Brand Strategist Lead

About the Role 

We are looking for a Brand Strategy Lead for our beauty and personal care brands. This person will own brand direction across consumer insight, positioning, product innovation, NPD strategy, product storytelling, packaging communication, launch GTM, creator strategy, and long-term brand building. The role sits between Founders, Product, R&D, Creative, Marketing, Growth, E-commerce, Partnerships, and Operations teams, ensuring every product, campaign, and consumer touchpoint builds a consistent, differentiated, and commercially scalable beauty brand. 

Important Role Clarity 

• This role is not a graphic designer, content creator, or social media manager role. 

• The person will not personally design assets or edit content, but will own the strategic brief, brand direction, messaging, content pillars, creator angle, launch architecture, and final brand alignment. 

• The person must be able to challenge launches, packaging, claims, campaigns, and creative output when they do not strengthen the brand. 

Role Mission 

To convert consumer insight and beauty trends into sharp brand direction, differentiated products, strong launch stories, and commercially successful brand-building initiatives. The Brand Strategy Lead should answer: what should we launch, why should we launch it, how should it look, how should it speak, how should it be marketed, and why will the consumer care? 

Key Responsibilities 

1. Brand Strategy & Positioning 

• Define and own the long-term brand strategy aligned with founder vision and business goals. 
• Develop and continuously refine the brand positioning, purpose, values, personality, tone of voice, and messaging framework. 
• Establish the desired consumer perception of the brand and ensure consistency across all touchpoints. 
• Act as the custodian of the brand, ensuring product, packaging, content, creative, creator activity, and marketplace communication reinforce the brand identity. 

2. Consumer, Market & Cultural Intelligence 

• Build a deep understanding of consumer behaviour, beauty routines, aspirations, insecurities, purchase drivers, and unmet needs. 
• Track Indian, Korean, US, and global beauty trends across skincare, bodycare, haircare, fragrance, cosmetics, ingredients, packaging, creators, and retail formats. 
• Study reviews, comments, search trends, marketplace data, social listening, creator content, and competitor launches to identify actionable insights. 
• Translate research into clear recommendations for brand direction, product innovation, packaging, claims, launch strategy, and channel communication. 

3. Product Innovation & NPD Strategy 

• Identify NPD opportunities based on consumer insights, category trends, market gaps, viral formats, ingredient trends, and business priorities. 
• Partner with Product Development and R&D to shape the innovation pipeline from idea to launch. 
• Recommend product formats, claims, ingredients, textures, fragrances, shade/variant systems, packaging concepts, collaborations, and limited-edition launches. 
• Build an annual NPD roadmap with hero SKU logic, launch sequence, pricing ladder, bundling/gift-kit strategy, and channel fit. 
• Challenge products that are random, undifferentiated, off-brand, or unlikely to create consumer desire. 

4. Packaging, Claims & Product Storytelling 

• Define the product story for every key launch: consumer problem, emotional hook, functional benefit, ingredient/claim logic, and reason to believe. 
• Guide product naming, variant naming, front-of-pack communication, claim hierarchy, benefit language, PDP copy direction, and launch story. 
• Evaluate whether packaging looks premium, beauty-native, shelf-worthy, on-brand, and commercially attractive. 
• Work with design, regulatory, product, and e-commerce teams to ensure claims are compelling, compliant, and clear. 

5. Brand Architecture & Portfolio Strategy 

• Define the role of every product and category within the brand portfolio: hero SKU, entry SKU, repeat SKU, gifting SKU, premium SKU, and seasonal SKU. 
• Recommend portfolio expansion opportunities that strengthen brand positioning and long-term revenue potential. 
• Ensure every launch contributes meaningfully to the brand world instead of becoming a disconnected product addition. 
• Maintain strategic alignment across product ranges, pricing, packaging, claims, and channel communication. 

6. Launch & GTM Strategy 

• Build launch strategy for every major product, including target consumer, insight, product hook, messaging, creative route, creator plan, PR angle, and channel strategy. 
• Create pre-launch, launch, and post-launch plans across Instagram, creators, PR, e-commerce, marketplaces, quick commerce, website, offline, and performance marketing. 
• Define marketplace/PDP communication direction for Amazon, Nykaa, Flipkart, quick commerce, and D2C website. 
• Partner with Growth and Performance teams to define ad angles, hooks, problem-solution narratives, before/after ideas, and creator formats. 

7. Campaign & Communication Strategy 

• Define the strategic objective behind every campaign, product launch, brand moment, and founder-led initiative. 
• Develop campaign briefs covering target audience, consumer insight, key message, communication objective, brand role, creative territories, creator role, and expected business outcome. 
• Identify annual content pillars, storytelling themes, consumer education priorities, and cultural moments. 
• Work closely with Creative, Content, Influencer, PR, and Performance teams to ensure execution matches the strategy. 

8. Creator, PR, Brand Experience & Community Strategy 

• Develop the strategy for influencer gifting, PR kits, creator seeding, brand collaborations, events, community initiatives, and experiential marketing. 
• Define the type of creators, creator language, usage moments, proof points, and content routes for each launch. 
• Define how consumers should experience the brand across digital, retail, packaging, creator content, events, and partnerships. 
• Ensure every interaction with the brand strengthens trust, recall, desire, and emotional connection. 

9. Annual Brand Planning & Cross-functional Leadership 

• Build and own the annual brand calendar including product launches, seasonal moments, campaigns, cultural occasions, creator moments, collaborations, and innovation milestones. 
• Prioritize initiatives based on brand strategy, business objectives, consumer demand, trend relevance, and market opportunities. 
• Work closely with Founders and leadership to shape the future direction of the brand. 
• Collaborate with Product, R&D, Creative, Marketing, Growth, Community, E-commerce, Offline, and Partnerships teams to ensure strategic alignment. 
• Present consumer insights, market opportunities, launch strategies, and strategic recommendations to leadership. 

10. Brand Health, Measurement & Learning 

• Track whether brand direction is working through brand search, engagement quality, creator response, repeat purchase, reviews, sentiment, ad angle performance, and launch performance. 
• Build quarterly brand reviews covering what worked, what did not, competitor movement, consumer comments, content learnings, and next strategic actions. 
• Use data, insight, and taste together - not only opinion - to guide brand decisions. 
• Drive consumer-centric thinking across the organization and challenge initiatives that do not align with the brand strategy. 

Skills & Qualifications 

• 5-8 years of experience in brand strategy, brand management, product marketing, consumer insights, innovation, category strategy, or a similar strategic role. Exceptional 3-5 year profiles can be considered if they have strong beauty/NPD exposure. 
• Hands-on experience in beauty, skincare, haircare, cosmetics, fragrance, wellness, personal care, FMCG, or strong adjacent D2C consumer brands. 
• Experience working on product innovation and New Product Development from concept to launch is strongly preferred. 
• Strong understanding of beauty consumer psychology, category trends, product claims, ingredients, packaging, marketplace communication, and creator-led marketing. 
• Ability to translate consumer insight and trend signals into business opportunities, NPD ideas, launch stories, and strategic recommendations. 
• Strong aesthetic judgment and beauty category taste: ability to evaluate packaging, product naming, claim language, campaign ideas, creator content, and visual direction from a consumer and brand lens. 
• Comfort with cross-functional leadership across Founders, Product, R&D, Creative, Marketing, Growth, E-commerce, PR, Partnerships, and Operations. 
• Strong communication, storytelling, presentation, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.