Brand Marketing Manager-Cannabis Industry

Shangrila Dispensaries; Waterbury (CT); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Shangri-La is seeking a Brand Marketing Manager to own the day-to-day stewardship and growth of our owned brand portfolio across Connecticut and other markets. You will translate brand strategy into campaigns, product launches, packaging, and in-market activation, serving as the single point of accountability for brand consistency across retail, wholesale, and digital channels.

This builder role requires hands-on writing, briefing designers, and walking a shelf to verify impact.

Qualifications

• 5–7+ years of graphic design, brand management or brand marketing experience, including direct ownership of a brand or brand portfolio.
• Ownership of the full campaign lifecycle - from brief and budget through in-market execution and performance read.
• Experience managing multi-brand or multi-tier portfolios, with a track record of holding meaningful differentiation between brands.
• Hands-on product launch and packaging development experience, including working directly with designers and printers.
• Experience briefing and managing creative resources - internal designers, agencies, or freelancers.
• Comfort working with sell-through, velocity, and market share data, and turning it into a recommendation rather than a report.
• Excellent writing and presentation skills; able to present to and defend a point of view with executive leadership.
• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or related field.
• Must be 21 years of age or older and able to pass all state-required background checks and obtain any required agent registration.

Responsibilities

• Own brand positioning across Shangri-La dispensaries and product brands.
• Maintain brand guidelines across packaging, retail, wholesale collateral, digital, social, and in-store merchandising.
• Build and manage the annual brand campaign calendar with budgets.
• Translate consumer insights into leadership-ready recommendations.
• Develop campaign platforms from concept to in-market execution.
• Design core creative and write brand and product copy.
• Brief internal design resources and manage timelines.
• Partner with the digital team for paid, owned, email, SMS, and social executions.
• Own go-to-market plans for new SKU launches.
• Collaborate on the innovation roadmap with cultivation, production, and wholesale.
• Create repeatable launch playbooks.
• Manage packaging development end-to-end.
• Audit materials for brand standards.
• Partner with Retail Marketing and Sales on narratives and campaigns.
• Ensure owned brands are represented consistently on shelves.
• Represent brand voice in joint ventures and white-label conversations.
• Own brand health reporting and translate metrics into actions.
• Monitor competitive activity and adjust strategy.
• Ensure compliance with state cannabis advertising regulations.
• Route materials through compliance review.
• Stay current on regulatory changes.

Skills

Brand management

Graphic design

Campaign management

Product launches

Writing & presentation

Education

Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or related field

Tools

Adobe Creative Suite

Canva

Pistil

Headset

BDSA

Dutchie

Job description

About Shangri-La

Shangri-La is a vertically integrated, multi-state cannabis operator with retail dispensaries across Connecticut, Ohio, and Missouri, and licenses in development in Delaware. Alongside our retail footprint, we build and market our own portfolio of consumer brands: Borealis, our premium solventless and concentrate-forward brand; Asteroid, our broadest portfolio brand spanning flower, vape, and edibles; and Loud, our vape-led value brand.

Connecticut is our brand launchpad. New brands, new SKUs, and new campaigns prove out in CT before rolling into Missouri, Ohio, and Delaware. This is a company in an active build phase, and the Marketing team is building the brand infrastructure that will carry the portfolio through multi-state expansion.

Role Summary

The Brand Marketing Manager owns the day-to-day stewardship and growth of Shangri-La's owned brand portfolio. This role translates brand strategy into campaigns, product launches, packaging, and in-market activation - and serves as the single point of accountability for brand consistency across retail, wholesale, and digital channels.

This is a builder's role, not a caretaker's. The portfolio is young, the brand standards are still being codified, and the campaign calendar is being written for the first time. The right person is equally comfortable presenting a positioning framework to executive leadership and personally writing the product copy, briefing the designer, and walking a dispensary shelf to see whether the work landed.

Key Responsibilities

Brand Strategy & Positioning

• Own and evolve brand positioning, architecture, and tier differentiation across Shangri-La dispensaries and product brands: Borealis, Asteroid, and Loud, including clear delineation of where each brand competes and who it is for.
• Maintain and enforce brand guidelines across every touchpoint: packaging, retail, wholesale collateral, digital, social, and in-store merchandising.
• Build and manage the annual brand campaign calendar against key demand windows (4/20, summer, fall, Green Wednesday, holiday), including budget allocation by brand and window.
• Translate consumer, category, and competitive insight into positioning recommendations that leadership can act on.

