THE COMPANY A profitable, growing US-based specialty tea CPG brand (~15% YoY, 130K+ lifetime orders, warehouses in the US, Canada, UK, EU) selling primarily through Shopify and TikTok Shop. Built on authentic sourcing, education, and a founder-creator with millions of followers who is, today, the company's entire marketing engine. Ships frequent new product lines (two launches in the next four months) and runs a quarterly subscription program (~2,000 members) that's the growth core.

Marketing today is a set of good ideas with no owner: email, loyalty, referrals, collabs, community, contests. Your job is to become that owner and build the machine around the founder's audience instead of depending on it.

One thing to know before you apply: nothing customer-facing here is AI-generated. All creative is real and hand-made. That's brand identity, not policy — see "How this company uses AI" below.

THE ROLE

You own marketing end to end. This is a content-led brand: entertainment and infotainment IS the acquisition engine, and paid, email, and lifecycle all have to interact coherently with the organic machine, not run beside it.

The mandate runs in order: (1) find the leaks and build the scoreboard — subscription drop-off, paused members, one-time buyers, KPIs; (2) stand up paid media and get email/lifecycle performing; (3) once fundamentals run, expand into organic collaboration. The wrong hire asks for a big ad budget. The right hire asks where the money is leaking.

You're a player-coach, weighted toward player early. You personally run media strategy and buying until the team grows. An email specialist reports to you. You'll also coordinate with a Shopify/ecommerce ops person and the founder's YouTube account manager.

On creative: you're close to a creative director who never creates — the founder is the creator, and he wants to make ads. Your job is to make that enthusiasm strategic and tell him exactly what the data says to make next.

Not a strategy-deck job — you make tactical calls same-day and push initiatives to done.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Find the leaks, build the scoreboard

- Diagnose subscription drop-off (the drop after box 2-3 is the known weak point)
- Quantify lapsed members,



paused subs, one-time buyers, dead email segments
- Think in LTV, AOV, CAC, churn, net-new customers — build measurement where it doesn't exist
- Run win-back loops with internal AI survey systems

Run paid media yourself

- Launch paid ads from zero (Meta first, TikTok second) with an intro test budget
- Treat early paid as a learning instrument — breakeven is a fine outcome while collecting data
- Fund organic content that's already working, test odd angles, run boring direct-response ads
- Build creative testing plans around the founder's content; brief him on what to make next
- Own holiday-season buying (Oct–Feb); scale spend only as unit economics prove out

Own email, lifecycle, loyalty

- Set strategy for the email specialist, who executes under your direction
- Evolve loyalty into a VIP program, fold referrals into its tiers
- Multiply LTV/AOV: bundles, premium tiers, subscription upgrades, win-backs

Expand the organic machine (stage two)

- Lead creator/YouTube collab strategy
- Keep the founder's content production connected to marketing
- Deepen the paid-organic loop as both mature

Run the machine

- Own the marketing calendar and cross-channel coordination (next launches mid-Sept and November, plus holiday season)
- Direct the founder's creative production with batched, specific briefs
- Run the AI marketing stack for analytics/orchestration, and teach the team what the numbers mean
- Define and scope the next marketing hires as channels prove out

WHO SURVIVES HERE The founder runs this as a creator and artist. No 70-hour weeks, no frequent syncs — standing weekly calls and brand checks, otherwise batched asks and autonomy. Thrives: first-principles thinker, cares about brand ethos, low ego, systems-builder, has a sense of humor.

Fails: needs frequent alignment meetings,



wants to "workshop the vision," bulldozes the founder's constraints, too proud to run boring ads.

HOW THIS COMPANY USES AI

Aggressive AI adoption in operations, a hard wall around anything creative or customer-facing.

The wall: No AI images, ever. No AI-written copy shipped as-is — everything is real: real sourcing trips, real photos, real people. AI-assisted drafting is fine only if shipped output is hand-written or hand-reviewed.

The embrace: Internal AI agents for CS, demand prediction, and customer survey loops.

Your seat: You manage AI-driven ad analytics, orchestration, media buying, research, segmentation, reporting — and translate it in plain language. You do not generate ads, images, or copy that ships. Pitching AI-generated creator content in your interview ends the interview.

WHAT YOU'VE DONE BEFORE

- 6+ years hands-on across paid social, email/retention, loyalty/referral, influencer or community marketing
- Personally planned, bought, and optimized paid media — not just supervised an agency
- Required: food & beverage CPG experience
- Required: subscription experience and its retention economics
- DTC ecommerce, Shopify fluency; TikTok Shop a strong plus
- Startup/small-team background — you've been the whole marketing department
- Experience with content-led brands or media production is a real asset
- Ran frequent product launches end-to-end as project manager
- Managed a small team or agency relationships as the strategy layer
- Worked directly with a founder or creative director — and can tell us how you adapted
- Genuine interest in tea, tea culture, or Chinese culture is close to a requirement

SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE First 90 days: leak diagnosis done, KPI scoreboard live; first Meta tests live; holiday buying planned; email specialist at double campaign cadence; calendar locked through February; November launch fully coordinated.

First year: paid media proven profitable (or clear data on why not); movement on retention past box 2-3, LTV, AOV; loyalty evolved into VIP with referrals folded in; at least one premium tier launched; collab strategy live in stage two.

📌 Marketing Manager (Head of Marketing) - Specialty Tea CPG Brand (Argentina)
🏢 Effortless Hire
📍 Argentina