Talking Rain® Beverage Company announced its first chief growth officer, Rich DePencier, a move in the company's aggressive strategy to energize future growth and meet consumer demand for Sparkling Ice®.
Thanks to leadership in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, DePencier brings both deep brand management expertise and a passion for innovation in marketing, product development and retail. In this new position, DePencier leads the company's largest-ever investment in marketing and innovation around Sparkling Ice with bold creative campaigns, flavorful new product launches, unique brand collaborations and partnerships, and new channel expansion.
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DePencier's sweet spot is building highly motivated brand teams to accelerate share growth across channels, cultures, and countries around the globe. He has built and led some of the world's favorite and iconic consumer brands for Fortune 100 companies, including Procter & Gamble and Starbucks.
DePencier brings decades of expertise driving the global success of branded CPG, including building the Starbucks ready-to-drink coffee line into a global business. At Talking Rain, DePencier's primary focus will be leading cross-functionally to grow the company's market share, revenue, and profitability. Further, he will emphasize innovation throughout the company, and optimize existing product offerings, including multichannel products, packaging, and flavors. Concurrently, he will explore additional avenues for growth in new geographies, as well as non-traditional and emerging channels.
Starting his career at Procter & Gamble, DePencier first honed his management skills with major brands including Tide and Charmin before leading a beauty care portfolio including Pantene, Olay and Cover Girl. Recruited by Starbucks to create and lead its new CPG business unit, he served as vice president, global consumer products, responsible for leading the global expansion of the consumer products business unit. During his tenure at Starbucks, DePencier also led the P&L of the US retail beverage business, and the creation of the company's first global product portfolio pipeline.
The company also announced Emilia Tauss as its new vice president of revenue strategy management & planning.
Tauss joins the company with more than 20 years of consumer-packaged goods (CPG) experience at companies such as PepsiCo, Trident Seafoods, Essentia Water and Ste. Michelle Wine Estates. As Sparkling Ice is set to launch transformational new growth platforms and enterprise initiatives to meet the company's growth plans, expansion needs and future strategies, Tauss will play an integral role in guiding these proposals toward success.
As head of revenue strategy management & planning, Tauss will use her decades of experience with top consumer brands to build the promotion, category management and sales planning teams at Talking Rain. She will also develop tailored brand recommendations based on shopper insights and buying behavior to increase net revenue.
Tauss honed her commercialization of tools and capabilities for revenue management and insight leadership skills by building new category and revenue management departments from the ground up at other food and beverage companies, including recruiting, coaching and managing high-performing teams.
