Rachel Brazelton
Verified Expert in Marketing
Marketing Expert
Edmonds, WA, United States
Toptal member since July 31, 2023
Rachel is a seasoned brand marketing professional with over a decade of experience navigating the tech, eCommerce, retail, and consumer packaged goods sectors. She has led insights, strategy, development, and execution of marketing campaigns for brands and products within B2B and B2C national and global organizations, focusing on delivering exceptional results that drive growth and long-term success by addressing the dynamic needs of consumers.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Brand Strategy
- Business Models
- Customer Segmentation
- Innovation Strategy
- Messaging
- New Product Development
- Portfolio Management
- Profit & Loss (P&L)
Work Experience
Senior Brand Manager, Brand Marketing, Strategy & Partnerships
Zulily.com
- Owned brand repositioning, including strategy, testing, and activation, leading asset development for a 360-national media campaign.
- Spearheaded the development of strategic documents, including brand strategy, guidelines, and brand voice guide to steer internal and external partners in cohesive messaging and tone.
- Led consumer insights, curating and executing new brand equity tracking, customer segmentation, positioning research, and loyalty surveys.
- Integrated the channel team lead, developing an annual marketing strategy and a marketing support calendar for tentpole moments and key sales events.
- Identified, onboarded, and managed external partners, including media, ad, and creative agencies, while selecting research vendors.
Senior Brand Manager, Portfolio Growth Strategy
Nestlé
- Crafted the Nestlé USA coffee and tea portfolio and product strategy spanning eight brands within a matrixed global organization.
- Acted as the portfolio front-end innovation lead, developing new product platforms across brands and managing the Starbucks Global Coffee Alliance partnership.
- Led MBS marketing for three years, fostering innovation and investment growth strategies that empowered a $2.2 billion business to achieve short and long-term objectives.
- Oversaw project ownership, encompassing sensory mapping of portfolios, brand roles and RTB mapping, prioritization, and investment allocation. I also redefined I&R to facilitate value-creating platforms on a larger scale.
- Spearheaded enterprise initiatives for sustainability projects.
Brand Marketing Manager
Nestlé
- Led innovation for Nescafé USA, managing strategy development at every stage from gaining insights and strategizing product pricing to scaling up the market.
- Spearheaded a special project for Chameleon Organic Coffee, overseeing the management of a high-complexity strategic initiative focused on CBD.
- Acted as the innovation lead for Starbucks Functional Coffee Platform, managing multiple cross-functional teams to deliver highly incremental new products to extend brand reach.
- Led brand marketing for long-term innovation pipeline and strategic design. Demonstrated experience across various brands, identifying product territories and white spaces that created value.
Product Manager, Brand Marketing
Starbucks
- Maintained ownership of Seattle's Best Coffee product development and innovation pipeline, leveraging quantitative and qualitative consumer research to drive meaningful innovation and sell-in, resulting in improved business performance.
- Managed cross-functional relationships with the creative agency, supply chain, sales, and shopper marketing for new packaging rollout and national marketing support.
- Steered a multi-million dollar marketing budget, formulating strategies that enhanced spending efficiencies and tripled profitability year-over-year (YOY).
- Developed business, strategic, and annual operating plans (AOP), laddering to strategic organizational growth initiatives.
- Led the transformation of brand architecture and strategic target definition, enhancing the brand's differentiation and relevance.
Category Analyst
Starbucks
- Analyzed, produced, and championed the corporate channel category strategy while establishing channel shelving standards based on shopper insights, consumer purchase processes, and category trends.
- Led space management, producing top-tier schematics for tea, juice, cocoa, and coffee categories. Set up shopper-inspired principles and conducted a national aisle adjacency study. Performed space and distribution analysis for 73 customers.
- Provided insight and recommendations to brand and field sales, enhancing long-term performance strategy. Crafted tools to promote new item acceptance and shelving suggestions among premier customers.
- Managed vendor relationships and contracts, resulting in a 20% cost reduction over two years and broadening the scope of services.
- Collaborated cross-functionally with global consumer insights to build a virtual test for progressive shelf concepts. We extracted insights to aid the sell-in process and spotlighted opportunities to enhance buyer conversion at leading retailers.
Project History
National Marketing Campaign for the eCommerce Retailer Zulily.com
https://youtu.be/25tTYjuRKmULed the design, development, and execution of Zulily's new national marketing campaign in five months, including brand repositioning work, messaging and creative strategy, national media planning, and integrated channel planning.
Zulily is an online superstore offering significant discounts on top brands, serving early-stage moms, and operating a flash and persistent sale model across clothing, footwear, beauty, and home.
I was brought on to the team to reposition the brand, increase national brand awareness, and accelerate traffic to the site. I led the repositioning workstream, campaign development, and national media strategy—along with tech integrations—cascading objectives and leading integrated channel planning which increased synergies across teams regarding messaging and investment.
Within six months of launch, we saw a reversal of new traffic trends while improving return on ad spend (ROAS) and site conversion metrics.
Starbucks Coffee Whitespace Innovation Launch
Led the ideation, research, development, and launch strategy for Starbucks' functional coffee platform, a highly incremental premium product assortment delivering $15+ million in demand.
To increase brand reach and drive trade-up, I led the incubation of Starbucks’ functional coffee platform from discovery to launch.
I owned and managed the insights strategy, business case, pricing architecture, and product development while partnering closely with PMO and R&D and guiding leadership decisions for investment support. I collaborated with my brand team, media team, and creative agency to develop a go-to-market (GTM) plan and assets for launch.
I brought to life the Starbucks PLUS platform, which resulted in 8+ multi-format varieties that drove trade up and increased wallet share of Starbucks Coffee at Home.
Portfolio Growth Strategy Development for Nestle Coffee at Home
Led the development of Nestle Coffee Partner's portfolio strategy across eight multi-million dollar brands, grounded in market segmentation, spanning positioning and assortment, and an innovation and investment strategy to clarify swim lanes.
Nestle Coffee Partners manages some of the world’s biggest coffee brands, including Nescafe Taster’s Choice and Starbucks. As the portfolio continued to expand, there was a clear need to define the growth path, avoid cannibalization, and invest in the proper categories to future-proof the portfolio.
I defined the role to support this work and led the strategy development, incremental research work, and cross-functional collaboration while partnering with consumer insights, brand, marketing analytics, and leaders across the organization to drive a holistic strategy that ensured we were pacing investment and innovation appropriately to hit brand and portfolio growth targets.
Education
Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics
University of Washington - Seattle, WA, USA
Skills
Core
Brand Strategy, Writing & Editing, Customer Segmentation, A/B Testing, Field Sales, Shopper Marketing
Business Models
Business Models
Platforms & Tools
Google Workspace
Other
IRI, Collaboration, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Excel, Analytics, Profit & Loss (P&L), Messaging, Innovation Strategy, Innovation, Project Scoping, Storytelling, Project Management, Economics, Forecasting, Consumer Insights, Brand Positioning, Creative Strategy, Creative Briefs, Agency, Media Planning, Market Segmentation, Portfolio Management, Business Planning, New Product Development, Pricing Strategy, Market Research, Vendor Management, Strategy, Tableau, Smartsheet, Jira, Econometrics, Statistical Analysis, Financial Modeling, Integrated Marketing, Strategic Planning & Execution, Product Packaging, Category Management, Paid Media, Video Production, Product Launch, Sustainability Strategy, Campaign Development, Strategy Development
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