Full Time
REMOTE (Remote)
Posted 4 days ago
150,000-160,000 USD / Year
Salary: $150,000-160,000

Apply Now ACCO Brands, Lake Zurich, IL 60047

🟥 EMPLOYERS: Separate from recruiting, I write investment‑grade recruiting briefs that walk A‑player ecommerce candidates through the real business case for your role – the market, channels, KPIs, tech stack, team, and AI issues – before they ever get on Zoom with you. I research / write it. YOU bless it. YOU own it.

RESULT: Your first‑round conversations are with 6-8 highly informed A-players who already understand where/how they can drive EBITDA. To have me write and send your posting out to this list, text Harry Joiner at (404) 281‑2025. Confidential briefs / application process are no problem. ⬇️ SEE EXAMPLE ⬇️

HARRY’S TEARDOWN: ACCO is a $1.525 billion public company (NYSE: ACCO) in the middle of what it calls, in its own words, a “strategic pivot to higher growth technology peripherals.” This job sits right on top of that pivot. It covers three brands:

Kensington makes docks, locks, mice and ergonomic gear for the hybrid office.
EPOS makes enterprise headsets and audio. ACCO bought it from Demant and closed the deal on January 30, 2026. ACCO expects about $80 million in EPOS sales this year, over 11 months.
PowerA makes licensed gaming controllers and accessories.

ACCO’s target is for technology peripherals to be about 25% of 2026 sales. On their guided range, that is roughly $390–400 million. But wait, there’s more: On August 14, ACCO announced a deal to buy Trust, which ACCO says does about $100 million a year. That would take peripherals to about $500 million in annual sales, pro forma.

Here’s the simplest way I can put it: the stapler is paying for the headset. (That’s my read, not ACCO’s words.) The legacy office business throws off the cash. Peripherals is where ACCO says the growth has to come from. This hire is one of the people expected to prove it.

🟥 JOB SEARCH GOT YOU STUCK? Book an hour with VP/CMO ecommerce recruiter, Harry Joiner. To buy Harry’s comprehensive interview prompt pack for this exact job, text (404) 281-2025. Reference prompt pack ppck2832.

Who the Customer Actually Is

It’s three customers, not one, and that’s the whole job.

Kensington sells to IT buyers, facilities teams and resellers, and to the hybrid worker who needs one more dock that actually works with their laptop. Purchases are spec-driven and tied to refresh cycles.
EPOS sells to enterprise and contact-center buyers. ACCO says its audio is certified for the major unified-communications platforms. That means evaluation, certification and a long sales cycle.
PowerA sells to gamers and console owners. Purchases are seasonal and ride on the next big release.

That’s two long, spec-driven B2B cycles and one fast consumer cycle. ACCO’s own posting says to build one measurement framework “without collapsing them into a single model.” Good. They know. Most companies don’t.

Best I can tell, this seat sits exactly where ACCO says growth should appear. It’s global and it owns the digital channel mix and the AI strategy, with a written Phase 2 that takes AI beyond marketing into sales, operations, finance, HR, product and customer service. The segment is led by Jeppe Dalberg-Larsen, President, Global Technology Peripherals. Get two or three AI workflows into real production with numbers a CFO would sign, and people above this seat will notice. (My view.)

Now the Honest Part

Everything in this section is my opinion, labeled as such.

Pay. In my view, $150,000–$160,000 is light for a global, multi-brand, B2B-plus-consumer role that also owns AI strategy.
Budget. ACCO is tightening its belt. It reported a leverage ratio of 4.3x at June 30. The covenant maximum steps down to 4.25x for Q3–Q4, and ACCO guides to 3.7x–3.9x by year-end. It also runs a cost program: more than $60 million saved so far, and $100 million targeted by the end of 2026. My read: new budget will be hard to win, and your AI work will have to pay for itself.
Team. You get a team of five across multiple regions. Lean.
Reporting line. The posting says you’ll “work closely with the Senior Director, Global Marketing.” Ask who you actually report to, and what you actually own.
Amazon and retail media aren’t named in the remit. For brands like these, I’d want to know who owns them before I signed anything.
“3–5 AI proofs of concept.” Pilots are easy. Production is hard. I’d rather see two or three workflows running every day with a baseline and a kill rule than five demos that never leave the lab.

None of that is a reason to pass. It’s a reason to walk in with better questions than the other finalists.

The person who wins this job has taken AI past the pilot stage and can prove it. My screening question: “Show me one AI workflow you took to production. What was the before-and-after metric, and who checked the output?” If you have a crisp answer, you’ll probably do okay in your interviews.

ABOUT THE ROLE

This role owns digital marketing and AI strategy for ACCO’s global technology peripherals segment: roughly a $400M business by my math, across Kensington, EPOS and PowerA. Your mission will be to 1.) build one global digital strategy that respects three very different buying cycles, 2.) build measurement ACCO can trust, with B2B pipeline for Kensington and EPOS kept separate from ecommerce revenue for PowerA, and 3.) move AI from proofs of concept into daily production in marketing and customer experience, then earn the right to scale it across the company. THIS IS NOT a big-team role. You’ll lead five people across multiple regions, so the leverage has to come from systems, not headcount.

