The Brand Activation Lead owns a critical phase of the brand lifecycle at Powered by People (PBP) taking newly acquired brands from sales handoff through onboarding, activation, and ongoing subscription management, and ultimately managing a clean offboarding process when a brand exits the platform.
This role is the primary point of contact for brands once they enter the PBP ecosystem. You will ensure brands are set up correctly, understand how to work with PBP, meet platform and compliance requirements, and are ready to be activated across relevant retail channels.
You will work closely with Merchandising and Sales, Marketplace Operations and Product teams to create a seamless brand experience while ensuring PBP's internal systems and data remain accurate and actionable.
Key Responsibilities
Brand Conversion & Enablement
- Own and convert sales qualified brand leads and manage the onboarding process.
- Develop and deliver brand onboarding webinars, presentations, group sessions, and provide 1:1 support to brands where required.
- Own and continuously improve onboarding guides, training materials, FAQs, and brand-facing documentation.
- Identify recurring areas of friction and recommend improvements to the onboarding experience.
Onboarding & Account Set-Up
- Receive sales qualified brands from Acquisition and monitor their progress through the automated onboarding flow.
- Configure brands within PBP systems and ensure required account information is complete and accurate.
- Act as the primary point of contact for onboarding questions and resolve or escalate issues as required.
- Confirm that all onboarding requirements have been completed, including brand profile, product uploads, preliminary pricing review, SKU volume, PBP Verified requirements, and applicable compliance requirements.
- Move brands to Ready to Review and trigger the Merchandising team to review SKU quality, assortment, and product content.
- Maintain accurate status tracking and ensure a clean handoff into merchandising and retailer ingestion workflows.
Brand Support & Inquiry Management
- Serve as the first line of support for onboarding, platform, and general brand questions.
- Troubleshoot general issues and appropriately route technical issues, including Shopify and PBP Platform questions.
- Own pre-live brand inquiries, either resolving them directly or routing them to the appropriate internal owner.
- Track recurring questions and issues to identify opportunities for better documentation, automation, or product improvements.
Compliance & PBP Verified™
- Own tracking and administration of the PBP Verified™ process, including reviewing submissions, triaging approvals, following up on outstanding requirements, and communicating status to brands.
- Review applicable regulatory and ESG requirements and ensure required supporting documentation has been provided.
- Maintain accurate and complete compliance documentation and statuses.
Subscription Management & Retention
- Maintain accurate tracking of brand subscription status, renewals, and activity.
- Own the pre-sale retention strategy for subscribed brands, with the goal of keeping brands active and engaged before an exit decision is made.
- Develop proactive touchpoints for brands showing signs of inactivity or disengagement.
- Monitor and report on subscription health, retention, churn signals, and brand status.
- Identify brands at risk of churn and coordinate appropriate intervention with internal teams.
- Capture recurring reasons for disengagement and surface opportunities to improve the brand experience.
Brand Offboarding
- Identify brands that may need to exit the platform based on defined criteria or brand requests and route decisions for internal approval.
- Manage brands requesting cancellation or removal, coordinating final decisions with Merchandising and other stakeholders as required.
- Coordinate notification to relevant retail partners when a brand is being removed.
- Coordinate with Marketplace Operations and Technology to ensure products are removed or deactivated across applicable retailers.
- Capture the reason for exit, relevant learnings, and potential for future reactivation.
What Success Looks Like
The Brand Activation Lead is accountable for ensuring:
- Predictable activation: Every acquired brand moves from handoff through onboarding on a clear, measurable timeline and reaches launch-ready status.
- Clear ownership: Brands always know who to contact during onboarding, activation, subscription management, and offboarding.
- Launch readiness: Brands do not move forward until required profile, product, pricing, PBP Verified™ and compliance requirements are complete.
- Strong retention: Subscription status and brand health are actively monitored, with at-risk brands identified and engaged before they decide to exit.
- Compliance visibility: Regulatory, ESG, and PBP Verified requirements are tracked and actioned for every applicable brand, with no unresolved requirements sitting indefinitely.
- Complete offboarding: Brand exits are executed end-to-end - retailers notified, SKUs delisted, systems updated, final communications completed, and exit reasons captured.
- Data integrity: Airtable accurately reflects each brand's status at every lifecycle stage and handoff.
Our Ideal Profile
- Experience in customer success, onboarding, account management, marketplace operations, e-commerce, or a related operational role.
- Strong project and workflow management skills.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Confidence managing external brand relationships and difficult conversations when required.
- Strong attention to detail, particularly around data, documentation, and compliance requirements.
- Experience working with CRM, workflow, or database tools; Airtable experience is an asset.
- Comfort troubleshooting technology and determining when an issue should be escalated.
- A process-improvement mindset with an interest in automation and scalable operations.
- Ability to work cross-functionally and drive action without needing direct authority over every stakeholder.
Compensation & Benefits
Base Salary: $60,000 - $75,000 CAD
12-18 month fixed term contract
We believe in transparent compensation. The salary for this role falls within the range above, with placement determined by experience and overall fit for the position. In addition to competitive compensation, we offer meaningful equity, comprehensive health benefits and the opportunity to have a direct impact on the growth of our company.
About Powered by People (PBP)
Powered by People (PBP) is on a mission to democratize a global sustainable economy. Our digital platform has connected responsibly-made products from independent brands worldwide to mainstream retail channels through our distribution network, catalog and order management technology and compliance tools - PBP Dropship, PBP CatalogAgent, and PBP Verified™. Because when their businesses grow, we all flourish.
