Head of Influencer

A note from Tom, who started this

Pepper Pong wasn't born in a boardroom. It was hacked together in a garage out of scrap parts from other games and a weird collection of foam balls. It wasn't a product. It wasn't even called Pepper Pong. It was just The Game, and we played it everywhere.

We loved ping pong. Then ping pong got old. Too serious, too breakable, too loud, too bro. Coffin-sized table. Busted balls. Ten minutes of interest and ten years of dust.

So we kept the three things worth keeping, which were competition, camaraderie and connection, and threw out the rest. The foam did something we didn't plan for. Rallies stretched to 30, 40, 50 shots. Matches stayed close. Grandparents started beating grandkids. The guy who doesn't do games started demanding best of seven.

Then life threw me a harder match. In 2016 I got sober. Toughest rally of my life, and the most important one I'll ever win. It reminded me what I actually valued, which was real people and real laughter. By 2020, in a world starving for connection, I decided to bring The Game to the world. Not for profit. For purpose.

People ask whether I went on Shark Tank to raise money or to market the game. Neither. I went to talk about declining human connection. Pepper Pong just happens to be one joyful way to solve it.

That's the job here. Turn every table into center court, and every gathering into a tournament of unforgettable moments.

Tom Filippini, Founder

Where we are

Six years ago this was a foam ball bouncing around a garage, surviving on 100-plus design iterations and 20-plus factory prototypes. On 22 November 2024 it aired on Shark Tank, Todd Graves came on as a partner, and Tom repaid his entire investment inside the first business hour.

Since then we have sold more than 100,000 sets, people have played over a million games, and we sold out three times in three months. You can find us in Dick's Sporting Goods and Scheels, and we ship to all 50 states. Reviews sit at 4.9 stars and under 1% of sets ever come back, which for something most people buy as a gift is the number we are quietly proudest of.

Where we're going

Right now Pepper Pong is a product. The plan is to make it a sport.

That starts with the app, which ships this year. Set a phone on the table and it runs the bracket, keeps score, and turns the result into a ranking you can actually climb. It is probably the first app ever designed not to be sticky, on the grounds that every second you spend looking at it is a second you are not playing. The long joke we are engineering is a grandmother who plays every Sunday outranking someone who does this professionally.

Around that sits a creator program, a growing retail business, and Rally for Recovery, which has put more than 1,000 sets into recovery centers and community spaces across all 50 states. That one is not marketing. It is where the game came from.

How we work

We are small, so the roles are wide and nobody is going to hand you a brief. You get a number that is yours and enough room to go get it, which is the good news and the bad news in one sentence. We move quickly, we use AI heavily and without ceremony, and we would rather hear the thing that didn't work at the start of the meeting than at the end of the quarter.

The role

We are seeking a Head of Influencer to own creator marketing as a channel. You will set the strategy, own the budget, decide the shape of the roster, and make the creator program a reliable source of both reach and the performance creative our paid team runs.

This role is ideal for someone who has built a creator program from strategy down to operations and who thinks about creators as a media channel with economics, not as a list of names.

Why this role matters right now

Creator content is both our best-performing advertising and our biggest bottleneck. The program exists and it works. It has never had one person owning the strategy, the budget and the pipeline into paid media at the same time. That is what we are hiring.

What You'll Do

  • Own creator marketing strategy, budget, and the targets the channel is measured against
  • Define roster composition across tiers, from large partnerships to high-volume seeding
  • Build the creator payment and usage rights framework the program runs on
  • Own the relationship between creator content and paid media, including whitelisting and content licensing
  • Build the systems and team that let the program scale without quality dropping
  • Negotiate and manage the brand's most significant creator and ambassador partnerships
  • Report on channel contribution, including content produced, reach delivered, and paid performance

Must-Have Requirements

  • 5+ years in influencer or creator marketing, including ownership of strategy and budget
  • Experience building a creator program rather than only running one that already existed
  • Strong command of creator economics, rate benchmarks, usage rights, and contracts
  • Demonstrated ability to turn creator content into performing paid assets
  • Experience managing people or agency partners
  • Analytical rigor in measuring a channel that resists clean attribution
  • Deep familiarity with creator ecosystems on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube