Account Director - Trailblaze

Description

Trailblaze is a boutique communications agency for brands that challenge convention.

We specialize in creative marketing communications, earned media, and influencer campaigns that drive cultural relevance and real impact. Our clients partner with us because they're over predictable, "check-the-box" PR and want bold thinking, sharp strategy, and standout execution. We bring mainstream CPG rigor to challenger brands in some of the fastest-moving, most regulated categories in marketing—and put them on the map.

Trailblaze is part of Acceleration Community of Companies (ACC), an LA-based community of marketing, communications, and media companies.

What You'll Do

Lead the Work

• Own integrated communications strategy across earned media, influencer, creative, and executive visibility 
• Turn briefs into breakthrough ideas. You should create the kind that get the AP to file, land on Colbert, and move stock prices.
• Build annual comms plans, editorial calendars, messaging platforms, and campaign frameworks with KPIs that actually tie to a client’s business.
• Understand and navigate platform restrictions and category-specific regulatory guardrails.

Make Headlines Happen

• Invent the moments. The kind that turns a product launch into a cultural conversation, a wellness trend into a WSJ story, and a niche ingredient into a household name. 
• Know what's landing where, from Forbes to Feed Me to Rolling Stone, and what will land where next.
• Lead the team in generating and refining creative pitch angles, PR stunts, and survey-led news hooks.
• Operate with platform fluency. From building workflows in Claude to negotiating a brand partnership for Substack, you’re skilled up and scouting what’s next.

Own the Client Relationship

• Be the trusted advisor for CMOs, CEOs, and founders.
• Lead client meetings as someone who has an answer before the question lands.
• Provide proactive counsel on issues management, crisis, and high-stakes moments.
• Grow current clients with your service; earn new business with your results.

Lead the Team

• Serve as a strategic right hand to the Founder CEO, and a liaison to ACC agency partners
• Mentor publicists and account staff, overseeing client meetings and deliverables
• Foster a collaborative, high-performing team environment within a hybrid/virtual model.

Requirements

Requirements

This is a senior, client-facing role for a communications leader who thrives in categories other agencies find too complicated, too regulated, or too niche. If you have a POV on where wellness, biohacking, functional beverages, and cannabis go next, keep reading.

• 8+ years of experience working in PR, communications, and/or integrated marketing. You have the confidence and presence to lead a meeting, respectfully challenge an idea, or disarm an agitated client, journalist, or teammate.
• Creative firepower, not just PR mechanics. You don’t just execute your client’s ideas, you generate them. You have a nose for what’s newsworthy and know how to take a story from mid to elite. You’re driven to find the angle and pitch the unexpected. 
• Cultural literacy. You probably have too many tabs open. You’re tracking macro trends, micro trends, and emerging trends. And, crucially, you can convert those trends into insights that help your clients. 
• Regulated industry fluency. You have experience navigating regulated industries and active relationships with the media and influencers who cover them. Our clients range from CPG and DTC brands to longevity and technology companies. What they have in common is an ambition to challenge convention and change the narrative.
• Genuine service orientation. You stay ahead of clients by anticipating their needs (and the needs of the journalists covering them) before you have to be asked. You treat clients large and small as a top priority with timely responses, turnkey deliverables, and strategic counsel that shows you understand their business and priorities. 
• Good-humored tenacity. You don’t see “No” as a stop sign, but a prompt to pivot. You generate a new idea. Hit up a different target. Change up the pitch. Whether you are securing a media exclusive or pitching a new client, you are a relentless closer. 
• Integrated thinking. As part of ACC, Trailblaze brings clients a wider range of expertise from talent negotiations and media buying to event production and content creation. A strong AD should think beyond earned media, understanding how PR ladders into influencer, partnerships, experiential, and social. 

The Details

• Location: Los Angeles or New York (hybrid)
• Reports to: CEO, Trailblaze
• Travel: Occasional — client visits, press trips, facility tours, and select events
• The network: Access to ACC's full community of sister agencies — MKG, DKC, Pixly, Hangar Four, Pink Sparrow, Stripe Theory, PMK, and more

Salary range: $120,000 - $175,000 annually

Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

Acceleration Community of Companies ("ACC") provides equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, gender or sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), national origin, ancestry, age, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, family and medical care leave status, military or veteran status, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. ACC will also make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities to perform their essential functions unless doing so would result in an undue hardship to the Company. Please inform ACC's Human Resources Department if you need assistance completing any forms or to otherwise participate in the application process. This policy governs all aspects of employment, including selection, job assignment, compensation, promotion, discipline, termination of employment, and access to benefits and training.