Senior Creative Strategist - Performance Marketing

thelab is looking for a Senior Creative Strategist - Performance Marketing to join our team working on paid social ad creative.

The ideal applicant has 5-7 years of paid creative strategy experience across a variety of digital channels, including Meta, Pinterest, Youtube, and TikTok, with a primary focus on Meta. This role is key to driving aggressive growth for our clients by delivering the right creative at the right time, on the right channels. This is a hybrid role–both creative and analytical–that bridges media, creative, and client teams. We’re looking for a unicorn candidate who brings not only a sophisticated understanding of performance data, but also the creative expertise to translate that data into actionable creative strategies and tactics that push our clients forward. 

About thelab:

We are an agency of makers with deep expertise in solving creative, production, and technology challenges. Our focus is on making better work, to help brands work better. We partner directly with clients to think big, build from scratch, and design for reality. From social media, digital marketing, branding, copy & design, and strategy, to full e-commerce builds, thelab mixes inspiration and hard work to produce results.

About the Role:

The Senior Creative Strategist role will encompass:

Creative reporting, involving in-depth performance analysis. You’ll explain the state of our paid ad accounts, designate top/bottom performers across channels, and thoughtfully analyze creative trends based on performance. Because you’ve got both data and creative expertise, you’re able to translate performance into actionable go-forward creative strategies & tactics.

Owning strategic components of client relationships… which involves a lot of public speaking! You’ll pitch strategic & tactical ideas, share creative live, present detailed creative reporting to large groups of clients, and field client questions about strategy and platform data on the fly.  

Developing sophisticated quarterly testing strategies for your clients. For us, this involves analyzing inputs like competitor & market research, historical performance, and upcoming brand priorities to craft compelling net-new messaging and audience hypotheses. 

Translating high-level strategy into tactical testing plans & concept roadmaps. You’ll write tactical briefs for the creative team, scale top performers via smart iteration flights, and provide strategic feedback on edits. 

Acting as a strategic touchpoint and source of truth for our internal creative team. You’ll
translate reporting for creative teams, maintain logs of test results for team reference, and build tactical “playbooks” to help streamline our production processes and educate the creative team on top-performing ad formats for each client. 

About You (Mandatories):

5-7 years in-house or top-tier agency experience with a proven track record of leading performance creative strategy across paid social channels. (Please note: we are looking for paid social experience, not organic social.)

A trusted partner for our clients who can guide them with paid social strategies that help them achieve their marketing and business goals

Deep expertise of the digital landscape and knowledge of platform-specific best practices on Meta, YouTube, TikTok and additional/emerging platforms. 

Proven analytical ability - you can digest data and turn insights into actionable creative strategy that drives growth. You are comfortable operating across spreadsheets and storyboards and enjoy using data to tell a story

Understanding of media buying best practices across social channels

Demonstrated history of achieving and exceeding paid social media campaign goals

Expertise across capabilities (creative, media, analytics), engaging with the larger team

Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, and can summarize insights to create easy-to-understand client-facing reports

Experience creating and implementing long-term testing and optimization practices

The ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment with a consistent “can-do” attitude, seeing ambiguity as a challenge and not a deterrent

Strong attention to detail and a proven ability to manage multiple work streams at once

Very experienced and comfortable with presenting to clients

Job Details:

Hybrid work environment - Tues-Thurs in the Madison Square Park office

Salary range $100k-$120k will ultimately be decided at the offer stage, based on an individual candidate’s level of skills and experience aligned with the needs of this role

Benefits include unlimited PTO, Healthcare/Dental/Vision, 401k company match, and the best snacks in town