Campaign Development & Execution

• Develop campaign platforms from concept through in-market execution - creative brief, messaging hierarchy, asset requirements, channel plan, and post-campaign read.
• Design core concept creative, write and edit brand and product copy, including brand guides, product one-pagers, budtender education materials, and packaging copy.
• Brief and direct internal design resource and outside freelancers; manage creative timelines and rounds of review to on-time delivery. Complete graphic design and production work as needed.
• Partner with the digital team to adapt campaign platforms into paid, owned, email, SMS, and social executions.

Product Launch & Innovation

• Own the go-to-market plan for every new SKU and cultivar launch: naming, positioning, packaging, launch assets, sell-in materials, and education.
• Partner with cultivation, production, and wholesale leadership on the innovation roadmap, including format and formulation decisions that need to lock ahead of procurement deadlines.
• Build repeatable launch playbooks so each market launch gets faster and more consistent than the last.

Packaging & Asset Governance

• Manage packaging development and revisions end to end - dielines, artwork, state-required panel elements, and printer coordination.
• Maintain the brand asset library and the distribution workflow that gets approved assets to retail, wholesale, and partner teams without chasing.
• Audit in-market materials on a recurring basis and correct drift from brand standards.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner daily with Retail Marketing, Wholesale Marketing and the Director of Sales & Retail Operations on sell-in narratives, retail + trade programs, and dispensary merchandising.
• Partner with Retail Marketing and Retail Operations to ensure owned brands are represented consistently and compellingly on our own shelves.
• Serve as the brand voice in joint-venture and white-label conversations, protecting brand standards regardless of who is producing the product.

Brand Health & Reporting

• Own brand health reporting - distribution quality, velocity, advocacy, brand pull, and social - and translate the numbers into a clear point of view on what to do next.
• Track campaign and launch performance against defined objectives; present results and recommendations to the Director of Marketing and executive leadership.
• Monitor competitive activity across CT, MO, and OH and flag shifts that warrant a portfolio or pricing response.

Compliance

• Ensure all brand work meets state cannabis advertising and packaging regulations in every market where it will appear.
• Route all materials through the compliance review workflow before print, sales floor placement, or external distribution.
• Stay current on regulatory changes that affect claims, potency language, packaging, and promotional activity.

Required Qualifications

• 5–7+ years of graphic design, brand management or brand marketing experience, including direct ownership of a brand or brand portfolio.
• Demonstrated ownership of the full campaign lifecycle - from brief and budget through in-market execution and performance read.
• Experience managing multi-brand or multi-tier portfolios, with a track record of holding meaningful differentiation between brands.
• Hands-on product launch and packaging development experience, including working directly with designers and printers.
• Experience briefing and managing creative resources - internal designers, agencies, or freelancers.
• Comfort working with sell-through, velocity, and market share data, and the ability to turn it into a recommendation rather than a report.
• Strong project management skills with proven capacity to run multiple concurrent launches and campaigns against fixed dates.
• Excellent writing and presentation skills; able to present to and defend a point of view with executive leadership.
• Thrives in a lean, fast-moving organization - strategic enough to set direction, hands-on enough to execute it personally.
• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Must be 21 years of age or older and able to pass all state-required background checks and obtain any required agent registration.

Preferred Qualifications

• Cannabis industry brand experience strongly preferred, particularly with a multi-state operator or a cannabis CPG brand sold through wholesale distribution.
• Working knowledge of Connecticut, Missouri, and/or Ohio cannabis advertising, packaging, and promotional regulations.
• Familiarity with cannabis data and commerce platforms such as Pistil, Headset, BDSA, Dutchie, Surfside, or Sparkplug.
• Experience launching a brand into a new state market.
• Category knowledge in solventless, concentrates, or vape.
• Working fluency in Adobe Creative Suite and/or Canva - enough to mark up creative precisely, not to replace the designer.
• Experience in another highly regulated consumer category (alcohol, tobacco, supplements, pharma) in lieu of cannabis.

Success in the First Six Months

• Brand guidelines for Borealis, Asteroid, and Loud are current, complete, and actively enforced; in-market drift has been identified and corrected.
• The brand campaign calendar is built, budgeted, and approved, with the first two campaigns executed and measured.
• A repeatable product launch playbook is documented and proven on at least one live SKU or cultivar launch.
• Brand health reporting is running on a regular cadence and being used in leadership decision-making.
• Wholesale and retail partners consistently have the approved assets they need, on time, without chasing them down.
• Clean compliance posture across all brand materials in every active market.

Equal Opportunity

Shangri-La is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. Applicants must be 21 years of age or older.