Senior Director - Brand

Philz is entering an important new chapter of growth, and the Senior Director, Brand will help define what the brand becomes as we scale. This leader will define and lead the enterprise brand strategy, ensuring the brand shows up with clarity and consistency across retail, ecommerce, wholesale, products, packaging, creative, communications, partnerships, and campaigns. Blending strong brand stewardship with commercial impact, the Senior Director will use customer insights, cultural understanding, and performance data to grow awareness, attract new customers, increase store traffic, and help Philz successfully enter new markets. Leading the Brand and Creative organization, this role will partner closely across the business to build greater consistency and discipline as Philz scales—while protecting the warmth, individuality, and human connection that have always made the brand distinctive.

This role is currently remote and must be based within the Greater Los Angeles area. Our teams will return to a hybrid office environment in Long Beach, CA in Q1 of 2027.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Brand Strategy, Customer Insights & Growth

• Own and evolve the long-term Philz brand strategy, positioning, architecture, voice, and visual identity while protecting the equities that make the brand distinctive.
• Translate company growth priorities into a clear brand strategy that supports customer acquisition, retention, store growth, ecommerce, and wholesale.
• Build a deep understanding of current and future Philz customers through research, customer data, market insights, and competitive intelligence.
• Establish and track meaningful brand health measures, including awareness, consideration, preference, customer sentiment, and other indicators of brand strength.
• Connect brand investment to commercial outcomes including customer acquisition, store traffic, sales, frequency, and market penetration.
• Identify emerging consumer, cultural, and category trends that can strengthen Philz's relevance and differentiation.
• Serve as the senior steward of the Philz brand, ensuring major marketing and business decisions reinforce long-term brand equity.

Integrated Marketing, Creative & Brand Experience

• Lead the development of annual and multi-year integrated marketing strategies designed to build awareness, attract new customers, and deepen relationships with existing customers.
• Oversee seasonal and evergreen campaigns across paid, earned, owned, social, retail, ecommerce, wholesale, influencer, and experiential channels.
• Set the creative vision for Philz and lead the Creative and Design organization, ensuring work is distinctive, consistent, and grounded in customer and business objectives.
• Own brand storytelling, content strategy, social media, public relations, influencer marketing, partnerships, collaborations, and experiential marketing.
• Lead brand media strategy and ensure investments are focused on the audiences, markets, and moments with the greatest potential impact.
• Establish scalable brand standards, creative systems, and processes that enable consistent execution across teams and channels.
• Lead external creative, media, public relations, production, and other agency partners as appropriate.

Retail, Product & Omnichannel Brand Activation

• Define how the Philz brand comes to life across stores, ecommerce, wholesale, packaging, products, menus, and other customer touchpoints.
• Partner with Operations and Development to strengthen the in-store brand experience and ensure consistency across the existing portfolio and future locations.
• Develop repeatable go-to-market strategies for new store openings and new market entry that build awareness, generate traffic, and establish Philz within local communities.
• Create scalable local store marketing playbooks that balance enterprise brand consistency with market and community relevance.
• Partner with Product and Operations on positioning, storytelling, and integrated go-to-market plans for menu innovation, seasonal offerings, and product launches.
• Ensure packaging, merchandise, menus, ecommerce experiences, and wholesale marketing reflect a consistent and compelling Philz brand.
• Establish clear measurement for store openings, market launches, product campaigns, and other major brand activations and apply learnings to future initiatives.

Leadership, Organizational Capability & Business Partnership

• Build, lead, coach, and develop a high-performing Brand and Creative organization capable of supporting Philz's next stage of growth.
• Establish clear priorities, operating rhythms, roles, and processes that improve focus, accountability, collaboration, and execution.
• Develop and manage brand and marketing budgets with strong financial discipline and clear expectations for business impact.
• Create compelling business cases for major brand investments and communicate results, insights, and recommendations to executive leadership.
• Serve as a strategic partner to the Chief Business Officer and executive leadership team on brand, customer, market expansion, and growth decisions.
• Partner closely with Operations, Development, Ecommerce, Wholesale, Product, Finance, People, and other functions to ensure the brand and customer are represented in key business decisions.
• Lead external agencies, freelancers, and strategic partners and ensure internal and external resources are aligned to the highest-priority business and brand opportunities.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• 12+ years of progressive brand and marketing leadership experience, including significant experience leading a consumer brand within multi-unit food and beverage retail, restaurants, or quick-service restaurants.
• Demonstrated experience leading brand strategy for a business with a meaningful physical retail footprint.
• Experience helping a consumer brand scale into new locations and markets while protecting brand consistency and customer experience.
• Strong understanding of the relationship between brand building and commercial performance, with demonstrated ability to connect marketing investment to customer acquisition, traffic, sales, and growth.
• Deep experience developing brand positioning, integrated marketing campaigns, creative strategy, customer insights, and go-to-market strategies.
• Experience leading across multiple customer channels, ideally including physical retail, ecommerce, and other distribution or wholesale channels.
• Demonstrated success building integrated marketing programs across paid, earned, owned, social, experiential, influencer, partnership, and retail channels.
• Strong understanding of local store marketing and new-store opening strategies within a multi-unit retail or restaurant environment.
• Experience leading internal creative and brand teams and managing external agencies and partners.
• Strong customer orientation with experience using consumer research, customer data, market intelligence, and performance analytics to inform decisions.
• Demonstrated ability to protect the long-term strength of an established brand while evolving it to reach new customers and support growth.
• Strong financial and commercial acumen with experience managing meaningful marketing budgets and evaluating return on investment.
• Proven ability to operate effectively across both strategy and execution — setting a clear vision while remaining close enough to the work to ensure exceptional execution.
• Exceptional communication, storytelling, and executive presentation skills with the ability to influence senior leaders and cross-functional partners.
• Experience operating within a fast-growing, multi-location consumer business where priorities evolve and teams must balance growth with operational realities.