Senior Creative Strategist (at a fast-growing creative-led digital and social growth agency)

Senior Creative Strategist: creative direction, research, briefs and partnerships

Location - London/Hybrid (office culture is vital)

Salary - DOE (the right thinker matters more than years in role)

Type - Permanent or freelance-to-perm

About the role

We're working with a creative-led growth agency for tier one ecommerce brands in fashion, beauty and wellness - brands whose paid used to work, until it didn't.

They work on the ethos that paid media should be as curated as every other channel. Gone are the days of band product shot with price copy. This agency understands the necessity of killer creative strategy for paid media creative - an art currently lost to formulas, frameworks and endless churn of 'what worked last time'.

They work in two-week cycles; with a goal CPA set from each client's profitability. What hits it earns spend and richer creative. What misses gets cut.

You'd set creative direction across the accounts: who we find next, what we say to them, and which formats earn reach at target. Strategy first (audiences, pains and hypotheses) before formats and edits. You'd work alongside the Growth Lead and Head of Creative, and stay close to the work end-to-end, from research and brief through to shoot and rollout.

What you'll do

• Diagnose each account's creative: what's working, what's tired, which audiences and angles are untouched
• Lead research: reviews, social search, competitors, category entry points, personas, pain points
• Turn research into hypotheses and briefs: persona, situation, claim, hook and format, at every stage of awareness
• Run the creative side of the two-week cycle - three concepts against a control, CPA decides, winners get richer formats
• Brief designers, content creators, creators and shoots, holding the quality bar with the Head of Creative
• Build creator, ambassador and brand partnership programmes, from sourcing to negotiation/close
• Present creative strategy to clients and defend it with data
• Coach the junior creative strategists and content creators

What you'll bring to the table Experience & background

• 5+ years in creative strategy, with deep paid social experience in fashion, beauty, lifestyle or wellness
• Big-brand craft and DTC speed: you can build a considered campaign and ship tests in days
• Develop briefs designers and creators can genuinely run with
• You read ad data - hook rate, hold rate, CTR, CPA, where the spend goes - and know which numbers matter
• Omnichannel thinking across paid, organic, creators and partnerships

Mindset & approach

• Happy to be judged on CPA, ready to finetune and develop beautiful ads if they don't sell
• Confident pushing back to fight for a strategic suggestion (internally and externally)

Bonus points

• You've built or led a creative team
• Agency and client-side experience
• Advertising rules for health and supplement claims (ASA and CAP)
• AI creative tools used well (Midjourney, Higgsfield and similar)

What great looks like at 90 days

You own creative strategy on the agency's biggest accounts

A research and briefing process the whole team uses

A new concept family earning spend at target

Why join?

Creative direction with real ownership, at an agency built to break the orthodoxy

Machine learning and audience tools used to sharpen the idea, not replace it

Daily collaboration with media, content and creator teams - excellent strategy is of utmost importance, not an afterthought

First-mover access to emerging channels and formats

A growing team on a serious trajectory, all in it together

This isn't for you if

Your best work needs 12-week timelines and five feedback rounds

You measure creative on likes or awards rather than real business outcomes (sales should reflect this)