Director, Product Marketing

The posting

At Sonos we want to create the ultimate listening experience for our customers and know that it starts by listening to each other. As part of the Sonos team, you’ll collaborate with people of all styles, skill sets, and backgrounds to realize our vision while fostering a community where everyone feels included and empowered to do the best work of their lives.

This role is a hybrid position

Some roles require an office while others may be done remotely. This position is considered hybrid, allowing for a combination of remote work and in-office collaboration. Qualified applicants must live within commuting distance of New York or Boston.

The Role

At Sonos, Product Marketing manages and captures the collision of product development, audience insights and brand storytelling.

The Product Marketing Director is the most senior member of the Product Marketing team and takes on the responsibility of leading the team, the process and cross functional relationships to deliver clear product positioning and a toolkit of creative assets that the entire organization uses to take the products to market. This role reports directly to the VP of Global Brand Strategy and is responsible for ensuring that every piece of Sonos hardware and every software initiative have a clearly defined role in the Sonos system and in people’s homes and lives, and that the features and functionality that differentiate each product are communicated in clear and compelling ways.

The role is different from many organizations in that it shifts the focus of Product Marketing upstream – leaning into strategic positioning early in the product development cycle, and handing responsibility for go-to-market planning, production and deployment to our consumer marketing and creative teams.

What You'll Lead The Team To Deliver

You’ll be responsible for managing the team and defining and overseeing processes and deliverables across the following:

Own the Global Product/System Narrative Arc from Current Positioning to Future State Positioning

• Partner with Brand Strategy to intimately understand and contribute to brand narrative based on new products and their role in the system as well as new audiences that these products can attract
• Collaborate with Product Owners to develop the authoritative product narrative for key product and software innovations. This is the core story at the intersection of the product truth, the audience, and brand to drive downstream product feature prioritizations and decisions, naming, launch briefs, regional adaptations, and channel executions
• Ensure product narratives include audience insights and system thinking – not just specs, commercial objectives or competitive landscape
• Partner with the Product Owner, Product Finance & Insights teams to ensure all relevant product, competitive, and commercial intelligence has been gathered and synthesized to inform product narrative, pricing, business case and investment recommendations
• Maintain narrative coherence as products move from launch into their commercial lifecycle

Lead the Learning Agenda (and contribute to the execution of research)

• Collaborate with UX and Insights teams to develop research plans through the product lifecycle
• Participate and provide input as research is executed
• Interrogate and utilize research findings to inform narratives, audience definitions and insights and strategies for products and launch moments
• Deliver audience and cultural insights around the intelligent home, privacy, home audio and other relevant topics

Own the Product Toolkit

• Work with creative team to develop an insightful, system-led toolkit for each product that includesRelevant Product Narratives for both hardware and software features and experiences Key product stories and copy libraries for key communication channels Product visual assets and demonstration content Audience definition and insights Commercial and competitive analysis
• Collaborate with Product, Revenue, Training, Consumer Marketing, Commercial Marketing and Comms throughout the Toolkit development process to ensure strategic alignment and inclusion of the right executional deliverables to meet each team’s needs

Partner with Marketing Teams to Define Success

• Ensure that all campaigns, programs and activations have clear and measurable KPIs that align with strategic objectives (some products play a role in the portfolio that goes beyond direct revenue generation)
• Leverage performance learnings for future product strategies and positioning

Inspire Creative Teams

• Partner with creative teams as a strategic collaborator and product expert
• Inspire and champion product storytelling that is brand-true, product correct, unexpected and compelling
• Maintain a high bar for creative quality while keeping work anchored to strategic intent

Enable Regional and Segment Marketing

• Provide consumer, professional, and retail marketing teams with the strategic context and baseline assets they need to adapt global direction for their channels and markets

What This Role Is — and Is Not

This role is:

• The relentless driver of clarity
• The owner of the global product narrative and the creative toolkit that will be used to bring the product to market globally
• The integrator of brand strategy, product truth, and audience intelligence
• A strategic partner to product teams, creative teams, global and regional marketers, and commercial leaders

This role is not:

• A campaign manager or executional owner
• A media or channel planner
• A claims validator or Legal liaison
• A substitute for GTM ownership, which lives with segment marketing teams

What You Bring

• 15+ years experience in product marketing and delivery of product marketing assets in global, product-led organizations that involve both hardware and software elements
• 5+ years managing a product marketing team in a relevant environment
• Demonstrated experience defining, optimizing and deploying process and deliverables with cross-functional teams and stakeholders
• A track record of developing product narratives that inspire breakthrough product demonstration, explanation and onboarding content
• Ability to identify, gather, evaluate, and synthesize product, competitive, audience and cultural intelligence across multiple sources within the cross-functional team and from outside sources
• Experience integrating audience inputs from multiple sources (product, commercial, media) into a unified strategic point of view
• Proven ability to partner with and inspire creative teams
• Proven ability to simplify process and org structure complexity into clear, action-oriented ways of working for a PMM team
• Clear, confident communication skills as a manager and across senior leadership and cross-functional teams

Leadership Profile

• Product-rigorous and brand-fluent
• Comfortable defining and evolving process. Or navigating a complete lack of process
• Concise communicator. Brevity = Clarity
• Ability to generate and inspire unexpected ways of communicating and demonstrating product capabilities
• Energized by the upstream and comfortable doing consequential work before anyone can see where it's going
• A generous, elevating strategic partner who collaborates and shares, but also knows how to manage (and sometimes graciously decline to use) feedback in order to make the team and the work better
• High standards for both strategic thinking and creative quality

Research shows that candidates from underrepresented backgrounds often don't apply for roles if they don't meet all the criteria. If you don’t have 100% of the skills listed, we strongly encourage you to apply if interested.

Visa Sponsorship: Sonos is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this role at this time. We ask that applicants be authorized to work for any US employer, both now and in the future.

#LI-Hybrid

Your profile will be reviewed and you'll hear from us once we have an update. At Sonos we take the time to hire right and appreciate your patience.

The base pay range for this role based off geographic location is:

$185,000 and $231,000

The specific pay offered will depend on the candidate’s geographic location, as well as qualifications and experience. We apply geographic pay differentials based on the cost of labor in the market. Employees in high-cost locations may be compensated at the upper end of the range, while those in medium or low cost markets may be compensated at the lower end of the range. Your recruiter can provide more details about the specific salary range for your location during the hiring process.

Please note that compensation details listed in US job postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits.

We also offer a comprehensive benefits program with choice and flexibility in mind to help support the health, wealth, and overall well-being of our employees. Regular full time employees in the US are eligible for benefits on day one, including:

• Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• A 401(k) plan with company matching and immediate vesting
• An Open Time Off policy (OTO) so you have maximum opportunity to disconnect and recharge, with no tenure-based vacation accruals required
• 80 hours of sick time upon hire, refreshed annually
• Up to 12 paid holidays per calendar year
• Sonos offers a generous paid leave program for new parents or to care for a family member with a serious health condition, as well as short- and long-term disability for your own medical condition
• Company-paid Disability, Life, and AD&D Insurance
• Voluntary benefits, including Voluntary Life, AD&D, Accident, and Pet Insurance
• Mental health benefits to support your holistic well-being
• A generous employee discount program & Sonos Radio HD - on us!

Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole discretion, consistent with the law.

Notice to U.S. Job Applicants: Sonos is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics.

Sonos is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the employment process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information.