AREAS OF OVERSIGHT

Global Digital Marketing Strategy (Three Brands, Two Buying Motions)

Build and run one scalable global digital strategy across B2B (Kensington, EPOS) and consumer (PowerA) brands. Each brand gets its own audience, buying cycle and channel mix, and the plan has to flex as the portfolio grows.
Treat Kensington and EPOS as spec- and certification-driven B2B businesses. Treat PowerA as a seasonal, release-driven consumer business. Don’t force one playbook on both. That would be my approach, but this is not my client, and it’s not my search.
Set and manage the global digital marketing budget. Allocate it by brand and region with clear, demonstrable ROI, inside a company that is actively cutting costs.

Channel Ownership & the In-House Agency

Lead the in-house digital agency. Deliver regional performance campaigns against local teams’ goals, budgets and priorities.
Own the full channel mix: SEO/GEO/SEM, paid media and programmatic, paid social, email/CRM, content, web/CRO, and analytics/attribution.
Build a test-and-learn habit that holds up to a finance review. That means holdouts and controls, not “we launched it and traffic went up.”

Measurement, Attribution & Reporting

Build one measurement and attribution framework that tracks B2B pipeline (Kensington, EPOS) and consumer ecommerce revenue (PowerA) accurately, without collapsing them into a single model.
Establish KPIs, dashboards and reporting in GA4, Looker Studio and Google Search Console. Turn site, campaign and sales data into decisions, and show marketing’s contribution to pipeline and revenue to senior leadership.
Define and keep improving the global MarTech stack. Keep data, platforms and measurement fit for scale and compliant with GDPR, CCPA and WCAG.

AI Strategy — Phase 1 (Marketing & Customer Experience)

Train, upskill and govern. Make clear what humans do and what AI does, and build guardrails so any workflow the team builds is approved by Legal and IT.
Define and deliver the AI roadmap, starting with content generation, discoverability, personalization, campaign and media optimization, customer insight and automation.
Prototype and deliver high-value AI proofs of concept with measured ROI. Give each one a baseline, an owner and a kill rule, so the winners reach production and the losers die fast.

AI Strategy — Phase 2 (Enterprise Scale)

Take proven, ROI-positive use cases to other departments: sales, operations, finance, HR, product, customer service and beyond. Bring the governance, data-privacy and ethics, tooling and vendor framework needed to do it responsibly.
Lead change management. Upskill teams, drive adoption and build AI into everyday workflows.
Act as internal AI evangelist and trusted advisor to senior leadership and department heads.

Team, Stakeholders & Partners

Lead, coach and mentor a team of five digital marketers across multiple regions, building capability in both digital marketing and AI fluency.
Work closely with the Senior Director, Global Marketing, and wider leadership to tie marketing and AI priorities to commercial goals, and to secure senior buy-in for AI beyond marketing.
Partner with brand, product, sales, ecommerce, Legal, IT/data and regional teams. Manage external agencies, technology vendors and partners.

QUALIFICATIONS

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATION

ACCO’s posting does not state a degree requirement. Relevant experience is what gets you in the door.

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES – SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE

10+ years in digital marketing, including several years in a senior leadership or management role.
Proven experience leading digital and AI strategy across both B2B and consumer/B2C, or strong, demonstrable range across both.
A track record of building and running global or multi-region digital strategies that delivered measurable commercial results.
Deep expertise across the channel mix: SEO/GEO/SEM, paid media and programmatic, paid social, email/CRM, content, web/CRO, analytics/attribution, and a modern MarTech stack.
Hands-on experience applying AI and automation to marketing, with the strategic range to scale it enterprise-wide. The bar: you can name the workflow, the metric it moved, and who checked the output. Using AI tools yourself doesn’t count on its own.
A strong commercial and analytical mindset. Fluent in performance metrics, attribution, ROI, CAC, conversion rate and ROAS.
Nice to have (my view): experience with enterprise or IT-channel B2B (UC/audio, workspace hardware) and seasonal consumer or gaming brands; experience integrating an acquired brand into a larger marketing organization.

LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT / BEHAVIORAL COMPETENCIES

Proven people leadership: building, coaching and developing high-performing distributed teams.
Excellent stakeholder management and the ability to influence at the senior and executive level.
Strong change-management capability. Phase 2 lives or dies here.
Comfortable managing agencies, vendors and partners, and making a small in-house team punch well above its weight.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

High integrity.
Self-directed. This is a remote, global role.
A strong communicator who can explain an attribution model to a CFO and an AI guardrail to Legal.
Equally comfortable shaping strategy and rolling up your sleeves.
Commercially skeptical. You kill your own pilots when the numbers say so.
Resilient and resourceful in a company that is funding growth and cutting costs at the same time.
Curious and current on a fast-moving AI landscape, without chasing every shiny object.

To apply for this job please visit accocareers.jobs.hr.cloud.sap.