Director of Brand - Waterbury, VT

The Company:

Founded in 1978, Cabot Hosiery Mills is an American manufacturer of premium socks with uncompromised comfort, durability, and fit. With a family of brands including Darn Tough Vermont, Wide Open, and Cabot & Sons, our mission is to make the world’s best socks, in Vermont, USA, and back them with our Unconditional Lifetime Guarantee. We are family owned, three generations strong, and have yet to produce our best sock.

Job Summary:

The Director of Brand is a strategic architect responsible for stewarding and evolving the brand’s positioning, differentiation, and long-term growth strategy. This role owns the brand’s strategic foundation – grounded in consumer insights, category understanding, and cultural relevance – and plays a critical role in informing commercial and go-to-market strategy.

Working closely with senior leaders across Marketing, Product, and Sales, the Director of Brand facilitates the development of integrated brand, product, and go-to-market strategies by providing the insight, positioning, and strategic context that guide cross-functional decision-making.

As a commercially minded brand leader, the Director of Brand ensures the brand remains deeply connected to its audience while aligned with company priorities. Through rigorous insights and category expertise, this role informs product development, shapes go-to-market planning and serves as the brand’s strategic voice in cross-functional decisions.

The salary range for this role is $130,000-$155,000 annually, depending on experience.

Key Responsibilities:

Brand Strategy & Stewardship

• Define and evolve the long-term, strategic brand vision, competitive positioning, and brand architecture, honoring 20+ years of brand identity while intentionally guiding brand evolution.
• Provide strategic brand direction through regular delivery of brand strategy guidelines, campaign briefs, and category briefs, founded on consumer insights and integrating marketing and sales insights.
• Ensure Product, Marketing, and Sales efforts are on brand across customer and consumer touchpoints, including digital marketing channels, retail marketing efforts, and packaging.
• Provide leadership and strategic recommendations on brand and category architecture, including how the brand and its products are structured, the naming system for products or lines, and how sub-brands or future innovations ladder up to the master brand.

Brand Awareness & Equity Growth

• Lead the strategic development of brand-building initiatives that expand brand awareness, improve brand perception, and strengthen long-term brand equity.
• Partner with Growth Marketing, eCommerce, and Sales teams to align upper-funnel initiatives with performance and business KPIs.
• Establish brand health metrics and continually monitor performance to refine strategy.

Consumer Insights

• Build and support the team and tools that enable the delivery of high-quality consumer insights that inform brand strategy, product innovation, and go-to-market strategies.
• In partnership with Data & Analytics Team and Growth Marketing, provide brand leadership in building a robust insights ecosystem to guide commercial decision-making.

Public Relations & Messaging

• Oversee brand and category PR strategy, agency management, and earned media efforts.
• Drive PR initiatives that amplify brand milestones, product innovation, founder/executive narratives, and cultural moments.
• Collaborate with Content + Creative, Growth Marketing, and eComm teams to ensure brand frameworks are consistently translated into on-brand storytelling across paid, earned and marketing channels.
• Serve as brand point person to for compliance and trademarks for product names, brand marks, and brand messages

B2B & Retail Marketing

• Lead the strategic direction of retail marketing programs to grow key accounts, support sell-in, and drive sell-through, defining and setting priorities for retail marketing assets, merchandising programs, and retailer education tools.
• Partner with Sales to integrate brand strategy into key account plans, provide recommendations for new target accounts, and increase brand consistency across retailer touchpoints.
• Partner with Sales to develop an impactful, measurable tradeshow strategy that aligns with brand strategy.

Partnership Strategy

• Define partnership strategy, including nonprofit partners, brand alliances, ambassadors, influencers, and affiliates with input from marketing channel experts.
• Partner with Corporate Comms Manager and Executive team to evaluate brand opportunities based on business and strategic alignment, audience reach, cultural relevance, and commercial impact.
• With Marketing leadership (Content + Creative, Growth / Integrated Marketing, Corporate Comms, and Project Management), establish, maintain, and enforce brand guidelines across all brand partnerships and relationships.

Team & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team that is collaborative, insights-informed, and solutions-minded.
• Create a culture of curiosity, analytical rigor, thoughtful risk-taking, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Influence product innovation by grounding development in data, insights, and consumer demand.
• Serve as a key commercial and strategic partner within Marketing (with Content + Creative and Growth / Integrated Marketing leaders) and cross-functionally with Product, Sales (B2B and D2C), serving as a valued brand resource and champion across stakeholder groups.
• Collaborate closely with the Content + Creative Director to translate strategic direction into compelling creative and storytelling and ensure brand strategy and brand expression work in lockstep.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Marketing, Business, or similar. MBA preferred.
• 10+ years in brand management, brand strategy, or consumer insights roles; consumer goods, wellness, or lifestyle experience preferred.
• Demonstrated success in long-term brand building and insights-driven strategy.
• Strong analytical and quantitative skill set, with experience managing insights or analytics teams.
• Experience communicating strategic direction and helping marketing and creative teams translate strategy to application and execution.
• Prior experience in retail or B2B marketing is a plus.
• Exceptional communication, influence, collaboration, and cross-functional leadership skills.

Working Conditions:

• Office Environment - Hybrid schedule
• Flexible nature to manage competing and changing priorities
• Travel locally to all of the organization’s sites and locations
• Occasional travel on as needed basis - up to 30%

This job description should not be interpreted to be a complete list of all the duties, qualifications and responsibilities performed by the jobholder. To maintain organizational flexibility, the organization has the discretion to add, drop or change at any time the duties, responsibilities and expectations of this position. This job description does not constitute an offer of employment, continuous employment or an employment contract. Reasonable accommodations will be considered to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of this position.