Creative Strategy Lead

Creative Strategy Lead

Department: Creative Strategy | Performance Creative

Reports to: Head of Creative Strategy (with dotted line to the Chief Creative Officer on domain alignment)

Location: Hybrid, Central London (Camden Roundhouse)

Compensation: Competitive Base + Benefits Scheme + 28 Days Paid Holiday + Private Health

KPIs You'll Own

You'll be measured on department-wide creative performance:

• Blended Dept hit-rate - average creative hit-rate across all pods. Your headline KPI.
• Percentage of spend through ECD-produced ads - share of total Meta client spend flowing through creative we produced
• Senior CS development trajectory - measurable craft uplift across all four Seniors over 12 months
• New CS onboarding quality - time-to-billable and first-90-day output quality for every new joiner
  

About Soar Group

The Soar Group is a UK performance agency group comprising three specialist agencies. With over £100M+ in annual ad spend under management and a team of 120+, we work with 7-9 figure DTC and e-commerce brands across Meta, TikTok, and Google.

We were nominated for Meta's Creative Diversity Award 2025 and were named the UK's #1 independent Meta agency group. Our creative department is the group's biggest growth lever - and this role is central to where it goes next.

Our values: Extreme Ownership. Radical Curiosity. Kind Candour. Outcome Obsessed.

The Opportunity

We're hiring a Creative Lead to join the Creative Strategy leadership team at the UK's largest performance creative department.

Hambi Media (ECD) is the creative engine of the Soar Group - the UK's #1 independent Meta agency group. Our Creative Strategy department is the group's single biggest revenue driver, producing performance creative across High Production video, UGC, and Static for 7-9 figure DTC and e-commerce brands. We manage over £100M in ad spend yearly and operate 13 creative pods.

You'll join a six-person Creative Strategy leadership team: the Chief Creative Officer, the Head of Creative Strategy, three other Creative Leads, and you. Your remit is cross-departmental rather than pod-specific - you'll coach our Senior Creative Strategists layer to help increase strategic ability, and drive strong performance outcomes for our biggest brands. You will raise the creative quality bar across the pods you manage, and own the craft layer of how the department stays ahead of the game.

This is a Creative Lead role with a department-wide focus. You won't own a pod or run an account directly, but 40% of your time is still billable - embedded in the strategic support of up to four senior strategists, coaching their thinking on the accounts they own. The other 60% is split across tier 1 account risk mitigation, departmental training sessions, new-joiner onboarding, and self-development.

If you're a creative strategist with 5+ years of experience who has been deep in the trenches and ready to become a leader, has deep craft instincts, and genuine energy for coaching, this is the role where your impact compounds across every client in the book.

Requirements

What You'll Own

Senior CS Strategic Coaching (Billable, 40%)

• Embedded coaching and management of 4-5 Senior Creative Strategists on the strategic work of their biggest accounts
• Help every Senior CS find the next layer of their craft: research depth, strategic synthesis and creative authority
• Coach intentionally - reverse-engineer your approach from knowing each individual. Ask what do I need to do here to get the best possible outcome for this person on this account? before defaulting to advice

Risk Mitigation, Audits & Bottleneck Identification

• Cross-pod craft authority on Gold and Silver tier accounts - when a pod's performance is dipping, you go deep, audit the creative, and support reset strategy alongside the Pod Creative Lead
• Identify performance bottlenecks before they hit monthly review - if a KPI is off track, it should never be a surprise
• Run regular creative audits across the department, surface what's working and what isn't, and feed insight into the wider Creative Strategy leadership team

Departmental Creative Quality Bar

• Set and uphold the quality bar for creative strategy output across the team
• Drive the rollout of new craft skills in-line with market shifts, including Ai adoption

Team Domain Trainings & Frameworks

• Translate frameworks, methodologies, and AI workflows set by the CCO into team-wide up-skilling sessions
• Identify domain skill gaps across the department and design training to close them. Replacing one-to-one to one-to-many
• Tapping into our biggest unfair advantage: data. Running regular macro reports to identify creative insights, trends and gaps that can be funnelled into the team

New CS Onboarding

• Own the craft component of every new Creative Strategist's onboarding across their first 30-60 days
• Build and maintain the onboarding playbook (skills, frameworks, AI workflows, departmental gold-standard examples)

How You'll Spend Your Time

Indicative time allocation:

Senior CS coaching on their biggest accounts (billable)

• 40% of scope: Embedded strategic coaching, research and reporting support, persona development, reporting QC

Risk mitigation audits, bottleneck identification

• 25% of scope: Cross-pod risk-mitigation on high-risk Gold and Silver accounts, performance audits, strategic resets

Departmental training + framework rollout

• 20% of scope: Designing and delivering training, AI-assisted skill rollout, gold-standard documentation

New CS onboarding ownership

• 10% of scope:First-30-day craft onboarding for every new joiner

Self training + market scanning

• 5% of scope:AI / Meta / TikTok shifts, competitor strategy, continuous research. Purse curiosity at a market level

What You'll Bring

Must-Have

• 5+ years in Creative Strategy in a performance creative agency, growth team, or DTC brand-side environment
• Deep performance creative expertise - you can dissect a winning Meta ad in 30 seconds and explain exactly why it works
• Strong growth and paid social fluency - testing structures, scaling logic, persona development, funnel positions, attribution, post-click
• Coaching mindset - you've coached strategists or junior creatives into better work and got real energy from doing it. You are empowering in your approach
• Risk mitigation instinct - you can reverse-engineer a performance bottleneck. Strong audit and insight discipline. Strong ability to turn complex ideas into simple ones, and delegate accordingly
• Continuous research mindset - constantly scanning trends, competitor work, Reddit, customer behaviour, creative patterns. Daily, not quarterly
• Outcome Obsessed - every task, framework, and training tied to a measurable outcome
• Kind Candour - confident in giving direct, honest feedback regularly in a way that empowers
• Extreme Ownership - you demonstrate strong accountability in everything you do
• AI-literate and tech-enabled - you understand the trajectory of AI in creative and marketing, are comfortable using AI tools yourself, and can lead a team through AI-augmented workflow adoption

Nice-to-Have (Not Required)

• DTC / e-commerce business model literacy at 7-9 figure scale
• Track record running training sessions or workshops with creative teams
• Familiarity with our internal frameworks: macro / micro personas, Growth Compass, CSOS

Who You Are

• Outcome Obsessed: every task, meeting, idea attached to a measurable outcome
• Leverage-aware: rejects low-leverage work with discipline
• Intentional coach: reverse-engineers coaching from knowing each individual
• Curious by nature: continuous research mindset, not quarterly
• Calm under pressure: leads through ambiguity, performance dips, tight deadlines without spreading panic
• Structured thinker: breaks down problems and strategies clearly and logically
• Mentorship mindset: driven to help others grow. Leads by example
• Owner mentality: takes full accountability for craft outcomes. No excuses

Benefits

Benefits

• Enjoy 28 days of annual leave, giving you the time to recharge and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
• Benefit from our long-service reward scheme, with 1 additional day of annual leave awarded each year after 2 years of service.
• Work in a flexible hybrid model, with 2 days in our Central London office at the Roundhouse in Camden and the remainder from home.
• Access private health and life insurance, providing additional peace of mind and support for you and your family.
• Participate in our company pension scheme to help you plan and save for the future.
• Take advantage of a one-month annual work-abroad allowance, giving you the flexibility to work remotely from another location each year.