Job Description

The Brand Manager ensures that every brand touchpoint reinforces Citadel’s key differentiators and value proposition, builds credibility across its footprint, and reflects its community-focused values.

Key responsibilities include:

• Defining and evolving Citadel’s brand positioning, messaging architecture, and strategic differentiation in partnership with marketing leadership
• Creating differentiation for the Citadel brand and its products in the market through insights and competitive intelligence
• Planning campaigns to support the growth of awareness and consideration of the Citadel brand
• Providing strategic direction and evaluating creative against approved brand positioning and messaging frameworks
• Developing and distributing guidelines and governance for efficient brand and product message creation

The Brand Manager reports to the VP of Brand and works in close collaboration with teams across the organization.

Key Responsibilities:

Brand Insights

• Partner with Insights & Analytics team to develop deeper insights into the drivers of brand and product consideration. Create benchmarks and manage ongoing research waves to guide the Brand team in the development of positioning concepts
• Monitor competitive, consumer, and category trends to identify opportunities and risks that influence brand and product messaging strategy. Synthesize market and performance insights into actionable recommendations that guide messaging, campaign, and brand strategy decisions
• Educate the organization on drivers of brand health and consumer choice

Brand Management

• Work with the Brand team to refine and solidify clear guidelines for:
• Company and product positioning, including detailed product messaging direction
• Communications style, including tone and brand personality

Brand identity

• Create and maintain a centralized brand resource library to enable users across the organization to access brand insights, guidelines, key messages and visual assets.
• Provide active governance for the effective and efficient development of all brand touchpoints
• Develop and maintain a set of assets that can be quickly customized by retail branch staff, such as signage, collateral, sponsorship ads, and staff incentive kits. Identify efficient resources for enabling self-serve customizations within brand guidelines and locked templates.

Marketing Campaigns

• Lead development of brand and product marketing strategy, positioning, and messaging. Provide clear direction through briefs to the Director of Brand Creative, who leads creative strategy, development and execution.
• Work with Channel marketing team to identify the optimal channel mix to drive consumer awareness and consideration.
• Partner with the Copywriter & Content Strategist, who authors messaging systems and frameworks across brand and product.
• Collaborate closely with Performance Marketing team to ensure direct response campaigns and tactics reflect the brand and reinforce key product messaging. Ensure Performance Marketing has all necessary guidance and assets to craft direct response tactics that drive results.

Measurement:

• Partner with Channel and Insights & Analytics team to identify and track key brand success metrics, such as:
• Non-member and member brand consideration
• Direct traffic to CitadelBanking.com
• Traffic to branches

Awareness

• Campaign message delivery and engagement

Qualifications and Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in one of the following fields (or closely related discipline):
  • Marketing or Marketing Communications
  • Brand Management
  • Business Administration
  • Advertising
• 5–8+ years of experience in brand management, marketing strategy, integrated marketing communications, or consumer or product marketing
• Proven ability to partner with marketing, insights/analytics, sales/distribution, and product management functions
• Background in developing brand and product positioning frameworks
• Experience leading cross-functional teams in development of marketing campaigns
• Strategic brand thinking and message creation
• Strong written and verbal communication skills

Additional Skills/Notes

• Must possess very strong interpersonal and communications skills
• Willingness to participate as a team player and leader, at various organizational levels
• Ability to develop and sell new ideas convincingly
• Passion to learn and accept responsibility
• Ability to manage multiple projects and meet tight deadlines, as well as strong organizational skills
• Ability to represent Citadel as a professional, demonstrate adaptability when interacting with internal clients, maintain confidentiality, promote integrity, and support the corporate mission