Senior Brand Manager – Local brands

The Senior Brand Manager – Local Brands will own the full marketing lifecycle of our iconic Passendale brand and a portfolio of authentic Belgian cheese brands produced at the Fromunion factory. You will shape brand strategy, launch new products, expand export presence, and ensure profitable growth through data‑driven insights and cross‑functional collaboration.

Responsibilities

Management of local brands produced in our Belgian cheese factory (Fromunion), this includes our key brand Passendale and a range of small authentic cheese brands which we want to grow in the Belgian market place, surfing on the trend of authentic, local products.

The SBM will have:

End-to-end responsibility for the marketing strategy for the Passendale brand

• Brand Strategy (Long Term & Annual Brand Plan)
• Operationalize the Annual Brand Plan within budget and timing
• Media and activation (from briefing to agency, to set-up, until analysis of results)
• Drive the implementation of a key brand development project, overseeing integrated communication activities in partnership with agency stakeholders
• Drive product development (from innovation briefing to R&D, to concept tests, to recipe and packaging development, to storytelling and market launch, performance and product quality tracking)
• Marketing budget management (elaboration and follow-up)
• P&L responsibility with strong focus on ROI

Key lead for the expansion of our small local authentic cheese brands like Père Joseph, Postel, Echte Loo, Petrus, Westhoek, Rubens, Damme, Wynendale

• By defining portfolio strategy & story to trade, optimize pack designs & BTL marketing mix.
• Development of our Belgian brand on the Export market to coordinate with different international teams.

In addition to the above, follow-up of the operational execution of the plan – including

• Tracking of competition (mix, new products, performance) inclusive occasional storechecks
• Brand health tracking & deep dives where needed
• Nielsen analysis and recurring reporting (sell in and sell out volumes, market shares, ...)
• Deep understanding of our consumers (ex. via YouGov data)

Qualifications

• 4-5 years of Brand Management experience in leading FMCG company
• Experience in building a brand communication platform
• Experience in innovation strategy
• At ease with agency management
• Strong communication, collaboration, influencing & storytelling skills
• Go-getter, creative & autonomous project manager
• Solution oriented, pro-active & positive team player who loves change
• Demonstrated leadership to federate internal and external stakeholders on projects
• Very organized and rigorous
• Foodie (& cheese lover)
• Empathic
• Mother tongue or bilingual in NL & FR + good knowledge of EN