define clear measures of product-market fit and innovation success before launch. - Monitor early performance including trial, repeat, subscription behavior, consumer feedback, ratings and reviews, and unit economics. - Translate in-market learning into recommendations to optimize, scale, pivot, or discontinue new products. - Partner with cross-functional teams to develop the roadmap for successful concepts as they move from incubation into scaled businesses. **Consumer & Market Insights** - Maintain a deep understanding of Bobbie consumers and the evolving needs of parents and families. - Stay close to emerging consumer behaviors, competitive innovation, category disruption, and broader food, nutrition, wellness, and CPG trends. - Partner with Insights to design research that answers critical innovation questions and reduces uncertainty. - Synthesize consumer, competitive, financial, and performance data into clear strategic recommendations. - Bring the consumer voice into every stage of the innovation process. **What we would like you to have:** - 4–5+ years of experience in Brand Management, Innovation, New Product Development, Product Marketing, or related CPG roles; classical brand management training strongly preferred. - Demonstrated experience developing and commercializing new products from concept through launch, ideally within food, nutrition, wellness, or consumer products. - Strong consumer, analytical, and commercial instincts with the ability to translate insights and data into compelling product concepts and business recommendations. - Proven ability to lead complex cross-functional initiatives, influence stakeholders, and drive projects forward in fast-paced, ambiguous environments. - A builder mindset with strong strategic thinking, curiosity, creativity, and a bias toward action. **You’re inspired by our core values:** - Be Radical - We are change makers, rule breakers and stigma shakers. We are unapologetically bold and use our megaphone for good. - Nurture the Tension - Parenthood is full of healthy *tension*, and so is building a company. We embrace the unknowns, practice humility and are a culture of learners. - Deliver Ounce by Ounce - Our customers have entrusted us to feed their babies. We lose sleep over the details, so they don’t have to. - Don’t Assume - We embrace our unique perspectives, withhold judgment, and find beauty in the paths that brought us all to Bobbie. Our strength is celebrating each other and our collective voice. ## **Compensation and Benefits:** **Compensation** Our salaries are based on paying competitively for our size and industry. For fully remote roles, we have a single salary target per role that is differentiated based on geographic location (Group A, B, or C). - Group A (SF/Bay Area, Seattle, NYC): $142,500 - Group B (Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, Denver, Boston, Washington DC, San Diego, Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento): $128,500 - Group C (All Other Cities): $121,000 **Benefits** - Competitive stock options - 401k with employer match - Employee medical, dental, and vision insurance 100% covered by Bobbie, with options to add dependents through a subsidized pre-tax deduction - US-based remote work model - Flexible Time Off Policy (including Summer Fridays; half days on Fridays Memorial Day through Labor Day) - 16 paid company holidays, plus an end of year holiday shut down - 16 weeks of paid parental leave with the option to take an additional 8 months unpaid - One year subscription to Bobbie - $75 monthly internet stipend - Co-working space reimbursement At Bobbie, we are committed to building a diverse and inclusive company. We seek to create a culture where everyone can belong because we believe that people do their best work when they can show up every day as their authentic selves. We welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives. Bobbie is an equal opportunity employer. We do not make hiring or employment decisions on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or genetic information, in compliance with applicable federal, state and local law. [Bobbie Personnel Privacy Policy and Notice at Collection](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UdDrOWiYp2du5y1svEYlqMhlsYyU04_f/edit)