Head of Brand & Retail Marketing
Location: Onsite - Santa Ana, CA
Type: Full-Time
Salary: $180,000 - $220,000 depending on experience
About Us
eJam is a bootstrapped consumer products company that has built, scaled, and exited multiple brands — all without ever taking a dollar of outside capital. Our portfolio includes category leaders ranked at the top of Amazon, carried in major retailers nationwide, and sold across DTC, marketplaces, and every channel in between.
We're not a startup hoping something works. We're a team that has done it repeatedly — taken products from zero to eight figures, landed them on retail shelves nationwide, and built real brands that consumers love. We operate like a holding company with the speed of a startup: small team, no bureaucracy, massive ownership.
This is the place where you'll see the entire machine — sourcing, product development, packaging, manufacturing, compliance, marketing, marketplace strategy, retail — all under one roof. If you want to learn how consumer products actually get built and shipped at scale, there is no faster education than this.
The Role
We're looking for the first true brand leader at BugMD — a pest control brand with real household demand, a product people swear by, and a category nobody has ever bothered to make interesting. There's no brand playbook to inherit. You write it.
BugMD makes plant-powered pest control that actually works — kills on contact, no harsh chemical smell, and formulated for use around the whole household. We're in Walmart, Home Depot, and on Amazon, and growing fast. We have a product that converts and a performance marketing engine that works. What we don't have yet is a brand that lives in culture — and that's what this role is for.
You'll partner directly with the General Manager and sit alongside the Head of Performance Marketing as peers. Performance scales what you build. You build what's worth scaling.
This role oversees Brand Strategy, Creative Direction, Organic Social, Content, Influencer Marketing, PR & Communications, and Cultural Activations. You're responsible for every consumer touchpoint that isn't a paid ad — and you'll have a strong voice in shaping the ones that are.
What You'll Do
- Define and document BugMD's voice, visual identity, and strategic positioning — building the brand bible from scratch
- Own organic social (Instagram, TikTok) — setting the content strategy, managing execution, and building a community that engages because the content is genuinely good
- Lead influencer and creator partnerships — home hacks, cleaning, DIY, gardening, pet and parent creators — managing relationships and ensuring content feels on-brand
- Drive PR and earned media — securing meaningful placements in home, lifestyle, DIY, and culture publications that build the brand story beyond product features
- Plan and execute cultural activations and real-world moments that put the brand in front of homeowners and renters when they actually need us
- Ensure visual and tonal consistency across every touchpoint — from social content to retail shelf to performance creative
- Manage agencies, creators, and production partners — knowing when to push and when to let them run
- Partner with the performance marketing team so brand and paid creative feel like the same company
Requirements
- 6–10 years in brand marketing, creative strategy, or brand management — ideally in food/bev, better-for-you CPG, or DTC with real cultural cachet
- You've managed or significantly contributed to a brand's voice and visual identity — not just executed other people's directions
- You understand culture as a participant, not a spectator — you know what's happening before it trends
- Experience managing agencies, creators, and production partners
- Comfortable in a lean, fast-moving environment where you don't need a large team to do great work
- Strong opinions about brand — you'll push back on what's wrong and advocate hard for what's right
- Excited to build from scratch rather than inherit a finished playbook
This Is Not You If...
- You built your career inside Big CPG and think in quarterly brand plans and legal-review timelines
- Your instinct when asked about TikTok is to hire an agency and monitor the reports
- You've never personally drafted a caption, written a creative brief, or argued for a logo treatment
- You're looking for a role where brand and performance operate in completely separate lanes
Compensation
- Equity: Profit interest units with meaningful upside participation as we grow
- Annual performance bonus tied to brand and business milestones
Benefits
- On-site role with travel budget for activations, market visits, and events
- Health, dental, and vision
- Amazing, dog-friendly office environment
- 401k matching
- Learning & Development Opportunities
- Flexible PTO
- 14 Holidays
Skills
As published by workable · 16 questions · 7 written answers
Basics
First name, Last name, Email, Phone, Address, Education, Resume
Short answers (3)
- Provide a link to your portfolio, brand book, or 3+ representative pieces of brand work you owned (Google Drive, Notion, personal site, etc.). Must start with https://.
- Are you legally authorized to work in the United States?
- Please insert your LinkedIn profile URL here:
Pick from a list (6)
- Are you able to work full-time, Monday–Friday, on-site at our Santa Ana, CA office?
- Are you legally authorized to work in the United States?
- Are you currently working IN-HOUSE at a DTC, CPG, or consumer brand (NOT at an agency, consultancy, or freelance)?
- Have you personally drafted brand voice guidelines, brand bibles, or visual identity documents that BECAME the source of truth for a brand (not just contributed input to someone else's)?
- Have you personally written copy for paid social ads, organic social posts, or brand campaigns that ran in market within the LAST 6 MONTHS?
- Are you actively present on TikTok and Instagram as a CULTURAL PARTICIPANT (you watch, engage, and create) — not just as a marketing professional analyzing them from outside?
Written answers (7)
- Shameless Snacks is a better-for-you gummy brand in Target and on Amazon. Name 3 other brands in adjacent categories whose brand work you admire, and tell us specifically what they're doing well or poorly.
- What is your target annual base salary? Format: $XXX,XXX (e.g., $165,000).
- How many years of experience do you have in brand marketing, creative strategy, or brand management? What industry or category have you worked in (e.g. food/bev, CPG, DTC)?
- Share a brand you've had meaningful ownership over — not just executed on. What did you build or change, and how did it perform?
- Walk us through your experience with organic social. Have you personally set strategy, written copy, or directed content — or have you primarily managed teams or agencies that did?
- This is a build-from-scratch role with a lean team. What's the smallest resource set you've done meaningful brand work with?
- What are your goals in applying for this role?