Strategic Growth Manager, Cross Category Programs, North America

A company with a pioneering past and a purposeful future.

At ACCO Brands, we are united by a common purpose, to empower our consumers to feel good when they work, learn, and play. For more than a century we have developed and nurtured brands that enable people to work with more productivity, learn with more confidence, and play with more enjoyment. We are passionate about a winning culture where we grow together, driving business, professional growth, and success.

We invite you to be part of a team that is grounded in a history of category-leading brands and products and focused on positioning our company for the future.

ACCO Brands is seeking a Strategic Growth Manager to lead insights-driven product development for delivery of large-scale, cross-category retail programs across the North America Consumer and Office Products business. Reporting to the Vice President of Marketing, this role translates consumer and shopper insights, retail trends, customer strategies, and marketplace opportunities, and translates them into differentiated product concepts, assortments and commercially viable growth platforms for ACCO Brands and its retail partners.

This is a product role first. The manager will own opportunities from insights and concept development through product definition, business case, stage-gate decisions and commercialization. The ideal candidate combines strong product-development depth with retail and commercial acumen, effectively bridging unmet consumer needs and category opportunities to programs that win with retail partners and shoppers in-store and online.

• Own cross-category product initiatives from opportunity identification and concept development through product definition, commercialization, launch, and post-launch optimization.
• Translate consumer, shopper, customer, category, competitive, and trend insights into clear product strategies, innovation briefs, product concepts, and prioritized development roadmaps that support business and brand objectives.
• Define the product proposition, target consumer, use occasion, feature set, design requirements, quality expectations, price architecture, assortment role, and channel strategy for each program.
• Partner with Creative, Engineering, Sourcing, Quality, Finance, Supply Chain, Operations, Sales, Insights, Brand, Creative and Content, and Merchandising to move concepts through the product-development and commercialization process.
• Manage the product-development critical path, including decision gates, specifications, samples, costing, testing, packaging, supply readiness, launch deliverables, risks, dependencies, and issue resolution.
• Develop assortment strategies that connect individual products into cohesive cross-category solutions tailored to priority retailers, channels, shopper missions, price points, and merchandising environments.
• Partner with Brand, Sales, Creative and Content, and Merchandising to convert product platforms into compelling retailer programs, including customer-specific assortments, exclusives, bundles, seasonal or event-based solutions, merchandising concepts, packaging direction, content needs, and in-store and online activation.
• Use syndicated and consumption data, consumer and customer insights, and business performance indicators to develop recommendations and support decisions.
• Build program-level business cases and performance expectations, including sales, margin, share, and profitability with Finance and Sales.
• Establish launch objectives and success measures; monitor sales, margin, share, distribution, inventory, retailer feedback, and consumer response to identify corrective actions and future growth opportunities.
• Present clear, persuasive strategies and recommendations that build alignment and influence decisions at multiple levels.

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, or a related field preferred.
• 8-11 years of experience in product management, product development, innovation, or related consumer products or light durables role; direct ownership of physical product development is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience taking physical consumer products from insights and concept through specifications, costing, development, commercialization, launch and performance management.
• Experience developing consumer-led product strategies, innovation pipelines, product briefs, assortments, and roadmaps across multiple categories,…