Senior Director, Sparkling Flavors, Sprite

Sprite is one of The Coca-Cola Company’s most globally resonant and culturally influential brands—an engine of growth, identity, and youth relevance within our total beverage portfolio. Across Europe, Sprite plays a critical role in shaping our sparkling category performance, equity leadership, and system value creation. 

We are seeking a highly strategic, visionary, and influential Senior Director to lead the full brand and business agenda for Sprite in Europe, driving long-term growth, cultural resonance, and sustained financial impact. This role sits at the intersection of global brand strategy, system leadership, enterprise commercial priorities, and regional transformation, requiring exceptional strategic judgment, influence, and leadership. 

The Senior Director will serve as the most senior brand steward for Sprite in Europe, co-leading the long-term portfolio vision, innovation strategy, commercial acceleration roadmap, and integrated brand-building agenda across more than 40 markets. This leader will guide a cross functional ecosystem and ensure the brand delivers against ambitious financial, equity, and category outcomes. 

This role includes formal people leadership and requires extensive orchestration of senior stakeholders, including Global Brand Leadership, EMEA OU leaders, bottling partners (especially in multicounty system structures), commercial leads, finance, and the full IMX network. 

Key Accountabilities 

1. Set and Steer the Long-Term Brand & Business Strategy 

• Own the end-to-end strategic direction for Sprite in Europe, ensuring strong alignment with global brand vision while shaping a regionally differentiated strategy that drives long-term market leadership. 

• Define and govern the 10year brand ambition, category role, and portfolio guardrails with a clear enterprise lens. 

• Translate macro consumer trends, cultural shifts, category dynamics, and system economics into actionable brand choices and business growth strategies. 

• Shape and influence the global strategy agenda by representing Europe’s strategic needs, future opportunities, and business imperatives. 

2. Lead Portfolio, Category, and System Value Creation 

• Act as a senior partner in shaping the sparkling and total beverage portfolio, driving clarity on Sprite’s role, boundaries, and interdependencies across brands and categories. 

• Influence system-wide plans by working closely with bottlers to drive networked investment decision-making, orchestration of market execution, and multi-year commercial roadmaps. 

• Serve as the senior leader accountable for shadow P&L management, margin expansion levers, RGM partnership, and capital allocation recommendations. 

3. Accelerate Innovation, Renovation & Future Growth Platforms 

• Lead the multi-year innovation masterplan, overseeing the pipeline from upstream concepting to commercialization, ensuring acceleration into emerging spaces such as:  

• Zero-sugar and function-forward platforms 

• Energy-adjacent and new consumption occasions 

• Breakthrough packaging and sustainability innovations 

• Shape long-term category disruption opportunities and champion transformational innovation that expands the brand’s relevance and business footprint. 

4. Lead Integrated Brand-Building Excellence at Scale 

• Oversee the Europe IMX masterplan, ensuring that communication, digital, experiential, partnerships, shopper, and in-market activation work cohesively to drive both short-term results and brand equity growth. 

• Guide creative excellence at the highest level, setting the standard for insight-driven, culturally relevant creativity. 

• Drive pan-European brand platforms that create repeatable, scalable, multi-market impact. 

5. Deliver World-Class Commercial & Execution Performance 

• Partner closely with commercial, channel, and customer teams to ensure that Sprite delivers breakthrough execution across retail, away-from-home, and eCommerce environments. 

• Govern annual DME investment decisions across the region to maximize ROI, commercial outcomes, and brand equity. 

• Support system partners in embedding best-in-class route-to-market strategies that drive penetration, availability, and transaction growth. 

6. Lead Teams, Culture & Enterprise Influence 

• Inspire, coach, and elevate high-performing teams across local markets, regional hubs, and cross-functional SMEs. 

• Build a culture of strategic clarity, creativity, commercial accountability, and experimentation. 

• Act as a senior thought partner to global brand leadership, system executives, and European OU leadership. 

• Model leadership behaviors that promote cross-market collaboration, transparency, and organizational alignment. 

Requirements & Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, Business, Strategy, or related field; MBA strongly preferred. 

• 15+ years of progressive marketing and business leadership experience within FMCG, beverages, or high-growth consumer sectors. 

• Proven experience leading iconic global or regional brands, including end-to-end brand strategy, commercial acceleration, and innovation. 

• Demonstrated track record influencing senior executives, bottlers, and cross-functional leaders in highly matrixed organizations. 

• Strong financial acumen, including P&L fluency, RGM, forecasting, and investment allocation. 

• Deep expertise in brand building, cultural strategy, digital ecosystems, and scalable IMX development. 

• Demonstrated ability to lead large multi-disciplinary teams, drive transformation, and create high performance cultures. 

• Extraordinary storytelling, communication, and influencing skills, capable of shaping decisions across a global network. 

Base Salary: 
Poland: 609,000 PLN to 810,000 PLN

Base pay offered may vary depending on geography, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. A full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the position, is offered.

Annual Incentive Reference Value Percentage: 50%

Annual incentive reference value is a market-based competitive value for your role. It falls in the middle of the range for your role, indicating performance at target